Tag Archives: leaders

Why I still don’t like “International Volunteer Manager’s Day”

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logoNovember 5 is celebrated by some as International Volunteer Manager’s Day. And I’m not fond of it. I’ve said so in conversations, and in a post on OzVPM back in October 2009 . But I wanted to revisit why I’m not fond of it.

I call it “hug-your-volunteer-manager” day. I compare it to Mother’s Day.  And I don’t mean that as a compliment. 

Mother’s Day didn’t transform mothers’ lives. It didn’t elevate the status of mothers. It didn’t improve maternal health. It didn’t make women want to become mothers. It wasn’t transformative regarding how society thought about mothers. That’s what the founder of Mother’s Day wanted, and instead, she saw the day become a commercial celebration, a day of sweetness, but not substance. In fact, the person who led the campaign to adopt Mother’s Day in the USA later regretted it because of how empty and commercial the celebration was, in contrary to her intentions, and even filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s Day Festival.

Maybe I would be more attracted to the day if it was a day less about cute memes and inspiring quotes and was, instead, devoted to encouraging people that are in charge of the engagement of volunteers to:

  • go to their supervisors and ask for salary and budget increases
  • put themselves on the agenda to address their organization’s board of directors regarding the importance of quality volunteer support and ask for a larger budget for this support
  • write their local newspapers and blog in response to whatever the latest volunteerism campaign is (because there is ALWAYS one going on somewhere), debunking myths like “volunteers are free” and talking about why volunteer management is essential to such a campaign’s success (and writing the campaign leaders as well)
  • have a meeting with the person responsible for the annual report to present a proposal regarding how the contributions of volunteers will be noted in the next annual report, and absolutely refuse for that information to be presented in terms of money
  • launch a new, updated, detailed section of the organization’s web site that gives volunteers as high a profile as donors, and ensure that the link to “support us” doesn’t just link to a page on how to make a cash donation
  • use social media to promote the impact of volunteers at the organization, or to assert volunteers aren’t cost-free, or to push back against those that want us to value volunteers primarily in terms of money saved by not paying staff
  • develop an action plan for the next year with concrete actions to elevate the role of volunteers and volunteer management within the organization (the board, the staff, partner organizations, etc.)
  • present a strategy to expand the engagement of volunteers at the organization
  • present a strategy for training staff to work better with volunteers, create more assignments, etc.
  • vow to never, ever write another Facebook post or blog or online discussion comment whining about how overworked and underpaid they are – or at least not to write one for six months.

No pins. No mugs. No flowers. No posters. No t-shirts. No buttons. No badges. No memes. Not for this day. Instead, concrete, even provocative, action, by managers of volunteers – real activism – to elevate respect for their roles and their work, to increase the recognition of the vital importance of volunteerism specialists, so much so that people choose it as a career. To be transformative regarding how society thought about volunteer engagement and those in charge of such.

Say it! Say it! “MANAGERS OF VOLUNTEERS”

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersImagine you work with youth. You help a group of youth to develop skills or explore careers or improve their grades or appreciate the arts or practice an art form – whatever. Maybe you are a choir teacher or a Girl Scout leader or a tutoring program coordinator. There’s a big, national conference on working with youth coming up, and you think, great, I am so going to that! I want to get lots of tips to help me be a better leader and supporter of youth!

You arrive at the conference, and the opening speakers are all people who go on and on about how important it is to work with youth. Corporations that fund youth programs are lauded, youth are lauded, parents are lauded, politicians and celebrities that say Youth are great! are lauded – but no one ever mentions the people like you, that actually work with youth, that design and lead these programs and make them happen.

You didn’t come to the conference to be convinced to work with youth; you already work with youth. You know how great working with youth is. You have every intention of continuing to work with youth. You came to the conference to get the knowledge and tools you need to work more effectively with youth. And you were expecting for youth workers such as yourself to at least be mentioned on the first day of the conference.

That would be a really crazy scenario. But it’s how a lot of managers of volunteers feel about current national or international “volunteerism” conferences: these are focused on celebrating volunteerism, and that’s nice, but those that actually work with volunteers, that make that volunteer involvement happen, don’t get mentioned on the first day amid all the celebration of volunteers and the celebrities and politicians that love them.

Volunteers are not free. Volunteers also do not magically appear to build houses or clean up a park or tutor young people. In fact, successful volunteer engagement is absolutely impossible without someone coordinating all of the people and activities, training people, screening people, etc. – that person could be a volunteer himself or herself, it could be a paid person, it could be an employee on loan from a corporation, but make no mistake, that person, that volunteer manager, is real and absolutely essential – and deserves to be named at some point during the opening activities that kick off, say, the National Conference on Volunteering and Service?

After attending five of the national conferences on volunteering in the USA, I stopped attending (I think my last one was in 2004). By my last conference, I was tired of managers of volunteers being ignored amid all the celebrations of celebrities and politicians who think volunteers are so swell and magical, and tired of seeing and presenting the same workshops over and over. I was tired of my ideas for advanced volunteer management topics being rejected – organizers wanted only very basic workshops introducing the concept of virtual volunteering (a practice that by the year 2001 was already more than 30 years old!), if at all, and certainly nothing more advanced than that. I gave up.

It took the 2006 NetSquared conferences to remind me of what a conference for those that work with volunteers could be. Here’s why I loved that conference – it would be so great if those that organize the NCVS conference (which will be in Washington, D.C. yet again!) would read it, think about it, and rise to the challenge of presenting such a conference!

If they did, I would so be there….

Note: this blog is in response to a series of tweets by people associated with the NCVS who were miffed (maybe even outraged?) that the conference’s lack of recognition for those that manage volunteer programs was being talked about online. It’s a shame that, instead of listening and considering, they got defensive, even accusatory (apparently, because I wasn’t there, I’m not supposed to talk about it). It’s not too late to turn this into a win, to consider the criticism and really think about ways to take the conference to the next level – and to ensure volunteer managers are acknowledged. I’d be the first to publicly laud organizers if that happened.