Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

How to avoid scams in volunteering

Images, in the style of petroglyphs, of people doing various activities, like writing or construction.

It’s a sad reality that there are people that use nonprofits and charities to try to make money for themselves, and that recruit volunteers to “help”.

Here are some red flags to look for when signing up to volunteer, so that you can avoid being financially exploited – or worse:

  • The organization wants a large fee for you to volunteer. Involving volunteers is not free, and it’s not unusual for organizations to ask volunteers to pay a small fee to cover some costs – up to, say, $50 – but most organizations will offer to waive a fee for any applicant that says the fee will be cost prohibitive to volunteer. If an organization is asking for a fee, but doesn’t say what that fee pays for, ask.
  • The organization has volunteers working with children or other vulnerable people, but does no screening of volunteers, has no policies regarding behavior and grounds for dismissal, etc. Even if the work is done online, if children or other vulnerable people are involved, screening and policies need to be in place. If they aren’t on the web site, ask for such.
  • The organization doesn’t have its board of directors listed on the web site. This is always a red flag. A one-person nonprofit – a web site that has lots about the founder but not about other volunteers or the board – or that doesn’t list any board members or staff, is a nonprofit to steer clear of.
  • The organization talks a lot about “We can give hours!” That doesn’t mean anything. It’s a completely meaningless statement. If you are volunteering to meet a high school graduation requirement, any volunteering for a nonprofit organization should qualify. If you are volunteering to meet a court order, you have to clear the volunteering with the court contact BEFORE you volunteer. If you are volunteering in hopes of getting admitted to a university or to get a scholarship, the number of hours does NOT matter – what you did, what you learned, what you accomplished, the leadership you exhibited, etc. are what matter.
  • The organization’s web site is awash with photos from photo-sharing sites, rather than photos of their own actual volunteers, staff and clients.
  • The organization never says why volunteers are in these roles it is recruiting for, or just says, “We can’t pay people, so we recruit volunteers.” The organization should have a reason it reserves certain roles for volunteers, and the web site should give this reason.
  • The organization emphasizes repeatedly that you can use the volunteering to fulfill a court order, in exchange for a fee. There are nonprofits that have been sued for this practice by State Attorneys General.

And in addition to these, for volunteering abroad (in a country different from your own), look for these red flags:

  • The organization wants short-term volunteers, for just a few weeks, and no specialized skills are necessary. There are zero credible organizations in other countries that need foreign volunteers with no specialized skills to come to their site and do something that local people are perfectly capable of doing themselves. If you encounter such, you will find that they are asking for a great deal of money for you to come and do this “volunteering.” That’s a vacation, not volunteering.
  • The organization has no local people on its board or leadership team.
  • The organization wants these short-term, unskilled volunteers to do something highly unethical, like interact with children, work in an orphanage or interact with wildlife.
  • The organization does no screening at all, doesn’t check references, etc. – you pay a fee and you get to “volunteer.”

Please be cautious before signing up to volunteer. Look at the web site carefully. Ask questions. Ask to speak with a current or previous volunteer. Type the name of the organization into Google or Duck Duck Go along with words like ripoff or scam or beware and see if anything comes up.

Here are all of my blogs about some aspect of court-ordered community service.

Here are my voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

How high is your bar for volunteer commitment?

a simplistic drawing of a wizard

I read these words a lot about volunteers from the organizations they support:

  • unwavering dedication and selflessness
  • tireless commitment
  • always ready and available

Those qualities are, absolutely, worthy of recognition.

But I wonder…

Does your nonprofit require volunteers to have “unwavering dedication”? Or “Selflessness?” Do you expect volunteers to be “tireless?” Is that realistic?

I’ve touched on this before, back in 2018 with the blog Some people think they aren’t perfect enough to volunteer with you. It’s fine to have minimum time requirements for volunteers, and to celebrate volunteers that go above and beyond, but here’s the reality: most of your volunteers aren’t going to have unwavering dedication, they aren’t going to be tireless, and they aren’t selfless and THAT’S OKAY. Those dedicated volunteers who also have strong personal boundaries and don’t want to overextend themselves can also be really terrific volunteers.

Absolutely, honor your outstanding volunteers, but also have frequent messaging about

  • how easy it is to sign up to volunteer (and is it?)
  • the variety of ways to help as a volunteer in terms of time commitment and time of day to help (and is there?)
  • the benefits to volunteering for the volunteer (because the reality is that very few of us are completely selfless!)

And you also need to have a culture with volunteers that, while it absolutely can encourage a high quality of service, it also welcomes suggestions, even criticism, from volunteers, and that volunteers won’t be penalized for needing a break – for not being “tireless.”

