Tag Archives: manager

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.

Even if all your volunteers are “traditional”, you need to explore virtual volunteering

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Even if your program’s volunteers are working onsite, and you frequently interact with them onsite, face-to-face, here are 11 easy ways you should be using the Internet and text messaging to support and involve those volunteers:

  • Have a list of volunteers and their accomplishments on your organization’s web site, and regularly update that list. Photos of volunteers in action are great too. This says to your volunteers, “Your contributions matter to us – YOU matter to us.” It also helps anyone who visits your web site understand that you value volunteers, and helps others at your organization see volunteer engagement as important as financial donations, client relations, and program activities.
  • Profile a volunteer and his or her accomplishments at least twice a month on your program’s Facebook page, Twitter account and other social media. Do this for all the same reasons mentioned in the first bullet.
  • Have an online discussion group for all volunteers, where information of value ot your volunteers is regularly posted, questions are regularly posed, and feedback regularly sought. Use this group to remind volunteers of new policies, or changes in policies, as well. All volunteers should stay on the group when they go on maternity leave, or take a break from volunteering for any reason, to keep them engaged with the organization.
  • Use text messaging to remind volunteers of work shifts, very special events or critical deadlines.
  • Create a policy for volunteers regarding the taking of photos during their service times, and regarding how they should share them and how they should tag them, including how they should tag your organization.
  • Encourage volunteers to allow such photos to be used by your organization, with permission.
  • Invite volunteers to write a blog on behalf of your organization, and if you track volunteer hours, count this time in tracking their service time.
  • Post your volunteer policies online. If you don’t want to share them with the public, post them in a password-protected area. If you have an online discussion group on Yahoo, you can post these in the “files” section, which an be accessed by your group members at any time.
  • Create a one-minute video showcasing the contributions of your volunteers – showing them in action, showing them laughing, etc. – and post it to YouTube or Vimeo, and link it from your web site and all your social media accounts.
  • Look for software that would allow volunteers to submit their completed service hours and volunteering accomplishments online, via their own devices, from wherever they want to, and to be able to see their hours and accomplishments to date.
  • Suggest an app or other online tool – or more than one – that would be particularly helpful for your volunteers as a part of their service. For instance, if a significant number of volunteers take mass transit to get to your location, is there a free app available that could help them buy tickets and find bus and train schedules on demand? If volunteers need to record their mileage during volunteer activities or record hours worked, is there a good, free app you can recommend to them for that? Are there health-related apps your volunteers could use in their work with clients regarding health issues? If volunteers are assisting people in domestic violence situations, do they know about apps that could help them identify places where clients could seek shelter immediately? If volunteers are assisting people living in poverty, do they know about apps that could help them identify free summer meal programs for children?

Please, no “our volunteers are seniors and don’t use the Internet” excuses (the facts dispute this), nor “our clients are homeless/refugees and don’t have smart phones” (again, the facts say otherwise). If you don’t believe most of these folks are online, fine, but there are enough of them online that you need to adopt these 10 simple activities. To do so demonstrates that your program is competent, organized, supportive, even transparent. To not do so will turn young volunteers away, hide the importance and impact of volunteer engagement from both the public and from people at your organization, and make some people suspicious of your stated abilities to meet your mission.

vvbooklittleWant more ideas for using computers, tablets, smart phones, even old-fashioned cell phones, to support and involve volunteers? Or want to create tasks specifically for volunteers to do online, remotely?  The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook has all of this information and more. It’s available both as a traditional printed book and as a digital book. It’s written in a style so that the suggestions can be used with any online tools, both those in use now and those that will become popular after, say, Facebook goes the way of America Online. This is a resource for anyone that works with volunteers – the marketing manager, the director of client services, and on and on – not just the official manager of volunteers.

And if you have more simple ideas for easy ways an organization or program can use the Internet and text messaging to support and involve volunteers, please offer such in the comments below.

Also see why we called it The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Striking a chord in 2012

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My most popular blogs in 2012, based on visitor numbers, were all focused the points of view of volunteers:

  • I’m a Frustrated Volunteer, my confession at just how many of my blogs from the points of view of people that were trying to volunteer and weren’t able to were actually about my own attempts to volunteer since moving back to the USA in 2009. Got a lot of comments as well.
  • A missed opportunity with volunteers, which included this quote from a colleague (not me this time!!) about her volunteering experience at an un-named organization: “No one ever asked me for my name. They didn’t have a sign in sheet. They didn’t capture any of my information. And I have no idea what all this work that I did means to them.”
  • I’m a volunteer & you should just be GRATEFUL I’m here!, which quoted entitlement volunteers, those folks who think organizations should take ANY volunteer and whatever that volunteer offers, and simply be grateful for what they get, should not have standards, quality control or performance measurements when it comes to volunteers, and that to demand quality from volunteers is insulting.

