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:

• Diagnosing the causes of volunteer recruitment problems
• Volunteering, or that meeting you are going to host, must sound enticing & compelling or people won’t care (our post-pandemic reality).
• What Are Your Volunteers Saying?
• Volunteer turnover isn’t always a bad thing
• The key to retaining volunteers.
• Nine plus four emerging volunteer engagement trends (a VERY different list than you will read elsewhere).
• How are you supporting the mental health needs of your volunteers?
• Mission statements for your volunteer engagement.