Also see:

Expectations for volunteering by the volunteer – too much?

Do you welcome people with your language?

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

We’ve got to get better at addressing misconceptions about volunteerism.

graphic representing volunteers at work

I live in the Portland, Oregon area, and a few years ago, the area experienced record-setting heat. In response, various city and county governments set up cooling centers: spaces in libraries, churches and convention centers where people without air conditioning and people who are unsheltered could come, with their pets, to get relief from the dangerous heat. One county government tweeted out several requests for volunteers, including one that said volunteers were needed “desperately.” I decided to amplify the message by posting it to various online communities I’m a part of, including posting it on the subreddit for Portland, Oregon. I highlighted some points in particular from the web site where people were to express interest in volunteering:

Must be 18+, have compassion for all guests. Social service experience helpful.

Please keep in mind that emergency response operations may be very hectic keeping you quite busy for extended periods. You may also experience very slow uneventful periods of time. Such is the nature of emergency and disaster response. Please take time before your deployment to prepare for this working environment.

These are 9-hour shifts. These locations are open 24 HOURS.

I did alter the message to say cooling center volunteers were needed URGENTLY, rather than desperately, because I think desperation is never a good place to recruit volunteers from.

The message was upvoted more than any message I’ve ever posted to Reddit. But there was also significant backlash. The criticisms fell into three areas:

  • Why aren’t these positions paid? Why are these volunteer roles instead?
  • Why are the shifts 9 hours instead of 4?
  • Why didn’t the city plan better & start recruiting sooner?

It’s a shame those first two questions in particular weren’t answered by the recruiting agency in their messaging. As regular readers of my blog know, to not say why positions are volunteer rather than paid is always a big no-no. And saying “we don’t have the money to pay, so these are volunteer!” would not be the answer I am looking for (and probably not most of potential volunteers either).

As for the third comment, I don’t know that the city didn’t start recruiting sooner; I didn’t look on HandsOn Portland, VolunteerMatch and AllforGood, for instance, to see if they had started recruiting there. I don’t know that they didn’t have notices on their own web site sooner than what I saw on social media. So I hesitate to criticize them for how they have recruited in terms of when and where.

I did take issue with one comment that was made, and pushed back at it:

Way too much money and benefits expenses being expended on volunteer “coordinators”

I noted in my response that managers or coordinators of volunteers are some of the lowest paid people at any nonprofit or other agency, and rarely is their only role managing volunteers. I also said:

Volunteers aren’t free: someone has to recruit them, read the applications, interview them, screen them (often, background checks, reference checks and extensive interviews are required), supervise them (both to ensure their safety and client safety, and to make sure they’re doing what they are supposed to), support them (train them, answer questions on demand, etc), record their hours and their accomplishments, address problems, and report regularly to senior staff about what the volunteers are doing. It’s a tough job, made harder by people who think volunteers are free, think volunteer management is “Hey, we need volunteers, come on down!” and the work all magically happens, and balk at coordinators who ask for better training for themselves, software to manage volunteers, etc.

Nonprofits have GOT to do a better job of addressing misconceptions about volunteers and volunteer engagement. This is just yet another example of why.

Also see:

If you have benefited from any of my blogs or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

A dare for nonprofit executive directors

graphic representing volunteers at work

Do you head a nonprofit or non-government organizations (NGO)? I have a challenge for you. It’s a simple challenge, but a revealing one, and I’m daring you to do it:

Make this list, entirely on your own, with no consultation with others, of each person at your organization that you believe is supposed to be primarily responsible for:

  • responding to someone that emails or calls and says they want to volunteer.
  • meeting with / interviewing someone for the first time that wants to volunteer, getting all the necessary paperwork from the new applicant, etc.
  • orienting/training someone that will volunteer and what that orienting or training consists of (watching a certain video? going over the employee policy manual? getting a tour of facilities?)
  • inputting all of the volunteers’ information into a central database.
  • letting volunteers know about organization events or activities they would be welcomed to join or that they may be asked about from the public they work with.
  • following up with volunteers to see how their experience is going.
  • trouble-shooting on behalf of volunteers.
  • firing a volunteer.
  • recognizing and rewarding volunteers.
  • tracking volunteer contributions and reporting such to the organization.
  • interviewing volunteers that leave, to see why and to address issues.

Now that you have your list, then, at your next staff meeting, ask your staff these same questions. And learn two things:

  • If you are right.
  • If the staff that have these responsibilities knew they had these responsibilities.

