Among the various topics I train on is volunteer engagement – how to create opportunities for a variety of different kinds of volunteers (short-term, long-term, teens, university students, highly-skilled professionals donating their work pro bono, onsite, online, etc.), how to recruit different kinds of volunteers, how to measure success in a volunteer program, virtual volunteering, how to build the capacity of staff to involve volunteers, etc.

How do I keep my volunteer management skills and knowledge up-to-date so I know what the heck to say in a training or a blog? In addition to reading, reading, reading – not just materials specific to volunteer engagement, but also materials regarding telecommuting / work shifting, team-building, project management, human resources management, conflict resolution – I also volunteer frequently volunteer myself, and I try to have regular experiences as a manager of volunteers.

For five months – ending this week – I’ve been the interim online forum community manager for TechSoup. I approach online community management as volunteer management, and the TechSoup Community Forum is a perfect example of that: online community members are volunteers. They contribute time and expertise, and they aren’t paid for it. It’s the community manager’s role to:

• encourage their participation,
• create opportunities for their participation,
• acknowledge their contributions and their feedback in a meaningful way, and
• promote their accomplishments and feedback within the organization, making sure their contributions are valued within the organization, across departments and staff hierarchies.

It’s easier said than done, particularly when in an interim, part-time role: I don’t want to create any systems that the permanent person will inherit and hate. I don’t want to start a bunch of processes that the permanent person will decide aren’t what he or she really wants, and when done away with, leave people feeling like their time has been wasted. In an interim, part-time role, sometimes the best thing you can do is identify what the permanent, full-time person will need to focus on – although that can feel like, “Hi, here’s all the problems I found, good luck!”

These kinds of experiences provide the kind of reality check I need in order to stay sharp regarding volunteer management training. How can I blog, or get up in front of a room full of people in charge of volunteer engagement at nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies, schools and other mission-based organizations, and make lots of recommendations about volunteer engagement that I haven’t tested myself – and tested relatively recently?

This experience has challenged me on a lot of levels, as all these experiences do. It’s sent me running to re-read materials about working with highly-skilled, high-responsibility volunteers and how to deal with conflict online. But the experience has also confirmed a lot of what I’ve been writing about and training on, particularly about the importance of

• written task descriptions for ALL volunteers, and ensuring expectations are understood
• having an end date for EVERY volunteer role / assignment, and giving volunteers that are approaching that end date the opportunity to renew their role for a set amount of time (creating a new end date) or to withdraw from the role altogether
• having various staff people work with/listen to volunteers, not just the volunteer manager
• involving volunteers in the organization’s decision-making in some meaningful way (even if final decisions are not in their hands)
• continuously cultivating new volunteers for leadership roles
• encouraging long-term volunteers to change roles, even temporarily
• encouraging long-term, high-responsibility volunteers to take breaks from their roles every few years
• lots and lots of communication – including telling volunteers in high-responsibility roles what YOU are doing every week!

I could go on and on as well about what I’ve learned in this experience about remote staffing, remote management, workshifting/telecommuting, virtual teams, time management, staff time budgeting and project management! You can never know-it-all on those subjects…

As I review my experience over the last five months, a lot is on my mind:

• what I would have done differently had I known I would be in the role for five months instead of three months, or had I been full-time instead of part-time, had I known a bit more about the overall mood and outlook of the volunteers when I started.
• what I did that worked, and what didn’t.

It’s important to review that for yourself, even if you are in a permanent volunteer management position – do you do that for yourself after ever major project, or at least twice a year? You should! You can’t improve without that kind of assessment.

I’ve been involved with TechSoup since the early 1990s, when it was called CompuMentor and was focused on matching IT volunteers with nonprofits – I started off as a client, and most of my experience has been as a volunteer. It’s been fascinating to see the organization from this different point-of-view, as a paid consultant. In fact, this experience has renewed my desire to continuing volunteering to moderate one of the TechSoup Community Forum branches! Thanks, TechSoup, not just for the paycheck, but for the incredible learning experience!

On a related note, here’s a profile of Exhale’s new strategy of turning over more decision-making and responsibilities to its leadership volunteers. Volunteers are capable of leadership roles, and this is a good example of that. It’s not always appropriate in every situation, it’s not always best for every organization, and I’m not at all commenting on my experience with TechSoup by posting this – rather, I’m trying to counter some comments I’ve seen online lately along the lines of, “But that role is too important for just a volunteer!.” I share this as a great example of an organization making a conscious choice to put volunteers in charge because the organization has realized it’s what’s best for the organization. If anything, this link is a comment for GIRL SCOUTS OF THE USA. And that’s another blog some other time…

Also see: Knowledge transfer – it’s more than a buzz phrase

Tags: project, program, programme, volunteer, volunteers, volunteering, engagement, involvement, management, community, stakeholders, charities, charity, NGOs, non-governmental, organizations, nonprofit, civil, society