I expected some defensive comments on these blogs, about how over-worked managers of volunteers are, about how they can’t be expected to respond somehow to every person that wants to volunteer or to ask volunteers about their experience, etc. That’s what usually happens when I try to talk about these subjects on online discussion groups for managers of volunteers. That didn’t happen (progress!), but the visitor numbers show that these blogs really did strike a chord!

Being a volunteer – or trying to volunteer – and talking to others volunteering or trying to volunteer, has taught me more about the essentials of volunteer engagement than any book, article or workshop!

I’m quite surprised that the blogs regarding the results of the volunteer management software survey that Rob Jackson (robjacksonconsulting.com) and I did this year didn’t get much more attention than they did – I fully expected the blogs about this survey to be the most popular of the year, but they weren’t! The purpose of the survey was to gather some basic data that might help organizations that involve volunteers to make better-informed decisions when choosing software, and to help software designers to understand the needs of those organizations. We also wanted to get a sense of what organizations were thinking about volunteer management software. I think we more than met those expectations! In addition to the main blog announcing the results in July 2012, there was also a blog about What’s so fabulous about software tools for volunteer management?, a blog about just how much managers of volunteers love spreadsheets, and a blog about What do volunteers do? The answer may surprise you, as reported by survey respondents, that turned out to be much more wide ranging than many volunteer management consultants and books would have you believe. In short, our survey provided a lot of in-depth information about not just software, but volunteer engagement in general.

In case you missed a blog this year: I’m retweeting two or three of my blogs a few times a week between now and the end of the year (follow jcravens42 for more!), and I’ve created this index of all my my blogs (indexed by date).

2012 isn’t over – I’ll be writing a few more entries in the waning days of the year. Stay tuned!

 

Have you ever changed your mind?

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Have you ever changed your mind? Have you ever decided to let go of a long-held opinion and embrace one you had long opposed? Particularly regarding issues that affect your approach in your professional or volunteering work?

I have. A few examples:

  • I thought instant messaging was a useless distraction. A colleague changed my mind.
  • I thought Twitter was a useless distraction. Actually using it, and following people like Howard Sherman and Rob Jackson and Skepchicks, convinced me otherwise.
  • I used to think it was ethically unacceptable, under any and all circumstances, for a for-profit company to involve volunteers. I had railed against it more than once. It took Triumph Motorcycles to change my mind.
  • I don’t like certificates in return for volunteering. I don’t value them. And I thought most other people did too. But a member of my staff was passionate in her conviction to try it. So we tried it. They turned out to be one of the most popular features of the UN’s Online Volunteering service.

I’m open to being wrong, or to admitting I haven’t been fully-informed, or to new facts. I’m open to having my mind changed – through solid facts and examples. I like working to change minds – you have to like it if you are going to work in communications / outreach – but I also have to be as open as I want others to be.

But beware: if you want to change my mind, I need facts, and lots of them!

Okay, now you: share in the comments how you have had your mind changed with regard to your work or volunteering.

What you say vs. what you do re: volunteers

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You say volunteers are more than just free labor at your organization… but your annual report talks only about how much money volunteers saved (by showing how many hours they contributed and what this would have been in paid staff time otherwise).

You say you want committed volunteers that exude quality… but then you don’t respond to their emails or phone calls promptly, if at all.

You say you don’t have time to do this or that… but balk at the idea of allowing volunteers to take on any of those tasks.

You say you want steadfast, fully-invested volunteers… but you respond to every idea they have with, “At this time, we can’t address that/allow you to do that” or “We’re forming a committee to look into that – it’s employee only, however. Check back with me in six months.”

You say you want to engage more professionals as volunteers… but you don’t/won’t create volunteering opportunities in which those professionals might be interested.

You say you want your volunteers to represent the diversity of your community, or to reach under-represented groups… but you are unwilling to change your recruitment methods to reach different groups. “But this is how we’ve always done it!” or “I don’t have time to input every volunteering assignment into VolunteerMatch.”

You say you want volunteers to participate in decision-making… but you don’t invite volunteers to planning meetings, and don’t offer possible strategies up for discussion at volunteer meetings or on your online community.