Don’t be surprised if, in fact, you are wrong about who is responsible for what, nor surprised that there are staff with these responsibilities that didn’t know it. Reflect on these discrepancies and think about how you are going to support staff that didn’t know it was their responsibility to manage a piece of working with volunteers.

And then, finally, ask for a progress report on each of these tasks. And don’t be surprised to hear, again and again, “We’re behind on that. We’ve had other priorities. Sorry.” Because unless you have a dedicated manager of volunteers, someone whose sole responsibility is to support and engage volunteers, it’s very likely all those other people who are supposed to have at least a piece of volunteer engagement as a part of their roles – the marketing director, the fundraising manager, the thrift store manager, etc. – aren’t doing it regularly. And with that, you’ll finally understand why your organization doesn’t have all the volunteers it needs and why volunteers don’t stay.

And maybe then you’ll stop saying, “Well, people just don’t want to volunteer anymore!”

Also see:

Our Lady of the Manifest: the icon for a very particular community of online volunteers

When most people think of the Afghan evacuation, they think of August of 2021, when crowds surged around Kabul’s airport, desperate and doomed Afghans clung to the sides of planes taking off, and a suicide bomber murdered scores of Afghans and 11 U.S. Marines, one soldier, and one Navy Corpsman. And they think the evacuation is over. But the evacuation of Afghans never ended. And neither has the volunteering by people all over the world trying to get vulnerable people out.

Jeff Phaneuf of No One Left Behind, the largest volunteer organization working to assist Afghans who served the USA as interpreters, has noted that when the organization surveyed its 16,000 contacts in August 2022, it found 180 clear instances of Afghans killed while waiting on a visa, with a 80 further possible murders they’re looking into. No One Left Behind estimates that there are close to 200,000 people still in Afghanistan eligible for visas from the USA set aside for Afghans and their family members who are at risk because of work they did for the USA. That doesn’t count the women’s rights activists other groups are working on. Those Afghans who do make it out often exist in an indeterminate legal space because of the inaction of governments to give them permanent status. Many of the people in Afghanistan that volunteers abroad are trying to help are literally starving: in August 2022, when No One Left Behind asked Afghans applying to leave about the conditions they lived under, only 5.5% reported being able to feed their families.

a doll with only its white face is visible amid its cover of blue and white fabric, like a chador. It holds a large, fake sunflower. It is hung on an otherwise bare, white wall.

This Time article profiles the work of people, most of them volunteers, who are still in contact with Afghans in Afghanistan and are continuing to try to get people, especially women, out of Afghanistan and to a safe country with official asylum status, and focuses on their macabre mascot, Our Lady of the Manifest, “She’s who we pray to, to get people on flights” – and how she’s helping volunteers facing mounting fatigue, frustration, depression and stress as they feel a growing helplessness to assist Afghans.

The article notes what everyone faces in trying to get at-risk Afghans out of Afghanistan:

You can get every necessary document in order, push your case through the sluggish and unresponsive refugee system, get every name of the family you’re working with on a flight manifest, and somewhere between that Afghan family’s home and the airport they can run into the “18-year-old with a gun” problem—a young Afghan running a Taliban checkpoint who doesn’t have much respect for international agreements or paperwork and who might be in a bad mood, or struck by how a woman is dressed, or acting, or who just doesn’t like the idea of a family who wants to flee the country. Everything can fall apart in a moment.

As the author of the article notes, “Sometimes, Our Lady feels a little less like an inside joke with these volunteers trying to get Afghans out, and more like a companion on a painful road.”

These volunteers work mostly in isolation. Even with online communities and interacting with others remotely, volunteers can feel very unsupported and alone, especially when friends and family are more than ready to move on and stop talking about this. I know, because I am such volunteer: I wrote about my efforts two years ago as a part of Digital Dunkirk: online volunteers scrambling to help endangered Afghans get visas & out of Afghanistan and the mental and emotional toll I could see it taking on others and myself. There’s no organization supporting me or guiding me in this role – myself and other volunteers are all pretty much making it up as we go along, because the guidelines and information about getting people out of Afghanistan and into an asylum program are ever changing. Most of us, including myself, have no training in interacting with people witnessing and experiencing violence, who have no safe haven from those acts – but we are interacting with Afghans, via WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal – that live in this daily reality and want our help. In addition, many of these volunteers, myself including, know that there are people – former colleagues, real people, with names and stories, who are in the photos we have of our time there – who qualify, on paper, to come to the USA, but are still languishing in a country run by terrorists 18 months later. As Laura Deitz of Task Force Nyx notes in the article, “I probably can’t underscore the toll that this mentally and emotionally takes on anyone who’s trying to help.”

