Tag Archives: support

A missed opportunity with volunteers

A colleague recently told me that she and a group of co-workers arranged to go to a nonprofit thrift store for one day and help the organization sort through computer donations. She and her colleagues had a great time:

“It was super fun!”, she said. “I got to sort through equipment, to tear apart computers, to take a hammer to outdated computers. We had a great time!” But she added, “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 felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Again.

These volunteers merely got work done. This nonprofit merely got free labor. Nothing more.

Here was a great opportunity for this nonprofit organization to make connections that could lead to more volunteering, more volunteers, more awareness of its work and new financial donations! Here was an opportunity for these volunteers to learn about all that this nonprofit does, that it’s not just a thrift store but, in fact, a job training organization. A rich, longer-term, meaningful relationship could have been created.

Instead, the nonprofit just got some work done, and the volunteers had fun for a day. There is more to volunteer engagement than that – even for onsite episodic or microvolunteering volunteering like this, with just a few hours of work no requirement for future commitment.

I have no idea what all this work that I did means to them.

That comment in particular is the one that hurts me to the core as a volunteer management advocate.

Here’s what should have happened:

There should have been a sign in sheet for the volunteers. The names, postal mailing addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of every participant should have been captured. This isn’t just to create a way to followup with volunteers later for further volunteering or fundraising; it’s to mitigate risk, to have a recourse in case volunteers damage property, hurt someone, or engage in inappropriate activity. It also says to volunteers, “You are more than just bodies doing work to us. You are people. We recognize that.”
Someone from the organization should have taken photos of volunteers in action, and asked for a group photo as well. The photos should have been posted to Flickr with recognition of the volunteers, either by their names or by the company they were representing. Some of the photos should have ended up on the organization’s web site as well. Photos could have been tweeted during the work as it was happening. Posting photos is a great, easy, cheap way to thank volunteers, to entice others to volunteer, and to say to everyone, “We are a nonprofit that is doing things!.”
Someone from the organization should have emailed each of the volunteers the day after the event, thanking each person for his or her service, noting why the service was of value to the organization, and telling the person how he or she could volunteer again in the future. The email should also have invited each person to subscribe to an email newsletter or follow the organization on Twitter or “like” the organization on Facebook – something that would allow the person to stay connected to the organization, know about new volunteering opportunities, etc. The email should have also invited each volunteer to opt-in to receiving postal mail from the organization.
Local TV stations should have gotten an email or fax from the nonprofit an hour before volunteers arrived, saying, “Hey, here’s a great video opportunity for you…” TV stations are often scrambling for video the the evening news cast. Someone taking a hammer to a computer would have ended up on a local news station for sure!

That’s volunteer engagement / community engagement 101. That’s not extra work – that’s what any organization should already be doing with volunteers that are going to show up for just an hour, or just half a day, or just one day. If an organization can’t do that, should they be involving volunteers at all? I don’t think so.

Also see

How to Get Rid of Volunteers – My own volunteering horror story. One of the most popular blogs I’ve ever published.

Creating One-Time, Short-Term Group Volunteering Activities
Details on not just what groups of volunteers can do in a two-hour, half-day or all-day event, but also just how much an organization or program will need to do to prepare a site for group volunteering.

Keeping Volunteer Information Up-to-Date
Suggestions on how to keep volunteer information up-to-date, with the goal of getting the information your organization needs with minimal effort on your part.

Required Volunteer Information on Your Web Site
If your organization or department involves volunteers, or wants to, there are certain things your organization or department must have on its web site – no excuses! To not have this information says that your organization or department takes volunteers for granted, does not value volunteers beyond money saved in salaries, or is not really ready to involve volunteers.

Mission statements for your volunteer engagement
(Saying WHY your organization or department involves volunteers!)
In addition to carefully crafting the way you talk about the value of volunteers, your organization should also consider creating a mission statement for your organization’s volunteer engagement, to guide employees in how they think about volunteers, to guide current volunteers in thinking about their role and value at the organization, and to show potential volunteers the kind of culture they can expect at your organization regarding volunteers.

Basic Fund-Raising for Small NGOs/Civil Society in the Developing World

1 Reply

Some of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) to online forums for community-based organizations (CBOs) in developing countries, whatever the subject, are regarding funding.

In addition, the first impulse of many small non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seeking funding is to request the contact information for possible funders, and once they find the name of any company they think gives grants to NGOs, these NGOs often write immediately to the company with a desperate please for funds. This approach often harms the NGO, rather than garnering any support at all. Not only do these please rarely attract funding, they can turn funding sources against the NGO altogether.

After seeing these questions and messages again and again over several years (I’ve been on the Internet since about 1994) I drafted a list of basic tips for fund-raising for small NGOs – it was 15 pages long. Now, years later, it has evolved into 31 pages. It is a PDF file.

