Too often, the first position cut at a nonprofit organization or a
community program facing financial difficulties is the manager of
volunteers. Why? Because most people, even senior management at
nonprofit organization, do NOT know what the manager of
volunteers does, not really.
They think anyone can
manage a volunteer engagement program, and that such management is
easy. After all, a manager of volunteers just has a box and she
reaches into it and pulls volunteers out of it as needed, right?
The manager makes a few phone calls, tells volunteers where to be,
hands out thank you mugs – the job is easy peasy! And volunteers
are free, right? They
don't cost any money, because they are unpaid staff, right?
And volunteers are always SO easy to work with!
In some ways, managers of volunteers have themselves to blame
for these unfortunate and pervasive misunderstandings about what
it takes to involve volunteers effectively and why
an organization even involves volunteers at all. Most people
in these positions, I'm sorry to say, do a poor job of making sure
that every staff member at their organization knows the time and
expertise they bring to the position, and the essential nature of
their role in recruiting and supporting volunteers.
Managers of volunteers also often isolate themselves, seeing their
work as somehow separate from the rest of the organization. They
can also have a victim mentality, talking constantly about all the
work they have to do, but not talking about just how important
volunteer engagement is to an organization.
Contrast this with the fundraising manager at an organization,
who often does a great job of letting everyone know how much
money he or she has raised, making sure funding successes are
celebrated internally, talking endlessly about the importance of
networking and cultivation and, by default, making his or her
role seem absolutely essential to the organization. The
marketing manager does the same. Even the human resources
manager is seen as an expert. Why shouldn't the manager of
volunteers make sure volunteering successes have just as high
a profile in an organization as well, cultivate an image
of herself or himself as a specialist, as an expert, and make
sure she or he is seen as also absolutely essential to the
organization?
If you want your organization to understand and value its
engagement of volunteers, and understand your role as a
manager of volunteers in the success of the program, you have to take charge of
communicating this. And changing minds will be an
ongoing process - one workshop, one report, isn't going to do
it.
At minimum, the board of your organization, all paid staff and
all volunteers should know:
- the basics of how volunteers are recruited (where and how
do you get the word out?)
- the basics of what
information is available on the web site for
volunteering candidates and about volunteer
activities/successes
- what volunteers actually do at the organization. Everyone may know
about the volunteers who help at events, but do they know
about the pro bono consultant helping the organization
regarding human resources management? Do they know how much of
your organization's services are delivered to clients by
volunteers rather than paid staff? Do board members know that
they themselves are volunteers?
- what
impact volunteers have had at the organization (not just
how many hours contributed, but also, what qualitative impact
volunteer service has had)
- how many volunteers have been engaged in the last month,
the last quarter and the last year
- how different paid staff or volunteers have been
successfully engaging volunteers at the organization (the
manager of volunteers should NOT be the only person working
with volunteers!)
- new ways to involve volunteers (do they know about virtual
volunteering? do they know how to identify a
high-responsibility role for a long-term volunteer? do they
know how to identify a tech-related
assignment for a volunteer? do they know how to identify
a short-term assignment for a volunteer with a particular area
of expertise? do they know what microvolunteering
is? do they know what a
hackathon is?)
- where they can go for help in working with volunteers (and
their first stop should be the manager of volunteers, the
volunteerism specialist at the organization!)
To create this understand and knowledge, you, the manager of
volunteers, are going to have to undertake an ongoing
communications campaign. No one will do it for you - you
have to be directing this, even if you get others to help you in
this campaign.
Do not assume that staff
already know what you do!
To build the value of the volunteering specialist / manager of
volunteers, and to raise the profile of volunteering engagement
internally and externally for your organization:
- Start submitting a short, pithy report of interesting data
about your volunteering engagement for every staff
meeting. This could be a link to a blog that one of your
volunteers wrote, text of an email that a client sent to say
how much a volunteer's work meant to him or her, data on how
diverse your volunteer engagement is - or isn't, data on
how many volunteers completed microvolunteering
projects in one month's time, a fun photo taken at a recent
activity by volunteers, and on and on. Always
have something new to say at every staff
meeting about volunteering engagement at your organization.
Don't ask for permission to do this - JUST DO IT.
- Submit a similar report or data for every board
meeting, just as your fundraising manager probably does. Do
not wait to be asked - just do it. That may mean asking
someone else to deliver the data, if you aren't allowed to
present at the board meeting. If you aren't at the meeting,
ask after the board meeting how the data was received. Even if
there is no reaction, keep getting that info presented at every meeting; you are
building understanding and awareness, and that takes time.
Make sure the report or data is short and interesting. Even if
it is just in the board book and isn't actually talked about
at the board meeting, it's THERE, and that's a start.
- Negotiate with the appropriate staff to get at least one
page in the next annual report to talk about volunteer impact
at the organization. This impact should NOT be about number of
hours volunteers contribute or the monetary value of such
hours; this implies that volunteers are valued because they
are "free labor", and implies you could replace paid staff
with volunteers. More
about why this approach to valuing volunteers is dangerous.