And as I wrote in my earlier blog about this volunteering:

For the online volunteers trying to help, no certificate, no statistic on the monetary value of the time they contributed, no t-shirt, is going to serve as appropriate recognition for what they’ve done. There’s just one way we’re going to feel good about our virtual volunteering: getting people out of Afghanistan.

And I shall say it again, as I did two years ago:

Of course, the stress and frustration of online volunteers in this effort is nothing compared to the Afghans we’re trying to help. In addition to being terrified of the knock at the door that means the Taliban is there, to search the home, to take away boys and young men to fight, to take away girls for rape (there’s no such thing as “child marriage” – please stop saying that), to find files and data that could prove someone in the family worked with the USA, the UK, Australia, or some European country, Afghans are also running out of money and food.

I confess to having a very macabre sense of humor at times, and to gravitating to other humanitarian workers as colleagues and friends who also have such. It’s how I can face the absolute unnecessary absurdity of humanitarian work, whether internationally or just trying to help in my own community. This article provides a good profile of people who I think are like me – we don’t mean to offend. We’re just trying to stay sane.

I may print out a photo of Our Lady of the Manifest and put it on my wall.

If you have read this blog and are in the USA, I beg you to please write your US Congressional representative and both of your US Senators, as well as to the President of the USA, and ask them to please fulfill our commitment to our allies in Afghanistan, and to please put in the staffing and systems necessary to evacuate our allies and their families from Afgahnistan. They believed us – believe me – when we said they could and should pursue their education and careers, and they did so with the belief that we woud have their backs. We owe them this. And if you are in a country that worked in Afghanistan, whether militarily or in humanitarian interventions – Australia, the UK, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Japan, India, where ever – please do the same in your country regarding contacting your federally-elected officials.

What is meant by “safety policies” for volunteering programs?

two primitive-looking images, like petroglyphs, one holding an umbrella over them both

Any organization that involves volunteers needs to have safety policies and procedures to protect both volunteers and those that they serve, and if the volunteers interact with vulnerable people or could be in one-to-one situations with ANYONE, there needs to be even more extensive safety policies and procedures.

What do safety policies look like?

Screening steps for volunteers could be the volunteer applicants:

  • providing real names (not just nicknames or screen names), residential addresses (not just a PO Box), phone number, etc.
  • providing the name of the volunteer’s current employer and previous two employers, or the name of where they are currently enrolled in school and how many hours they are taking.
  • answering the questions “why do you want to volunteer?” and “What do you hope to experience as a volunteer” and “tell me about a time you interacted with a person in crisis.”
  • providing professional and academic reference checks (employers, teachers)
  • providing personal reference checks (friends, family)
  • undergoing a criminal background check
  • undergoing a credit check
  • being in a probation period and extra observation at first
  • going through required training

Supervision for volunteers could be:

  • Volunteers required to use an email the organization has set up and know that ALL emails are archived and could be reviewed at any time.
  • Volunteers required to work in pairs or paired with a staff person.
  • Staff that created the volunteering role meeting with the volunteer once a month or once a quarter AND meeting with other volunteers and clients about that volunteer’s performance.

Policies for volunteers could be:

  • Never being alone, one-on-one, with another volunteer, a paid staff person or a client.
  • Never using any electronic communications avenues other than a specific email or online platform (no texting among volunteers, for instance).
  • A prohibition on a volunteer giving personal contact info to any client.
  • A mandatory reporting by the volunteer if a client gives that volunteer personal contact info or tries to contact that volunteer outside of agreed-to communications avenues (WhatsApp, TikTok, etc.)
  • Mandatory reporting to management of suspicions of inappropriate behavior relating to sex by volunteers and clients.

etc.

Again, these are just EXAMPLES. And what safety requirements a volunteer beach cleanup group is going to have is NOT going to be the same as what a mentoring program for young people will have.

But whatever you have at your organization, whatever you require, should be detailed on your organization’s web site – NO EXCEPTIONS. And if they are not, it has to be assumed you don’t have them. And if you are recruiting volunteers to work with vulnerable groups or one-on-one with anyone, your post is going to be deleted here unless you have info on your web site on the steps you employ to keep volunteers and those they were safe.

Safety in Service Delivery/Client Support by Online Volunteers.

Your right to turn away volunteers who won’t adhere to safety measures (& your right to refuse to volunteer at an unsafe program)

My wakeup call regarding risks in volunteering programs – a blog that may change your mind about how to think about risks in volunteer engagement programs

Letting Fear Prevent Volunteer Involvement is Too Risky” (a guest blog by me for Energize, Inc. and Susan Ellis)

Have you enabled a Larry Nassar?

