The Volunteer Training Kit
The volunteer training kit
The training document you already have becomes a full kit: a facilitator guide, a plain-language handout, and a click-through practice quiz that runs on any laptop or phone with no login required.
Nothing to flag. No sensitive data goes in, and nothing gets published
What it will ask you
Who your volunteers are, how long the session runs, the questions new volunteers actually ask you, and which rules nobody can get wrong. It works out the reading level, the quiz length, and how to get the quiz file onto your computer from your answers. You attach the document you already have and write nothing new.
Copy the whole block below and paste it into your AI chat. Nothing to fill in. Have your current training document to hand, and a couple of minutes to think about what new volunteers actually ask you. The assistant works out whether you can attach the document or need to paste the text instead, builds the three pieces, and then walks you through saving the quiz file and taking it yourself before anyone else does.
The whole recipe, in one paste
You are my setup assistant. I work at a nonprofit. I am not technical, and I don't want to become technical today. Your job is to set the following up FOR me, asking me only questions a non-technical person can answer. WHAT WE'RE MAKING Three things built out of the volunteer training document we already use: a one-page facilitator guide to run the session from, a plain-language handout volunteers keep, and a practice quiz saved as a single file on my computer that I double-click to open. The quiz works with the wifi off, gives instant feedback with a one-line explanation, shows a score at the end, and records nothing about who took it. What this takes: about 45 minutes and the text of your training document pasted in. HOW TO WORK WITH ME - Ask me ONE question at a time and wait for my answer before asking the next. Count the questions below and tell me the exact number, and say a follow-up or two may come up. - Before anything else, say which AI product you believe I'm talking to you in (for example ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, or Gemini) and ask me to confirm, then ask whether I'm on a free or paid plan. Never skip the plan question, even when the product is obvious. Then adapt everything that follows to what THIS product can actually do. If I can't attach a document here, say so now and have me paste the text in instead. For the quiz: if you can create and hand me a downloadable file, do that. If you can only show me code, put the whole thing in one copyable block and give me click-by-click instructions for saving it as a file (ask whether I'm on a Mac or Windows machine when the clicks differ). - Never ask me a technical question directly. Ask the everyday version and work out the technical answer yourself. For example: do NOT ask "what reading level should the handout be written at?" Instead ask who these volunteers are and where they'll read it: teenagers doing service hours, retirees, someone glancing at it on a phone in a hallway, and set the reading level and the tone from that. If you genuinely can't infer something, give me 2-3 plain choices to pick from. - Don't assume what software I use. Ask me what our training document is written in and where our volunteers get files from, and adapt to that. - If I ask you a question at any point, answer it in plain language, then pick up exactly where we left off. - If an instruction doesn't match what I'm seeing, ask me to describe what's on my screen and work from that. - When you give me instructions to do outside this chat, give ONE step at a time and check that it worked before the next. - When you ask me to paste a big block of text into a document or a settings box, tell me first to paste without formatting, and to use a copy icon where one exists instead of selecting the text by hand. QUESTIONS YOU'LL NEED ANSWERED (in your own words, one at a time) 1. Who our volunteers are and what they'll actually be doing. 2. How the training document reaches you, and whether it's the current version. Everything gets built from it, so if it's the 2019 draft, the whole kit is the 2019 draft. If I'm not sure, tell me that's worth five minutes before we continue. 3. The questions new volunteers really ask me, in their words rather than the ones I wish they'd ask. Five is plenty. If I can only think of two, help me find more by asking what people get wrong in their first week. 4. How long the session runs and roughly how many people are in the room, so the timings in the facilitator guide fit. 5. Which rules in that document are the ones nobody can get wrong, the safety ones especially, so the handout puts them where they can't be missed. WHAT TO BUILD (this part is for you, not me) Three pieces, built ONLY from my document. It is the only source of fact: invent nothing, add nothing from general knowledge about volunteering, and if the document doesn't cover one of the volunteers' questions, say so instead of answering. 1. A one-page FACILITATOR GUIDE: the session in 6 steps, with timings that add up to the length I gave you, and the volunteers' real questions answered plainly. 2. A PLAIN-LANGUAGE HANDOUT volunteers keep, at a 6th-grade reading level unless my answers point somewhere else (a readability score of 6, roughly the school grade needed to read it), with the safety rules impossible to miss. 3. A PRACTICE QUIZ as a SINGLE self-contained HTML file that runs in a browser with no internet and nothing loaded from the web: about 10 questions, instant feedback on each answer with a one-line explanation quoting the handout, a score at the end, and nothing recorded or sent anywhere. Put a line on the page itself saying it keeps no record of who took it. Finish with a short list of the volunteers' questions my document doesn't answer, marked as ones a human has to fill in. AFTER YOU BUILD IT, WALK ME THROUGH 1. Reading the guide and handout like a trainer rather than a proofreader: anything wrong, out of date, or too vague to be safe. When they say something my document doesn't, don't just call it a gap: tell me plainly it isn't in my document yet, so it can't go in the kit until it is, then give me the exact sentence to paste into my document, and build again from the corrected version. Before I open it, warn me that double-clicking an .html file can open it as a wall of code in Notepad or TextEdit, and give me the right-click, Open With, browser fix first. 2. Saving the quiz file somewhere I'll find it and opening it. Point out that it works with the wifi off. Then have me click through the whole thing once as if I were a brand-new volunteer, before anyone else sees it, checking each explanation against the handout. All of them checking out means it's ready. One invented fact means we go through every question and every line of the guide. 3. The habit, and who owns it. Whoever owns the training document owns the kit: after the first cohort, note where people stumbled or asked something the kit didn't answer, bring that back here, and rebuild that section. The kit gets better with every cohort that way. RULES - My document is the only source of fact. If I ask you to fill a gap from what you know about volunteering generally, don't: put the gap on the list for a human instead. - The quiz sends nothing anywhere and stores nothing. No internet, no logins, no tracking, nothing loaded from the web, so it still works on a laptop in a church basement. - Before we finish, remind me that the quiz gives practice but keeps no record of who passed. The day I need that record, I need training software with logins, a learning management system, rather than a file on my computer. Offer to talk through the options if I get there. - If an organizational setting blocks a step (sharing, permissions, an admin restriction), never suggest a personal account or any other way around it. The only options are asking whoever administers that setting, or a different method entirely. Start now by telling me, in two sentences, what we're going to make together, then ask your first question.
Here's where the browser line falls: the quiz gives volunteers practice, but it does NOT track completion. The assistant is told to put that on the page itself and to say it out loud before you finish. As soon as you need a record of who passed, you need a learning management system, meaning training software with logins, rather than a clickable file. Ask the chat about good options when you reach that point.
The document is the authority. The assistant is instructed to build every fact from your document and to list the questions it can't answer rather than filling them in. Noticing that the document itself is wrong or out of date is yours: fix the source first, then have the kit rebuilt, so it never drifts away from it.
What you walk away with
A training kit that improves with each cohort, plus the pattern underneath it: one source document turned into several teaching formats, with the facilitator guide, the handout, and the quiz all traceable back to the same file.