Back in April 2010, I published the following blog. It became one of my most popular entries. Later that year, my blog home moved – and then, just two years later, it moved again. I managed to recover this via archive.org, and am republishing it here on what I hope will be my blog home for a long, long time:
——-
During my workshops in Australia last month, I asked managers of volunteers how their executive leadership at their organizations define success regarding volunteer involvement. And one of the answers really disturbed me:
“It’s successful if no one complains.”
The person who made this statement didn’t think this was a good measure of volunteer involvement at her organization; she was acknowledging a reality at her organization, but did not like it. And at least two other people said similar things about their organizations — that senior management did not want to hear about any problems with volunteers and, if they did, it meant the volunteer manager wasn’t doing her (or his) job.
It means that just one volunteer complaint — including complaints about being reprimanded for not following policy — would result in senior leadership displeasure with the volunteer manager. One person said that her supervisor, in regards to complaints by a long-time volunteer who did not want to follow policy, “I just don’t want to hear it. Make her happy.”
I heard this theme a few times, in fact: that senior management was more displeased about getting a complaint from a volunteer than they were that the volunteer had violated a policy and been given a verbal or written reprimand.
If you are facing this, confront it head on:
- Consider meeting one-on-one with the senior leader who thinks this way, to discuss why a complaint from a volunteer isn’t a sign of a failure in the program, why it’s often necessary to do something that upsets a volunteer (just as it’s sometimes necessary to do something that upsets an employee), etc. Talk about the consequences of not addressing problems with volunteers. Even if you walk away thinking you haven’t changed his or her mind, you’ve at least planted a seed of doubt in the senior manager’s mind about his or her thinking about volunteer management.
- While volunteer management is not exactly the same as HR management, volunteer management does involve HR management, and reprimanding volunteers because of policy violations is an example of that. Meet with the HR manager to make sure your policies and procedures — and enforcement — are in line with each other, and that he or she endorse your practices at a staff meeting or a meeting with senior management.
- Consider conducting a brief workshop for staff (over lunch is a great time) about how and why volunteers may be disciplined, why following policies and procedures is vitally important for the organization’s credibility and for staff and volunteer safety, the consequences of not addressing policy violations, how complaints from volunteers are handled, etc.
- Include information about problems you face as the volunteer manager in your regular reporting and how you systematically, dispassionately address such.
And on a related note, here is my interview with OzVPM Director Andy Fryar, talking about the trainings in Australia last month.
Also see