Keeping volunteers safe – & keeping everyone safe with volunteers (includes a list of my favorite resources regarding safety in programs that involve volunteers and/or children; I consider many of these resources mandatory reading for managers of volunteers

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help

What I’ve learned working at Habitat for Humanity

A photo of the author, Jayne Cravens, wearing a Habitat for Humanity plastic construction helmet with Habitat for Humanity on it.
Jayne Cravens

Since August 2022, I have been working the equivalent of two full days a week, sometimes a bit more, for a local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International. I’ve been working in marketing and outreach, primarily social media and web site content, and also for three months, I helped onboard volunteers for home builds and home repairs, as well as looking at the volunteer onboarding, support and tracking processes at the Restore, Habitat’s thrift store, and making recommendations to make them better.

My primary goal in my job is to increase local awareness about this Habitat affiliate’s efforts to address affordable housing and about its efforts to help vulnerable homeowners with critical home repairs that allow them to stay in their homes. I also have a focus on increasing sales of the affiliate’s ReStore, which is a vital funding component for the local affiliate, as well as increasing awareness of the ReStore regarding its connection to Habitat for Humanity and as a recycle and reuse option. I would also like to see a LOT more diversity among Habitat’s volunteer engagement, and that’s going to require special, targeted efforts in messaging – putting a lot of my own recommendations to the test. I manage the Habitat affiliate’s web site and the local ReStore web site, and you can see examples of my online outreach via the affiliate’s Facebook and Instagram pages, the local ReStore Facebook and Instagram pages, and the affiliate’s Mastodon, Twitter and Reddit accounts. 

It’s been a fascinating, challenging experience. I’ve long been a fan of Habitat for Humanity’s model for engaging volunteers in home construction, as you know if you have attended my workshops related to volunteer engagement. Getting this behind-the-scenes look at all the various aspects of Habitat’s programming, which goes well beyond building structures, has been fantastic and inspiring. It’s also so wonderful to be in a small, frontline nonprofit, especially one serving a largely rural community: the affiliate serves a large, mostly rural area of less than 400 sq miles / 940 km2, much of it unincorporated and outside the Portland Metro Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), which bisects Washington County. The overall population of the area served by this affiliate is less than 50,000. The three argest cities in the service area have populations of about 26,000 people, about 13,400 people and about 3500 people, respectively. More than 10 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino.

In the time I have been at this Habitat for Humanity affiliate, here are some things I’ve learned – or relearned:

