Tag Archives: management

We’ve got to get better at addressing misconceptions about volunteerism.

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graphic representing volunteers at work

I live in the Portland, Oregon area, and a few years ago, the area experienced record-setting heat. In response, various city and county governments set up cooling centers: spaces in libraries, churches and convention centers where people without air conditioning and people who are unsheltered could come, with their pets, to get relief from the dangerous heat. One county government tweeted out several requests for volunteers, including one that said volunteers were needed “desperately.” I decided to amplify the message by posting it to various online communities I’m a part of, including posting it on the subreddit for Portland, Oregon. I highlighted some points in particular from the web site where people were to express interest in volunteering:

Must be 18+, have compassion for all guests. Social service experience helpful.

Please keep in mind that emergency response operations may be very hectic keeping you quite busy for extended periods. You may also experience very slow uneventful periods of time. Such is the nature of emergency and disaster response. Please take time before your deployment to prepare for this working environment.

These are 9-hour shifts. These locations are open 24 HOURS.

I did alter the message to say cooling center volunteers were needed URGENTLY, rather than desperately, because I think desperation is never a good place to recruit volunteers from.

The message was upvoted more than any message I’ve ever posted to Reddit. But there was also significant backlash. The criticisms fell into three areas:

  • Why aren’t these positions paid? Why are these volunteer roles instead?
  • Why are the shifts 9 hours instead of 4?
  • Why didn’t the city plan better & start recruiting sooner?

It’s a shame those first two questions in particular weren’t answered by the recruiting agency in their messaging. As regular readers of my blog know, to not say why positions are volunteer rather than paid is always a big no-no. And saying “we don’t have the money to pay, so these are volunteer!” would not be the answer I am looking for (and probably not most of potential volunteers either).

As for the third comment, I don’t know that the city didn’t start recruiting sooner; I didn’t look on HandsOn Portland, VolunteerMatch and AllforGood, for instance, to see if they had started recruiting there. I don’t know that they didn’t have notices on their own web site sooner than what I saw on social media. So I hesitate to criticize them for how they have recruited in terms of when and where.

I did take issue with one comment that was made, and pushed back at it:

Way too much money and benefits expenses being expended on volunteer “coordinators”

I noted in my response that managers or coordinators of volunteers are some of the lowest paid people at any nonprofit or other agency, and rarely is their only role managing volunteers. I also said:

Volunteers aren’t free: someone has to recruit them, read the applications, interview them, screen them (often, background checks, reference checks and extensive interviews are required), supervise them (both to ensure their safety and client safety, and to make sure they’re doing what they are supposed to), support them (train them, answer questions on demand, etc), record their hours and their accomplishments, address problems, and report regularly to senior staff about what the volunteers are doing. It’s a tough job, made harder by people who think volunteers are free, think volunteer management is “Hey, we need volunteers, come on down!” and the work all magically happens, and balk at coordinators who ask for better training for themselves, software to manage volunteers, etc.

Nonprofits have GOT to do a better job of addressing misconceptions about volunteers and volunteer engagement. This is just yet another example of why.

Also see:

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A dare for nonprofit executive directors

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graphic representing volunteers at work

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:

What is meant by “safety policies” for volunteering programs?

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two primitive-looking images, like petroglyphs, one holding an umbrella over them both

Any organization that involves volunteers needs to have safety policies and procedures to protect both volunteers and those that they serve, and if the volunteers interact with vulnerable people or could be in one-to-one situations with ANYONE, there needs to be even more extensive safety policies and procedures.

What do safety policies look like?

Screening steps for volunteers could be the volunteer applicants:

  • providing real names (not just nicknames or screen names), residential addresses (not just a PO Box), phone number, etc.
  • providing the name of the volunteer’s current employer and previous two employers, or the name of where they are currently enrolled in school and how many hours they are taking.
  • answering the questions “why do you want to volunteer?” and “What do you hope to experience as a volunteer” and “tell me about a time you interacted with a person in crisis.”
  • providing professional and academic reference checks (employers, teachers)
  • providing personal reference checks (friends, family)
  • undergoing a criminal background check
  • undergoing a credit check
  • being in a probation period and extra observation at first
  • going through required training

Supervision for volunteers could be:

  • Volunteers required to use an email the organization has set up and know that ALL emails are archived and could be reviewed at any time.
  • Volunteers required to work in pairs or paired with a staff person.
  • Staff that created the volunteering role meeting with the volunteer once a month or once a quarter AND meeting with other volunteers and clients about that volunteer’s performance.