The document is meant to provide very basic guidelines for small NGOs in the developing world regarding fund-raising and adhering to the basic principles of good governance, and to point to other resources. By small NGOs, I mean organizations that may have only one paid staff member, or are run entirely by volunteers; and may or may not have official recognition by the government. These organizations are extremely limited in their resources, and are often in unstable environments and/or serving profoundly poor populations. Certainly medium-sized NGOs could use it as well – organizations that may have two or three paid staff members.

Please note that this document is NOT written for nonprofits serving the “developed” world — organizations serving communities in North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand or Japan would probably not find this document particularly helpful, as it has been prepared to make recommendations relevant for nonprofits serving in a developing country.

This document is also not for organizations that send volunteers into developing countries to work. This document will not help you fund the trips of such volunteers. If you are such a volunteer-sending organization, see funding your volunteering trip abroad and fund raising for a cause or organization for more helpful information.

THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT A LIST OF FUNDERS/DONORS.

Let me repeat that: THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT A LIST OF FUNDERS/DONORS.

It is, instead, a set of guidelines on how to prepare an organization in a developing country to be attractive to donors, how to search for potential donors and how to approach such potential donors.

The document includes:

A list of activities an NGO should NEVER do regarding fund-raising
(& how I know if an NGO has actually read this document!)
How to network among various sectors in your country and establish credibility to insure fund-raising success
The absolute essential preparations to solicit donations, both locally and from international NGOs working in your geographic area
Establishing credibility and a reputation of integrity, transparency and accountability
How to find donors that would be interested in your NGO and how to make contact with them
A warning about fund-raising scams
Online resources for detailed tips on writing funding proposals
Suggestions regarding volunteers in other countries fund-raising on your NGO’s behalf (new chapter added October 2011)
Online resources for further information

Once you have received this document, please do NOT distribute the document via a web site or on an online discussion group without my written permission. I frequently update the document, and want to ensure people are getting the most recent version.

Here is the web page for more regarding: Basic Fund-Raising for Small NGOs/Civil Societ in the Developing World, including how to access the document.

How to get rid of volunteers

11 Replies

Last week, I signed up to help at a community event, held yesterday.

Just. To. Help. To assist.

Yesterday, when I arrived at the event site – a public school – I found out I was in charge of the entire event. More than 30 kids would be there in an hour, expecting me to lead them through 90 minutes of activities that were completely foreign to me.

I don’t like kids.₁ And I noted this at the time I signed up to help. I care about the cause, however, and as I was new to the committee – I just joined last week – I wanted to prove myself as a reliable, helpful committee member. By assisting at an event. By helping someone else in charge.

But there I was, in charge of an event I knew nothing about. About to face more than 30 kids, all under the age of 12.

I wasn’t scared. And that was good, because kids smell fear. No, instead, I was angry. Kids smell anger too, but it tends to make them listen to me. And that played to my advantage during the event – they never crossed that line into chaos that a large group of kids can so easily dissolve into.

Then there were the other adult volunteers, who were also there just to help, just to be nice. And they just kinda stood there, watching me try to pull it together. And as I was bossing those confused volunteers around in a frantic attempt to pull the event together, I wondered: Have each of these people been registered with the school and had a criminal background check? Is it my responsibility to check into that before they participate? Come to think of it, no one at the school checked to see that I was who I said I was, or asked me for my school volunteer I.D. number. How do I know any of these adults are safe to be around these kids?

I pulled the event off, on a very basic level. I drew on my experience as a manager of people, projects and events, on my two years of experience volunteering with the Girl Scouts (I’ve noticed that troop leaders at events get the kids started on an activity immediately and have them keep repeating it until volunteers are ready to move them on to the next activity), my experience having coordinated and directed more live events than is probably healthy for any one person in one lifetime, and by channeling my ever-so-bossy-but-organized Great Aunt Cornelia, who is still a legend in my family for her management abilities.

Also, it turns out none of the adult volunteers were predators nor inclined to ignore kids engaging in dangerous behavior. Lucky kids. Lucky me.

In addition, the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge did have all of the materials and equipment ready to go at the site – that helped tremendously. However, she was astounded, upon arrival just after the kids started the first activity, that the emails she sent in the preceding days weren’t understood by me and others as completely signing off on responsibility for the event (she had, indeed, said in those emails she would be late, and said myself and another volunteer would be the “leads” for the other volunteers until she got there, and some emails came with attachments… But, of course, I thought the school principal would be in charge, since she was cc’d on everything, since I have no experience at all with this kind of event, since I had made it clear I was just signing up to help, and since, to her knowledge, I have no experience doing anything like this. And I don’t like kids).

Was the event a success? In my opinion, no. It wasn’t bad, and the kids had fun and were kept busy, but the reality is: the kids didn’t really learn anything about the subject at hand. They had fun, and they walked away happy, and that’s nice – but they didn’t walk away retaining any knowledge, which was the entire purpose of the event. No minds were changed, no behaviors altered – and that was the mission of the event. A lot could have been done at the event to create that knowledge, to ensure things were remembered, to better ensure some behaviors would change, but I would have needed more than 90 minutes of prep to make that happen.

In addition, this could have been an event where not only did kids get some really essential knowledge, but also, some adults could be inspired to help at future events. And that’s why it was a stark reminder about why I – and others – train in volunteer management issues (as well as why there are so many books on event management). And why so many schools and other organizations struggle to find volunteers.

Let’s face it: a great way to drive away volunteers is to sign them up to help at an event and, when they show up, tell them they are in charge. Or have them confused about what they are supposed to do, and feeling generally unsupported. Or have them bossed around for a couple of hours by a very confused and angry me.

Volunteer management isn’t just mindless bureaucracy, with forms to fill out and procedures to be followed. It’s about ensuring that an organization or program or department mission is met. It’s about ensuring volunteers don’t show up and just do some seemingly random activities. It’s about creating experiences that lead to awareness and inspiration – not just getting some work done. It’s about ensuring safety – not just keeping fingers crossed and hoping everything works out.

And effective volunteer management is what keeps volunteers coming back again and again.

Volunteer management also isn’t just one person’s responsibility; some person at that school trusted a volunteer explicitly with organizing a safe, meaningful event for students from the school. Who was that person? What is he or she going to do about what happened yesterday? Does he or she even know what happened – and what didn’t happen? Did they just walk by and think, yeah, the kids are having fun, no problems here? Are they reading this blog right now?

I know the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge isn’t reading this blog: she also sent me an email last week proudly stating that she doesn’t read blogs and isn’t on Twitter or Facebook. Just like so many people I’ve met here in Oregon, I’m sorry to say…

Here’s a positive: I’ve never been more dedicated to the fundamentals of volunteer management and effective, program-based planning than I am right now.

I still don’t like kids though…

————

1. Okay, I don’t hate kids. I sometimes find them quite amusing. I really love watching them learn. And I’m passionate about girls knowing just how many choices and opportunities are out there. But I do not think kids are automatically cute nor innocent nor sweet, and I also don’t like parents and other adults who think of kids as precious snowflakes who have every right to scream in a restaurant – though I cut a lot of slack on airplanes.

The Gutting of the USA

Government support re: volunteerism increasing worldwide

1 Reply

A recent edition of Global Trends in NGO Law, “a quarterly review of NGO legal trends around the world”, published by The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, examines the major international trends in the development of supportive volunteerism policies and legislation over the past decade. In anticipation of the 10 year anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10), the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) program commissioned the report by the ICNL and the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL).

The report finds that since IYV 2001, more than 70 laws and policies on volunteers and volunteering have been adopted in countries around the world. These laws cannot be absolutely attributed to the events surrounding IYV 2001, but it can be said that a growing number of countries are becoming aware of volunteerism in their countries — not just informal activities of neighbors helping neighbors, but volunteers self-organizing or being organized through a non-governmental organization (NGO) to provide certain services, to engage in activities that promote change by government or corporate sectors, etc.

Organized volunteerism isn’t just people being nice and helpful, and efforts to introduce, expand or support volunteerism nationally should keep that in mind. There are some not-so-nice volunteers out there — and while I think they are wonderful, many governments are going to balk when they show up.

In addition, as governments expand their support of volunteerism in their countries, they are going to learn very quickly that volunteers are not all selfless! Volunteers are neither saints nor teddy bears, and fuzzy language about them and their contributions needs to be replaced by more modern and more appropriate language that recognizes their importance, like “powerful” and “intrepid” and “audacious” and “determined.”

And do they understand that volunteers are never free, that successful volunteer engagement requires volunteer management and support – and that such support and management costs money?

It’s also important to take extra care in talking to impoverished people about donating their time for free – there can be a very ugly backlash with the wrong approach. But asking impoverished people to donate their time to free can work!

In short – there are LOTS to consider about expanded promotions of volunteering in countries globally! Let’s hope governments are getting that message as well.

Also see Germany needs 90 thousand volunteers immediately.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Jayne Cravens / CoyoteBroad Blog

Commentary, resources & discussion re: nonprofits/ngos, communications, community engagement, volunteerism, effective humanitarian aid & development, ethics, women's empowerment & management ethics. Posts 1st & 3rd Mondays of each month..