  • There’s nothing like testing your recommendations made as a consultant in real-world settings. It’s one thing to write a blog or a book or hold a training; it’s another to actually apply those strategies yourself. I’ve always been proud to be able to tie what I recommend in a workshop to what I’ve actually done.
  • Working with people in rural Oregon really isn’t that different from working with rural people in Afghanistan: people want a safe, stable place to live, most especially a place of their own, and in most cases, if you give them the opportunity to work for that, they’ll embrace it – and their neighbors will help. Political and economic obstacles in nonprofit work are shockingly similar across countries.
  • Some of the most important work you do as a communications manager is getting what people know in their heads into a form that can be read and referenced by others. Often, employees aren’t that aware of all their fellow employees are doing. When a key employee or volunteer leaves, and their work and knowledge isn’t documented, it can bring some work to a standstill. Plus, what is in people’s heads and what they experience in their work is fantastic for blogs and grant proposals.
  • The people with whom most customers interact should be regularly briefed on program activities, on upcoming events and on important dates. The cashiers of the ReStore regularly get questions about Habitat programming from customers, and since my office is right next to checkout, if the cashiers don’t know the answer, they will grab me to talk to the customers with questions, something I welcome. And they listen to what I say and sometimes comment later, “I didn’t know any of that.” Everyone is a spokesperson for your nonprofit, whether you like it or not. I’m now working to make sure they know how to answer our organization’s most frequently asked questions, and how to direct people who need detailed answers. I’m working to make sure they know they can use their smart phones to pull up our organization’s web site, right then and there, and read answers to customers with questions. Have a look at When some nonprofit employees & volunteers don’t really understand what the nonprofit is trying to address & why for more on what I suggest to ensure everyone is representing your nonprofit appropriately.
  • Just because you work for an agency with a well-known name does not mean people really know what it does (including some employees and board members!). So many people think Habitat for Humanity gives away houses – it doesn’t (it partners with families for affordable mortgages – the families DO make payments for the house). I didn’t know Habitat did critical home repairs for vulnerable home owners until I started working there.
  • Online tools aren’t enough to market an organization: executive directors and board members have to get out into the communities. You have to show up at the big events of other organizations. You have to present to city councils and county governments. You have to immediately respond to every call from the media – especially in this age of fewer and fewer newspapers, and fewer local radio stations and TV stations. You have to leverage banner placements over key streets and doorways, buy ads in newspapers (if you are lucky enough to still have a newspaper), put flyers up at grocery stores, and rely on other marketing tools many said would go away with the Internet. You have to be at farmer’s markets and the super popular food cart pod on a Friday night. And the opposite is true too: just going to onsite events and relying on traditional paper postal mail and onsite displays isn’t enough; you have to regularly use and update online tools.
  • People love social media posts that have photos of LOCAL PEOPLE in them. You can, therefore, never have enough photos of local volunteers and employees “in action.”
  • People also love social media that’s fun. And dinosaurs are terrific props.
  • Bureaucracy can be wonderful. Rules, regulations, protocols, official messaging – these are NOT automatically bad. Official policies and procedures MATTER because when they are based in reality, understood and followed, it keeps everyone on the same page and it prevents missteps. I loved that, at the United Nations, I could always find the policy, the manual, the official statement, that I could use to justify something I wanted to say or do. The same has been true of Habitat: their official policies regarding communications, safety and volunteer engagement have made my job easier! And what a joy to see Susan Ellis, my mentor and guru, quoted in Habitat’s official guidance for staff regarding volunteer engagement. It’s also been great not to have to agonize over how to phrase something – I can usually find exactly what I need in official Habitat materials, some public, some on our extensive national intranet/knowledge base.
  • People don’t like change. I’ve known this for years, and I’m relearning it yet again. And if I hear, “But that’s the way we’ve always done it” one more time…
  • There is a delicate, difficult balance in an organization that fights poverty hosting a gala event.
  • Contacting TV stations an hour away 48 hours before an event can sometimes get them to cover it during a slow news week. It’s always worth trying.
  • I’m not the only over-40 woman in my area that has so much professional experience I scare potential employers when I apply for jobs – and it’s amazing how many Generation Xers I’m now encountering on their third or fourth careers.
  • It’s still not easy to create group volunteering roles – things that three or more volunteers could do together, just once (though it’s usually 10 or more people). The agency could have three of these every month and not meet volunteer demand.
  • People are willing to travel outside of their area to volunteer for a day. As noted earlier, I’m in a county that’s half rural and half urban. The Habitat that serves the urban area can’t as easily accommodate groups of volunteers, or specialized volunteers, as we can, so we end up with volunteers from the opposite side of the county, often from groups of employees from very large employers – and that’s fine with us!
  • As I wrote on a blog in 2016 called “If no one is complaining, we don’t have to change how we do things”, “Often, when I do a little digging myself, talking to people that wanted to volunteer at the organization but didn’t, or to current members, or to former clients, and on and on, I find that, indeed, there is dissatisfaction among a few, maybe even more, but no one says anything to the organization itself… they don’t say anything about something they would like to see changed or improved because there is a culture within the program or the entire organization, that discourages complaints or suggestions.” No further comment.
  • Everyone that works with volunteers should have some training on how to work with volunteers. Period.
  • It’s so still oh-so-easy to recruit volunteers for online tasks and onsite, short-term roles. People are so, so hungry for those kinds of roles! I remain confused by people who struggle to recruit volunteers for short-term roles or online roles. I’ve put up three such assignments VolunteerMatch and had to take them down in just a few days because I had enough great volunteers to do them. I’ve recruited online volunteers to update our contact list of every community of faith and every nonprofit in the area, as well as to update our list of and contact information for every elected official that represents any part of our area. It’s not too late for you to get up-to-speed on virtual volunteering!
  • It’s really hard to recruit new volunteers for longer-term, ongoing roles, and people under 50 have zero interest in coming to a ReStore even twice a month to help in an ongoing role. And that’s not a criticism of these generations – I think they would volunteer if we built a relationship with these folks, if we enticed them with short-term gigs and gave them a really worthwhile experience.
  • Online sales requires a dedicated staff member who can spare the role several hours of every week – it can’t be done as a simple add-on to an existing role, something attended to just a few minutes a day.
  • Bicycling to work is awesome except when it’s icy outside. Just like in Germany! But it’s brutal in the increasingly over-headed summers we now get.

This experience has also affirmed my belief that, if you want to work abroad in humanitarian endeavors, you need deep experience working for nonprofits in your own community, as an employee, consultant or volunteer. And any Habitat for Humanity affiliate and its ReStore are great places to start.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help

For Executive Directors: It’s Time for Mandates Regarding Volunteering Engagement.

graphic representing volunteers at work

Volunteer engagement is not going to expand, nor be worthwhile, at any nonprofit unless senior management does more than pay it lip service.