Policies for volunteers could be:

  • Never being alone, one-on-one, with another volunteer, a paid staff person or a client.
  • Never using any electronic communications avenues other than a specific email or online platform (no texting among volunteers, for instance).
  • A prohibition on a volunteer giving personal contact info to any client.
  • A mandatory reporting by the volunteer if a client gives that volunteer personal contact info or tries to contact that volunteer outside of agreed-to communications avenues (WhatsApp, TikTok, etc.)
  • Mandatory reporting to management of suspicions of inappropriate behavior relating to sex by volunteers and clients.

etc.

Again, these are just EXAMPLES. And what safety requirements a volunteer beach cleanup group is going to have is NOT going to be the same as what a mentoring program for young people will have.

But whatever you have at your organization, whatever you require, should be detailed on your organization’s web site – NO EXCEPTIONS. And if they are not, it has to be assumed you don’t have them. And if you are recruiting volunteers to work with vulnerable groups or one-on-one with anyone, your post is going to be deleted here unless you have info on your web site on the steps you employ to keep volunteers and those they were safe.

Safety in Service Delivery/Client Support by Online Volunteers.

Your right to turn away volunteers who won’t adhere to safety measures (& your right to refuse to volunteer at an unsafe program)

My wakeup call regarding risks in volunteering programs – a blog that may change your mind about how to think about risks in volunteer engagement programs

Letting Fear Prevent Volunteer Involvement is Too Risky” (a guest blog by me for Energize, Inc. and Susan Ellis)

Have you enabled a Larry Nassar?

Keeping volunteers safe – & keeping everyone safe with volunteers (includes a list of my favorite resources regarding safety in programs that involve volunteers and/or children; I consider many of these resources mandatory reading for managers of volunteers

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

In-person / on-site work & meetings automatically better than online? NOPE!

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image of a panel discussion

Quit saying that to be productive, staff – employees, consultants and volunteers – need to be onsite. 

Quit saying that, to be productive, we need to return to onsite meetings. 

Quit saying that, to build trust and to be more personal, we need to be talking face-to-face in the same room. 

Stop it with that nonsense. 

Why do you think face-to-face meetings are more productive or are better ways to build trust in a team? I have had enough time wasted in onsite meetings to last a LIFETIME. I have sat in more onsite, face-to-face meetings than I can count where nothing was accomplished.

I’m not saying never to have onsite meetings. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t ever work together in the same time and place.

But this assumption that onsite meetings are somehow automatically better, more productive, have more personality, allow people to get to know each other better, is just BOLLOCKS. 

If your team doesn’t trust each other, if your team feels it can’t rely on certain members, if your team isn’t communicating well with each other, none of that is going to be automatically solved by changing from online to onsite meetings. 

None of what makes for an effective meeting automatically happens just because you are meeting onsite. NONE of it. Quit implying that it does. 

Effective meetings, whether onsite or online:

  • have clear agendas that are communicated before the start. 
  • have an agenda that is results-oriented/mission-focused.
  • start at the time they say they will and they end at the time they say they will. 
  • are effectively facilitated so that attendees stick to the agenda and scheduled decisions are made. 
  • allow everyone to speak within the time frame given.

The meeting facilitator needs to have recognition from members to be the person to remind attendees if the discussion period for an agenda item is finished now and it’s time for a decision, or when to table a decision for the next meeting. The facilitator needs to be empowered to remind people who didn’t read the meeting materials beforehand that, in the future, they need to do that. 

Case in point: I served on a board for three years. Our meetings became vastly more productive when we moved ONLINE because of the pandemic. I even got to know some of the board members more in our online meetings – the side chats on Zoom allowed truly EVERYONE to express their opinion, even their humor.