You acknowledge that the best way to keep volunteers long-term is to create lots of short-term, “quick win” opportunities that keep them hooked… but you don’t create these short-term assignments regularly to attract new volunteers.

You want everyone at your organization to involve and value volunteers… but, as volunteer manager, you don’t push to work with staff regularly to help them create volunteer opportunities that support their work, or, as executive director, you don’t ask staff members to include their involvement of volunteers in their annual performance plan.

You say you want to be as valued at your organization the fundraising manager… but you don’t regularly, precisely show to all employees and the board how volunteers are as essential to the organization as financial donors.

You say you are a modern organization… but you still think of volunteers in terms of real volunteers and online volunteers.

One organization inspired this blog in particular, but to be honest, I’ve seen all of the above at dozens and dozens of organizations. You could substitute the word member for volunteer and it would read the same.

Now you be honest. Have I described your organization? Is what you say about volunteers at your organization matched by what you DO?

Volunteer manager Fight Club

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While I don’t believe managers of volunteers are the same as human resources managers, these two professions do have a LOT in common. That’s why I subscribe to the newsletter from workforce.com: they bring such fantastic articles and blogs to my attention that can relate to volunteer engagement.

One of the recent things they brought to my attention is an entry on Fistful of Talent, a blog for “recruiters, HR, consultants and corporate types on all things talent.” It’s by Dawn Hrdlica of DAXKO. She made a list of things HR managers should fight for – or, as she put it, 5 Things to Create a HR Fight Club Over. She says, “you gotta fight openly for these gems.”

I loved the list, and have adapted it for those in charge of volunteer engagement at their organizations. When I’m quoting directly from Ms. Hrdlica, I put the text in colored italics. And I’m encouraging those who manage or coordinate an organization’s volunteer engagement to fight for six things:

    1. Fight for your volunteers: They aren’t yours in the sense that you own them, but they ARE yours in the sense that you are responsible for them, and they are counting on you to have their best interest at heart and to make sure the organization does too! Damn it… fight for them when they aren’t being recognized or listened to. Get their contributions in the annual report and on the web site, and NOT just as “wage replacement” or “money saved.” Bring up their contributions and challenges in staff meetings. Make sure the organization celebrates them just as much as it celebrates financial donors.
  • Fight for your team: Volunteers aren’t free, and it takes a huge amount of time and resources to ensure their work is meaningful for both your organization and for them. They are doing a whole lot of work behind the scenes that others may not see. It’s up to YOU to make sure that work gets seen by everyone at your organization, especially senior management!
     
  • Fight for your time: We are all busy. But if you don’t put the ki-bosh on all the unnecessary noise… you… will… drown. Many of us say, “But to be a good customer service agent I have to, always be available”. You also have to be PRESENT. If you are overwhelmed, interrupted or constantly jump when others say jump… you will not be present. Fight for you-time ’cause no one else will.
     
  • Fight for your budget. What gets cut first when things go bad? Volunteer management budgets. Because volunteers are free, right? Your budget must be detailed to show exactly how much time and effort it takes to engage all of the volunteers you have, and you must be able to say what the consequences of cutting your budget will be (less volunteers, and those that are left providing left sources, and numbers to back that up), in terms of real numbers. At least fight for the budget to stay in tact. You may not get it – but at least you can sleep at night knowing you’re not a coward.
     
  • Fight for your resources. You need volunteer management software, not just a few lines of data entry on the donor management software. You need interactive features on the volunteer-related pages of your organizations web site. You need to keep your training up-to-date and, therefore, need to go to a conference or workshop that will upgrade your skills. You may need a paid part-time or full-time assistant, or more than one, to be able to involve and support more volunteers at your organization. Don’t let some lame brain tell senior management that the donor software will meet all of your needs, that you can’t have the interactive features on the volunteer-related pages that other departments have with clients and donors because it’s too expensive or not possible (because it’s NOT), and that volunteers are free. And if you need more help, prove why and fight for it. Last but not least:
     
  • Fight for your salary. Fundraising managers, donor relations managers and even the HR manager are all making more than you. Why? Those people constantly show how all the things they do are critical to the organization. The organization believes that under-funding or cutting those positions who be disastrous to the organization. In addition, those other staff people are asking for more money and getting it. They are ASKING FOR IT. Pay peanuts… get monkeys. Don’t be a monkey.

 

Managers of volunteers have reputations of being nice. It’s time to start working towards a reputation of being absolutey necessary. It’s time to join the volunteer management Fight Club!

It’s not the first time I’ve tried to get you all to fight…