Nonprofit executive directors: you cannot keep treating volunteer engagement strategies from the point of view of “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” You can’t keep crossing your fingers and hope it somehow happens or that problems somehow work themselves out. Because none of that is going to happen on its own. You can’t just encourage volunteer engagement – it’s time for you to REQUIRE it.

Executive directors must MANDATE certain activities regarding volunteer engagement at their organizations, with some or all staff, or it won’t happen – or it won’t be successful and may, in fact, create frustration, disappointments, public relations problems, even safety and safeguarding problems.

What mandates regarding volunteer engagement look like:

  • Nonprofit executive directors include requirements for volunteer engagement in certain paid job roles – meaning certain staff have to include a goal of involving volunteers in their work. And when performance review time comes around, executive directors must look at how well each manager has – or has not – involved volunteers in their programs, and take necessary corrective action.
  • Nonprofits must provide regular training for all staff expected to work with volunteers and must provide time for staff to take part in workshops and to read about different aspects of volunteer engagement (screening, recruitment for diversity, safeguarding, etc.). And those expected to work with volunteers should have official opportunities to provide feedback to judge how well the executive director is supporting these capacity-building activities.
  • Nonprofits must have a systemic, well-thought-out process, IN WRITING, for onboarding volunteers, training volunteers, supporting volunteers, getting feedback from volunteers, and tracking information about volunteer engagement, as well as a way to generate performance reports on all of the aforementioned.
  • Executive directors must address volunteer engagement problems directly and as immediately as possible, like managers not following the official process to onboard volunteers, or managers not responding to questions or requests from volunteers in a timely manner – and that includes reviewing the performance of managers who are volunteers themselves.

I can feel the aversion from some readers. MANDATE volunteer engagement?! That’s not nice! It’s so harsh! Gee – we require staff to follow accounting procedures, we require staff to follow human resources policies, we measure staff performance on how well they communicate their work with management and other staff, how well they get along with other staff and clients, etc. and take corrective action when they come up short… Why have requirements for other business processes but NOT for volunteer engagement?

I’m not saying every staff member at a nonprofit has to involve volunteers. It’s not appropriate nor realistic for every staff member to involve volunteers. But if you, the executive director, do not mandate volunteer engagement in the job roles of those staff members you DO want to involve volunteers, and if you don’t support staff members in engaging and supporting those volunteers, volunteer engagement isn’t going to happen – or it’s going to be substandard and may, in fact, create something more than just frustration at your program.

If you are a nonprofit executive director and you need to learn more so that you can be a better manager of volunteer engagement at your organizaton, start with reading From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement. I consider it mandatory material for any nonprofit executive director. It’s worth every minute you spend reading it.

You can also peruse my own materials on the essentials of volunteer engagement (free).

And if you think engaging volunteers is easy and that your staff should be magically better at it, consider that your board of directors is made up entirely of volunteers. How much support do YOU need to work with your board members, even to just manage a meeting? Why do you think your staff needs less time and support for working with volunteers than you do with the board? No mandates work without providing appropriate support.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help

Volunteering, or that meeting you are going to host, must sound enticing & compelling or people won’t care (our post-pandemic reality).

image of a panel discussion

People are going on vacations again. They are going to restaurants again. They are going camping in droves. They are even attending work-related conferences again. But they have not returned to many onsite activities they might have done before the COVID-19 pandemic, like attending community meetings and volunteering.

Why?

I surmise it’s because people got very used to being home and they really don’t want to be away from home except for something they really enjoy or something that’s exceptional, something that is compelling. There’s so much great stuff at home – streaming services, that new pizza oven you bought during COVID, your couch… so if a person is going to leave it, it better be for a fantastic reason.

Before the pandemic, a lot of people attended meetings without deeply thinking about why they really, really wanted to – but now, post-lockdowns, we’ve thought a lot more about our time and our priorities. Going to an event before or after work requires organizing child or pet care, driving to the event, finding a parking spot, etc. – and in return, you might be bored, or intimidated, or under-valued and feel like your time is wasted. Plus, there is a vast amount of fantastic shows on TV that promise a lot of compelling stories and fun – and frequently deliver on that promise. Volunteering and in-person meetings? Not so much.

Many of you had to learn to run effective, even fun, virtual meetings to keep your nonprofit supporters engaged. It took a lot of effort on your part to learn do that and to actually do it. You are going to have to put in that same effort to rethink your onsite events, including your volunteer engagement.