- Regularly ask members of senior staff to attend workshops
regarding volunteer engagement. Workshops regarding risk
management in volunteer programs, social media use for
volunteer recruitment and recognition, and innovations in
volunteer engagement, such as virtual volunteering, should be
of particular interest to your executive director, program
director, and others from your organization. Let them see and
hear, first hand, from experts, about these activities, so
they start seeing YOU more as a specialist, someone who has
particular skills and knowledge and will need specific tools
to engage volunteers effectively at your organization. Also,
sometimes, staff needs to hear from someone outside the
organization that you, the manager of volunteers, should be
doing such as such (like engaging volunteers online), or
should be using social media as a part of your work, etc.
- Send a short email to all staff and volunteers every now
and again to update them about the volunteering program, or
about something innovative in volunteering. Provide data, tell
them about a page on the web site that's been updated with
volunteering photos, point them to an article about virtual
volunteering, point them to an article about the importance of
diversity in volunteer engagement, point them to an article
about the dangers in not reporting suspicions of child sexual
abuse (and how it makes an ENTIRE organization libel), etc.
Even if there is no reaction, keep getting that info out
there; you are building understanding and awareness, and
working to raise your profile as a volunteer engagement
specialist, and that takes time.
- Create a brag
board about volunteering activities. Put up newspaper
articles, blog posts, emails, a compilation of tweet mentions,
photos - anything that shows what volunteers are doing, what
they COULD be doing, trends in volunteer engagement, etc. Put
up stories about controversies
about volunteering as well. You can put it outside your
office, or in a common area, like the break room, or just
outside the bathrooms. And don't be surprised if other people
start posting to the board for you!
- Involve marketing staff as much as possible regarding your
program's outreach and promotion needs. For instance, ask your
marketing staff to help you develop a video of testimonies by
different clients talking about the impact volunteers make,
and/or by volunteers themselves talking about why they enjoy
volunteering for your organization. If your marketing staff
says they cannot help because of other commitments, make sure
that you report at each staff meeting about what you are doing
with regard to meeting your program's marketing needs, so that
it's clear that you should get credit for such and that you
are not getting support from the marketing team. The marketing
staff should be posting messages to Facebook, Twitter and
other social media regarding volunteer engagement as well, as
directed by you: recruitment messages and recognition messages
via these channels are absolutely essential. The audience you
will reach isn't just outside your organization; this builds
awareness among internal staff as well.
- If the marketing staff says it cannot use the
organization's Facebook, Twitter and other social media
channels for volunteering-related messages, create your own
Faceboook page, your own Twitter account, your own GooglePlus
account, your own Instagram account, your own Flicker account
and any other accounts needed, to be devoted to sharing
information about your volunteering engagement: about
recruitment needs, about success stories, photos of volunteers
in action, profiles of volunteers, etc. Recruiting volunteers
to help you with this is a great way to both involve more
volunteers in your organization's work, walk your own talk
about the importance of involving volunteers in the work of
the organization, and sharpen your own skills for working with
volunteers with particular areas of expertise.
- Make
the volunteering section of your organization's web site
content-rich, with lots of information about the impact
volunteers have with your organization, photos of volunteers
in action, testimonies about why volunteers are important to
your organization, a blog by you talking about what volunteers
are up to, etc. If your web master or marketing staff says
there is no room for such material on the web site, or they
don't have time, work with volunteers to create your own web
site for these materials. The web site should look exactly
like your organization's web site, with all the same layouts
and links. When you present the finished web site to the
organization, don't be surprised to find that the marketing
manager or web master suddenly does, indeed, have plenty of
room on the web site for your finished pages.
- If any
staff at the organization blogs, ask them to blog about
the role of volunteers at your organization, and provide
assistance on such blog topics to make sure they are accurate.
- Celebrate staff members who are doing a good job of
creating volunteering opportunities or working with
volunteers, by calling them out at a staff meeting, or sending
around an email to all staff highlighting the involvement by
the staff superstars of volunteers.
- Be persistent in talking to other staff members about how
they involve volunteers, what help they need from volunteers,
what help they need in involving and supporting volunteers,
etc. This takes lots of one-on-one meetings: drop by different
people's offices regularly, set up formal meetings, etc. You
need to do this with confidence - if you are worried, then
REHEARSE what you are going to say. Remember: you are the
volunteerism specialist at your organization. Act like
it!
- Do all of the above more
than once! Don't rely on a one-time presentation or report
to get your message across regarding volunteering impact.
- Do presentations for individual departments, or meet
one-on-one with key staff, to talk about how to identify
volunteering assignments, how to support volunteers, what
assistance you provide, and where they can get help for
working with volunteers.
- Stay on top of news relating to volunteer engagement, and
be ready to respond to such. If a city official is calling for
nonprofits to involve more court-ordered community service
people, what might that mean for your organization? What would
you need in terms of financing and other resources to involve
more of such volunteers? If the major is calling on nonprofits
to involve more youth as volunteers, or more families as
volunteers, what might that mean for your organization? What
would you need in terms of financing and other resources to
involve more of such volunteers? If your organization does not
want you responding to such activities as a representative of
the organization, you can still write to appropriate officials
and express your opinion, making it clear that you are not
representing the organization but you are speaking as a
manager of volunteers. Your local association of managers of
volunteers, sometimes called DOVIAs, should be responding to
such actions by city officials, as well as to proposed
legislation at the local, state and national level. That
association - or you - should also be responding to media
reports related to volunteering, especially when those reports
get something wrong about volunteering - like that people
volunteer only because they have good hearts, or that the
primary reason to involve volunteers is to save money.
(The National Forest System Trails Stewardship Act, currently
working its way through the USA Congress, would mandate
government agencies to increase volunteer involvement in trail
maintenance on public lands, such as national forests, but it
does not provide funding for necessary volunteer management:
for screening volunteers, training them, supervising them,
etc. Please
sign my petition telling Congress that more volunteers means
we need MORE FUNDING!)
- When you return from attending a workshop or conference
related to volunteerism, send a short update to your
supervisor and, perhaps, to all of your volunteers, telling
them about what you learned, where they can find more info,
etc.
Volunteers can help with many of
these activities. They can help you manage and monitor
social media accounts, help you prepare web site materials, help
you crunch data and create graphics using such, take photos at
events, monitor the news and legislation and more. If you involve
volunteers in this work, you are going to not only get your
organization to understand and value its engagement of volunteers,
and to understand your role in the success of the program, you are
also going to greatly sharpen your skills at volunteer engagement
- at talent management. You are going to increase your expertise
in volunteer engagement. And that's what you have to do to be seen
as an expert within your organization, and to see volunteer
engagement valued appropriately at the local, regional and
national level. No one is going to do this for you! You have to do it yourself!
How strongly do I feel about this? Honestly, if you aren't going
to do the above, then stop complaining that you, as manager of
volunteers, aren't valued at the organization. If you aren't going
to push for a change in how you are viewed, then you shouldn't
complain. It won't be easy and you will meet resistance. But it's
a fight worth undertaking.
And speaking of fighting, how about you join the Volunteer
Manager Fight Club?
Also see:
- Mission statements for your
volunteer engagement
(Saying WHY your organization or department involves
volunteers)
This is at the heart of everything I say and recommend
regarding volunteer engagement. This idea is what I would like
to be identified with even more than virtual volunteering:
that, in addition to carefully crafting the way you talk about
the value of volunteers, your
organization creates a mission statement for your
organization's volunteer engagement, to guide employees in how
they think about volunteers, to guide current volunteers in
thinking about their role and value at the organization, and
to show potential volunteers the kind of culture they can
expect at your organization regarding volunteers.
- The Information About
& For Volunteers You Should Have on Your Web Site
If your organization or department involves volunteers, or
wants to, there are certain things your organization or
department must have on its web site - not by law, of
course, but from a point of view of ethics and credibility. To
not have this basic information about volunteer engagement on
your web site says that your organization or department takes
volunteers for granted, does not value volunteers beyond money
saved in salaries, or is not really ready to involve
volunteers. This resource is a reflection of my firm belief in
having a mission statement for volunteer
engagement.
- Promoting your volunteering
program internally
Too often, the first position cut at an organization facing
financial difficulties is the volunteer coordinator. Most
people in these positions, I'm sorry to say, do a poor job of
making sure that every staff member at their organization
knows the time and expertise they bring to the position, and
the essential nature of their role in recruiting and
supporting volunteers. The volunteer coordinator should make
sure he or she is seen as also absolutely essential to the
organization. This page talks about how a volunteer
coordinator can make sure the board, all paid staff and all
volunteers at an organization know the essential value of not
only volunteers, but also the volunteer coordinator.
- Resources
Regarding USA Labor Laws and Volunteering
How should you determine who is a volunteer and who should be
paid for the hours they work at your organization? Your method
should NOT be Who can we pay and who can't we pay? In the USA,
there are laws and rulings from the Department of Justice that
guide what tasks may and may not be done by volunteers (as
opposed to paying someone to do the work), whether paid staff
can be asked to volunteer (work unpaid) at the nonprofit where
they work and more. This is a blog, rather than a resource
page on my web site, and is therefore more about linking to
other sources and quoting other sources than me actually
writing the guidance. Although this is US-centric, some of the
criteria is applicable in any country in trying to determine
what is ethnically appropriate regarding volunteer tasks,
including internships.
- Screening Volunteers for
Attitude
Screening is vital to finding the right people for some, maybe
all, volunteer roles, particularly those where the volunteer
will work with clients and the general public, and to screen
out people who may be better in shorter-term assignments or
assignments where they would not work with clients or the
general public, or who would not be appropriate in any role at
the organization. We put all sorts of emphasis on criminal
background checks and reference checks for volunteers, but the
reality is that a mismatched volunteer, in terms of attitude,
can be a program-killer. Screening volunteers for attitude
will reduce volunteer turnover and ensure everyone has a more
satisfying experience as a volunteer or working with
volunteers.
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