Meeting face-to-face, in the same place and time, does not magically create better communications and does not automatically create a sense of team. If your online meetings aren’t working out the way you want, the problem is probably not that you are all online.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

Want to learn more how to effectively work with people online? The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The lessons here are focused on engaging volunteers, but all are easily adapted for working with paid staff. If you want to learn how to leverage online tools to communicate with and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are mostly online (virtual volunteering) or they provide service mostly onsite at your organization, and to dig deep into the factors for success in supporting online volunteers and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my blogs or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

For Your Volunteers, Is Help Just a Phone Call or Text Away?

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Volunteers need support. Just like most humans, they cannot memorize an operations manual, they are going to be asked questions they don’t know the answer to, and no matter how benign you may think the roles and tasks for volunteers at your organization are, volunteers WILL sometimes face a situation where they need to talk to someone, immediately, for guidance. And if they don’t have that, they will feel frustrated, angry, even scared, and definitely unsupported.

Do volunteers at your organization know exactly who to call or text when they face a situation they don’t know how to handle, or when they are asked a question by a client that they don’t know the answer to, or when they are dealing with an angry client, or when they are feeling unsafe? And will that call or text get answered immediately?

Are volunteers encouraged to seek help in the aforementioned situations? How, beyond telling them in the volunteer orientation they should do so?

I believe very strongly that immediate support for volunteers should always be just a phone call or text message away.

Someone at your organization must be available to volunteers for consultation and direction throughout their service. That should go without saying. But I also believe that, for volunteers working with clients or the public in ANY capacity, immediate support for those volunteers should be just a phone call or text away.

For your volunteers, if they face any of the aforementioned scenarios: do they call or text the manager of volunteers? An employee that is the manager of the program they are participating in? A lead volunteer? A WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal or Slack group where they will get a response quickly?

And do you evaluate what you have told volunteers, to see if they are using it and getting the answers they need, and getting those answers quickly?

It is impossible to anticipate all problems. It is also not appropriate to have to have an immediate answer to every question – maybe things can wait for an email reply or for a regularly scheduled staff meeting to discuss them. But volunteers should know who they can call or text with a question they feel needs an immediate answer, or for a request for guidance in a situation they deem urgent.

It’s also a good idea to detail for volunteers exactly what you mean by urgent, as well as what an emergency situation is where they should call 911 first. Talk about possible scenarios together – don’t just issue a written memo.

And volunteers, if you are realizing you need more guidance, ask for it! Feel free to share this blog with those you work with at a nonprofit or government program and say, “I think we need this. Here are some things I’ve faced and I wish I’d had someone to call or text for guidance…”

Remember: the support of volunteers is THE key to retaining volunteers.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Seen a drop in volunteers? Quit blaming the pandemic & fix the problems.

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers doing service

Articles are everywhere saying nonprofits and government programs have seen a severe drop in volunteers since the start of the pandemic. Many imply that a growing number of people don’t want to volunteer and that’s fueling the drop in volunteer numbers.

It’s absolutely true that there’s been a drop in the number of volunteers at many organizations all over the world, not just in the USA. But the implication that people, especially people under 50, don’t want to volunteer is BOLLOCKS.

This drop in volunteer numbers has been coming on for a long while, but the pandemic sped things up. So many nonprofits have been seeing their volunteers get older and older, even dying off, but new, younger volunteers not replacing those that leave. Why?

Spend a week on Reddit, especially the volunteer subreddit, and you will see young people repeatedly posting messages that they want to volunteer, but don’t know where to look, or don’t know what’s available, or don’t know how to express interest, or have been trying and not getting responses to their applications. Many don’t know how volunteering really works – they ask if volunteers get paid, or are shocked that they have to go through training for certain roles. Most seem to think nonprofits do work that anyone that just walks through the door can do, right away.

There’s also a change in what volunteers want. Many don’t just want to do work for free for you; they want to feel like they are making a difference, or they want to have an interesting experience, or they want to develop skills for their career, or they want to have fun. None of those are bad reasons to volunteer. And the pandemic has changed how people value time and personal interactions: they now have a much lower tolerance for having their time wasted. One of the things I keep hearing is that people now want experiences, not things – that includes meaningful, enjoyable volunteering.

One of the most popular blogs I have ever written is Diagnosing the causes of volunteer recruitment problems. If you have seen a drop in the number of volunteers you involve, you need to go read it. And as I say in that blog:

What worked to recruit volunteers 30 years ago doesn’t work now; if you are having trouble recruiting volunteers, it’s overdue for you to take a hard, in-depth look at both how you recruit, what your in-take process is like, and the volunteer opportunities you have available.

No more but we’ve always done it this way. STOP IT! Times have changed. AND they will keep changing. Either change how you talk about volunteers, support volunteers, engage volunteers and recruit volunteers or stop complaining!

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Finally – a FUN, worthwhile volunteering experience!

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My name tag from my day of volunteering.

One of the things that differentiates me from other consultants and trainers regarding volunteer engagement is that I don’t just read and research and present: I also manage volunteers and I regularly volunteer myself. So much of my training advice, web pages and blogs have come from these first-hand volunteering experiences.

Every volunteer has a different “want” out of a volunteering gig, to make it worthwhile for them. For me, as a volunteer, it’s that:

  • I’m on-boarded quickly.
  • My time when I’m in training or actually volunteering is respected / isn’t wasted.
  • I feel like I’m actually doing something worthwhile as a volunteer for those served by the organization or the “cause” (I don’t do the work and wonder why it matters).
  • I feel supported in the volunteer role, I’ve been giving the prep I need for the role (I don’t feel like I’m foundering/set up for failure).
  • I feel like everyone wants everyone else to succeed, people don’t try to play “gotcha” with each other, there are not any ugly hidden agendas going on, there’s no delight in someone making a mistake, etc.

If I get even more out of it – if I have fun, if I get skills I can use in my job, etc. – that’s great too, but those four points are what are essential for me. And rarely do I undertake a volunteering gig that hits all those four points.

Helping at a blood drive in August hit all four of those points.

I’ve been promoting Red Cross volunteering for people who want to get started volunteering for many years – but I decided it was overdue for me to give it a try myself. So I went to the web site, read up on opportunities, and signed up for a few roles I thought I had time for and that looked interesting to me. None of the online volunteering I was interested in is available right now (they have enough volunteers for those tasks), but they really need people to help at blood drive events, and my commitment would be just one shift a month, so I signed up.

Filling out the initial application took a while – the Red Cross requires a lot of information in the volunteer application. But I think that’s a good thing: it screens out people who can’t make a commitment to reading information, filling out a form correctly, etc. – something any volunteer with the Red Cross will need to do in any assignment.

Then I did a phone interview with a volunteer that’s in charge of screening, then watched a video on YouTube, and then went through a live online training with a veteran “blood donor ambassador” – the name for volunteers who help sign in people at blood drives, make sure they get snacks and a rest afterward, etc. And all of that time is logged on my account already as volunteering time – I didn’t have to do anything.

We are a one-car family, and that means, most of the time, I do not have access to a car. I was able to sign up to help at a blood drive a short, direct bus ride from my home, in a nearby town. I had signed up for my first gig within minutes of my interview, and it was just two weeks away from that date.

I showed up at the event, 30 minutes early (as the video explained), and it turned out that I was the only volunteer ambassador there – meaning I was checking everyone in. I was very nervous since I thought I would get to “shadow” someone. Instead, it was all me – the site manager showed me how to check donors in, and the first donors, all veteran blood donors, also helped me (I think they loved being the experts to guide the newbie). And for the rest of the day, that’s what I did: donors showed their ID, I scanned it with a scanner, I checked off their name, I gave them a nametag, they had a seat and then got called up for the donation.

It was easy, it was interesting (nice to chat with people, interesting to watch how they go through the different stations of donating), and there was about 30 minutes when no one was scheduled and I was able to eat the lunch I brought.

If you are squeamish, don’t worry – you don’t ever have to see any blood, since you are facing away from the donor tables. And if anyone were to throw up, it’s NOT your job to clean it up (no one threw up, BTW, but we did have one guy faint).

If another volunteer had shown up, one of us would have been at the registration table and one of us would have been at the snack table, chatting with people who had just given blood, to make sure they were okay and ready to leave after 10 minutes or so. Had it been a larger event, there would have been two people registering and two people at the snack table.

If you are looking for an easy, interesting volunteering gig, I highly recommend you sign up to be a blood donor ambassador. You get to pick which event(s) you help at. It gives you insight into how the Red Cross works (the Red Cross does a lot more than blood drives). And you can sign up for as many blood drives as you want – if there is one every day in your area (which there is in the Portland, Oregon area), you could easily get 25 hours, maybe even more, of volunteering in a week, if you can volunteer on weekdays (more if you can do weekends too). I highly recommend this for people that are required to do community service – you may have three weeks from the time of sign up until you start, but you can get hours in quickly if you have time during the day.

In addition to Blood Donor Ambassadors, the American Red Cross needs:

  • Blood Transportation Specialists
  • Disaster Action Team members
  • Shelter Services staff members (being a blood donor ambassador is a good way to see what the intake process is like for emergency shelters)
  • Disaster Health Services Team (if you are a licensed healthcare provider)
  • Administrative help

If you dream of being deployed to disaster zones elsewhere, you first have to have deep experience as a part of your own local Red Cross in your own area (disaster action teams, shelter staff teams especially).

And if you are with an initiative that’s struggling to attract volunteers – what is the Red Cross doing that YOU should be doing regarding volunteer management? Note that I didn’t deal with any paid staff as I went through the onboarding process – my screeners and trainers were volunteers themselves!

Also see:

UPDATE:

A few months ago, I decided to test my own advice that I have posted on the subreddit regarding volunteering many times, that if you volunteer locally with the American Red Cross, you might get asked to deploy to a disaster somewhere else in the USA.

Welp – that’s exactly what’s just happened: I just got an email sent to all volunteers:

As Hurricane Ian hit Florida with dangerous winds, rain and storm surges, Cascades Region is in alert and standby modes in preparation of volunteer deployments. As we monitor the situation we look to current Red Crossers to train in both deployable and local volunteer roles to continue supporting the mission and our impacted communities.

And there’s a link to something called the Deployment Interest Form, and more info about information events (2 virtual, 3 in-person) to share deployment processes and training.

Folks, it really, really does work: volunteer LOCALLY with your American Red Cross chapter, in any capacity, and you will get info on trainings for disaster response, and if you complete that training, you may get invited to deploy to a disaster zone to help.

And in the USA, you start by filling out this form.

https://www.redcross.org/volunteer/become-a-volunteer.html

The crisis in Florida and the East Coast caused by this latest hurricane will go on for MONTHS. You could be a part of the response! Fill out the form, get the training you need – ASAP.

Do your volunteers feel psychologically safe?

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Google researchers, the People Analytics team, studied the qualifies of effective teams at Google. Code-named Project Aristotle – a tribute to Aristotle’s quote, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (as the Google researchers believed employees can do more working together than alone) – the goal was to answer the question: What makes a team effective at Google?

Research from Google’s Project Aristotle found that the most important dynamic of a successful team is members feeling psychologically safe. This occurs in environments where no one else will embarrass or punish others for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.

Reading this was like a punch in the gut for me. For any job that hasn’t worked out, that I couldn’t wait to leave, this was always the primary problem I faced with supervisors.

I hope that all managers of people that see this do a deep, honest examination of the culture of their own departments and companies with regard to this kind of fear-based way of working. But I hope managers of volunteers look at the culture around volunteer service as well. And I hope you won’t get defensive if the evidence you gather points to toxicity in your program or your entire organization.

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Either be committed to quality or quit involving volunteers.

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

I will always be fascinated by people at nonprofits, employees or volunteers, who will write a LONG post to an online forum about their lack of staffing for all that needs to be done or a safety issue regarding volunteers and clients, & when they read recommendations about how to address such, reply, Oh, yuck, bureaucracy… we’re non-traditional! We’re dynamic and nimble and get things done and rules are such a drag!

Being a dynamic, nimble startup nonprofit that GETS THINGS DONE! with NO RULES is lots of fun until volunteers start harassing clients or the executive director cries every night under all the stress and core volunteers quit because they just can’t anymore – and they aren’t replaced because the word is out about just how overwhelming volunteering can be.

Planning, policies and structure are NOT BAD THINGS. And they do NOT mean your organization can’t be dynamic and nimble and use all the latest jargon.

Put the mission of your program first, put your clients first, commit to quality, and remember that sometimes the reason for traditional ways of doing things is because traditional ways of doing things can WORK.

If you don’t have time to learn and apply the essentials, you’re being reckless with both volunteers and those they serve.

  • Foundations of Volunteer Engagement: Before you recruit volunteers, these are fundamental pieces that MUST be in place. If you choose not to do these and, instead, start recruiting volunteers right away, you are setting up your organization and those volunteers up for failure.
  • Support for Volunteers/Management of Volunteers & Safety Considerations: All of the resources I have regarding the support for and management of volunteers, as well as safety in engaging volunteers, are on one page because I believe they are inextricably linked – it’s impossible to separate these two issues. Also, I believe that these MUST be explored and drafted BEFORE you start recruiting volunteers.
  • Creating Roles & Tasks for Volunteers: A key to retaining volunteers is having roles and tasks well-defined and IN WRITING, so that expectations are clear. This is yet another step to undertake BEFORE you start recruiting volunteers – and if you don’t, don’t be surprised when you can’t keep volunteers and your volunteer engagement flounders.
  • Ethics in Volunteerism & Court-Ordered Community Service: If your organizations involves volunteers, you should also be thinking regularly about the ethics of such. Involving people who are not financially compensated for work that they do carries with it regular questions and criticisms. Exploring ethics in volunteerism has not won me many friends. Exploring ethics in volunteerism can help you avoid public relations disasters later.
  • Harumph.

Note: I will be quite hard to reach from Monday, June 20 through Wednesday, June 29. I will be checking email and social media only sporadically in that time.

The key to retaining volunteers

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Please, no more workshops called how to recruit and retain volunteers. Not unless each is about six hours long. Because to recruit volunteers is one function, but to retain volunteers – to keep volunteers beyond just a few days or weeks, to prevent sudden and frequent turnover – requires doing well in all aspects of effective volunteer engagement, and those aspects can’t be taught in an hour or two.

This graphic represents what I mean: if you have clear roles and tasks for volunteers, in writing, if you quickly onboard volunteers and ensure they are prepared for the role or task they will take on, and if you have excellent, appropriate support for volunteers during their service, you will retain volunteers:

And I believe that all of those functions frequently and regularly intersect – you cannot think of them as entirely separate activities.

If you aren’t retaining volunteers, if volunteers are leaving before they even start a task, or they are leaving soon after joining, the reasons probably lie in one of these three areas:

  1. they signed up to help but there was a big gap between that time and when you held your first meeting with them or got them started on a task,
  2. they did not have realistic expectations or understand what you expected because roles and tasks weren’t in writing, or
  3. they did not feel adequately supported or prepared for the volunteering role.

Another big reason for volunteers leaving is that they do not feel appreciated or that their service doesn’t seem to really be of value. I count that under support for volunteers, but you could certainly do an entire workshop just on that aspect of effective volunteer engagement (I certainly could).

Of course, the only way to know for sure is to ASK VOLUNTEERS WHO LEFT.

Also see diagnosing the causes of volunteer recruitment problems.

The principles of effective volunteer engagement, including identifying appropriate roles and putting them in writing, onboarding volunteers quickly and providing appropriate and regular support for volunteers are the basis for the recommendations detailed in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement. This is the most comprehensive resource anywhere on working with online volunteers, and on using the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including those you might not think of as “online” volunteers.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.