“People who became leaders during the pandemic haven’t learned how to create irresistible in-person meetings,” said Cynthia D’Amour, MBA, mentor and leadership strategist at People Power Unlimited, in this article How to Re-Engage Members in Chapter Events from Associations Now. The article is about how it is now essential to “design programs that have energy and take advantage of the face-to-face location.”

I can’t tell you just in one blog everything you can do to make onsite meetings and onsite volunteering more enticing and inviting. And what works for one group might not work for another. I also don’t want to sound gimmicky – there’s not a magical icebreaker or theme that will make a meeting exciting or compelling. This is something you all need to think about at length, and you are going to have to experiment at length.

Here are some general ideas to get you started on your journey to learn how to change your onsite meetings and onsite volunteering to bring people back:

What was the last really enjoyable community meeting or volunteering you experienced – even if it was before the pandemic? What made it enjoyable? Ask all of your staff this question, about what they have experienced, first hand. They are likely going to say things that you can’t manage: my favorite band played or we all got an incredible swag bag or we made and baked our own pizzas. But amid that are going to be some things you can consider:

  • there were free sodas in the break room.
  • the meetings always start and end on time and are really well-organized – my time is never wasted.
  • they served really good food.
  • the ideas we offered at the first meeting had been implemented the following month.
  • the manager is really welcoming and makes it clear she’s happy we’re there.

Also consider that many people have a profound fear of rejection. Some think that younger generations take statements far more personally than older generations, but maybe they just aren’t as willing as older generations to put up with personal insults or being neglected. Either way, you have to make sure you have deliberate, ongoing activities to make volunteers feel welcomed and valued. Are you encouraging their questions and responding promptly to their questions and concerns? Does all of your staff show know how you are listening to volunteers? Do you believe no complaints means everything is okay?

Finally, you don’t want volunteers asking themselves why am I putting myself through this? And they will if their time is wasted, if they feel intimidated or devalued, or if they see no purpose or result in their volunteering. Are you regularly addressing those concerns with volunteers even if you haven’t gotten an indication that volunteers are asking themselves that question?

So many of us in the volunteer management training world have been sounding the alarm for years that nonprofits and other organizations that involve volunteers MUST change their ways regarding volunteer onboarding recruitment, onboarding, engagement and value or they will risk all of their current volunteers dying out. The pandemic has created an urgency: if you aren’t addressing the new realities of volunteer engagement, your organization is doomed.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help

Also see:

The problem with volunteer matching platforms isn’t a software issue

I get a version of this message regularly from an IT or corporate person:

With today’s technology, it seems to me that it should be easier for both volunteers and nonprofits to find appropriate matches online.  

An illustraiton that is drawn like cave paintings - one image is of a figure holding a smartphone, the other is of a person at a computer.

Sigh. The problem is not DATA. It’s not a data issue. It’s not a tech issue. It’s not a software issue. The issue is that the vast majority of nonprofits, and staff charged with recruiting and involving volunteers, have no training in how to do so, and they start with volunteer recruitment when, in fact, that’s the LAST step.

Nonprofits, NGOs, community groups and other initiatives that want to involve volunteers – or that do currently – need to have training in:

  • How to create appropriate tasks and roles for volunteers.
  • How to create a variety of tasks and roles (short-term, long-term, for highly skilled, for low-skilled, for high responsibility roles, for micro/episodic volunteering, etc.)
  • How to create accessible tasks and roles (that welcome refugees, that welcome people with disabilities, etc.)
  • What screening is required for different roles in order for volunteering to be safe and in order for appropriate volunteers to be screened in and inappropriate volunteers to be screened out.
  • What support volunteers need in their roles.


That’s all of the many things that are needed BEFORE RECRUITMENT HAPPENS. And such training is getting harder and harder to find, instead of easier. And that doesn’t even get into all the other training that’s needed, like how to evaluate and report the effectiveness of volunteer engagement. Or other things that are needed, like policies and procedures, particularly around safety, and software to track volunteers time and impact, to schedule volunteers, etc. – most nonprofits can’t afford such (in fact, they can’t even afford the time to explore such).

Why is all that lacking? Because there’s no funding for it. Corporations and foundations refuse to fund “overhead”. That means they won’t fund training, they won’t fund the purchase of books or subscriptions to sites like Engage.

I could go on and on. And I do. And I have, many times, as the “also see” links below show. And I’ll keep doing it until funders, particularly, techie companies, “get it” – and are ready to pony up the funds needed to increase the number of people engaged in volunteering and to improve the engagement of volunteers.

Also see: