Tag Archives: volunteering

Safety of volunteers contributes to a shelter closing

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Thursday, I listened to an absolutely amazing interview on OPB’s Think Out Loud (it’s a local radio show on Portland, Oregon’s local NPR affiliate) regarding why a Portland church will not be opening a warming shelter for the homeless this year. One of the biggest reasons they will not be opening this year: concerns about the safety of volunteers.

This heart-breaking interview shows why having a good heart and some willing volunteers is just NOT ENOUGH for certain critical community issues – and may even put volunteers in danger and enable the problems to continue. This interview also shows why the homeless need so much more than a warm place to sleep and a smile. It’s a painful reality check – and there are no winners.

Also see:

volunteer managers: you are NOT psychic!

Dec. 5: International Volunteer Day for Economic & Social Development

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersDecember 5 is International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution 40/212 in 1985.

This is not a day to honor only international volunteers; the international in the title describes the day, not the volunteer. It’s a day to honor, specifically, those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development. Such volunteers deserve their own day.

I say this every year in coversations and on social media, and I’ve said it before on my blog: I think it’s a shame to try to turn December 5 into just another day to celebrate any volunteer, because there are PLENTY of days and weeks to honor all volunteers and encourage more volunteering (so many that maybe it’s even time for a culling of such).

Let’s keep December 5 specifically for volunteers who contribute to economic and social development, per its original intention; let’s give these volunteers their due, as per the original purpose of this day’s designation.

Examples of this type of volunteering are volunteers who help these initiatives:

Bpeace: helping start-up businesses in Afghanistan, Rwanda and El Salvador.

Adelante Mujeres: offers Latina women and their families in the Forest Grove / Cornelius / Hillsboro, Oregon area tools to achieve self-determination in the areas of Education, Empowerment and Enterprise. This includes these three programs: Adelante Empresas, a small business development program that offers support and marketing opportunities to aspiring Latino entrepreneurs; Adelante Agricultura trains Latino farmers in sustainable agriculture by teaching sustainable farming methods and ecological land management; and Forest Grove Farmers Market (FGFM), offering opportunities for clients to sell their wares.

Austin Free-Net: volunteers help with computer literacy training, which helps clients find jobs. In Austin, Texas, USA.

Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center: a non-profit organization that provides small business training and support services to women and men throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in California, USA.

SCORE: through this nonprofit in the USA, volunteers help thousands of entrepreneurs start small businesses and achieve new levels of success in their existing businesses.

PeaceCorps: many of the volunteers serving in this program are focused on helping to develop or expand income-generation activities by people and communities in developing countries.

KIVA: Kiva Fellows travel to and live in the host country of one of its partner microfinance institutions (MFI) for a minimum of 12 weeks.

Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC): many of its volunteers work in efforts related to economic development in countries around the world.

International Services division of Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO): Provides service related to economic development to communities within Canada and in many other countries around the world. This includes services related to strategic planning, business development, accounting and finance, organizational development, and production and operations.

Thank you to the many volunteers who help with the range of economic and social development needs in the world! Today is all about YOU.

My previous blog on this subject has a long list of examples of volunteers contributing to economic and social development.

It’s real: the unpaid internships & volunteers controversy

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Believe it or not, there are people that do not believe there is an ongoing, at times impassioned, debate as to whether or not unpaid interns supporting charities, nonprofits or non-government organizations (NGOs) are volunteers. These non-believers say that the issue is resolved – that unpaid interns aren’t volunteers, and that’s that. These non-believers are the same people that also do not believe that employees or executives on loan, pro bono consultants, or people doing community service for a court or a class at mission-based organizations are volunteers. Their definition of volunteer is extremely limited: the term is to be used only for people that donate time primarily out of the goodness of their heart, with NO expectations of benefits like job skills development, career exploration, social connections, etc.. For them, the motivation of the person defines volunteer, not their pay status or the reason the role was reserved specifically for unpaid staff.

The reality, however, is that there is a very real, ongoing debate among those that advocate for and research volunteerism, those that involve volunteers, and volunteers themselves, about who is and isn’t a volunteer, including debate regarding whether or not unpaid interns should be considered volunteers.

If you know me, you know that I’m firmly in the big tent camp: of course unpaid interns at nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools and other mission-based organizations are volunteers, just as employees or executives on loan, pro bono consultants, or people doing community service for a court or a class at such organizations are volunteers, just as people who are volunteering primarily to improve their employability or explore careers or making social connections are still volunteers. However, I also know that not everyone thinks that way, and fully acknowledge that this is an ongoing debate – that there are people with differing opinions on the issue.

Some of my previous blogs on the subject, with links to articles about how this is an ongoing controversy (and not just in the USA) include:

As the first link notes, this is not just a problem in the USA: there is not universal agreement in other countries either about unpaid interns as volunteers.

For instance, the European Volunteer Centre feels that unpaid internships are

“mistakenly perceived to be or even presented as volunteering.”

Yet CEV also says that

“Volunteering is an outstanding source of learning and a contributor to personal and professional development. CEV considers it important to recognize volunteering as a source of non-formal and informal learning, while keeping a balance in order not to move the focus from the benefit to others to the benefit of the individual in the form of qualifications or recognition of skills.”

Do you see the contradiction? Of course all mission-based organizations have a primary focus on benefiting others or the environment, rather than benefitting any individual, including employees and unpaid staff (volunteers), but any organization of quality will also have a second or tertiary priority of supporting staff – paid employees and unpaid volunteers – in expanding their qualifications or skills. Also, the reality is that there are a LOT of volunteers who are donating service primarily to benefit themselves in terms of skills development, career exploration, job connections, social connections, having fun, and on and on – those motivations don’t make them any less of a volunteer than the person that is there primarily out of the goodness of the heart (which I remain unconvinced any volunteer actually does, primarily, but that’s another blog).

The ILO’s Manual on the measurement of volunteer work is similarly confusing, saying

Volunteers may receive non-monetary benefits from volunteering in the form of skills development, social connections, job contacts, social standing and a feeling of self- worth (p. 14)

But then, later on that same page, saying

Unpaid apprenticeships required for entry into a job and internships and student volunteer work required for graduation or continuation in a school or training programme violate the non-compulsory feature of the definition and should therefore not be considered as volunteer work. (ILO 2011 p. 14)

On the UKVPMs online discussion group for managers of volunteers in the United Kingdom, debate on this subject happened as recently as December 20121. The longest debate on UKVPMs happened in July 2011, with more than 50 messages and more than a dozen people debating the issue2.

Controversies regarding unpaid interns can easily be found in newspaper articles and on Twitter, and further discussions regarding the controversies and emotions on this subject can be found in the comments section beneath most of these online articles, such as these, all retrieved in July 2013 (URLs provided in text in case links no longer work, in which case, type such into archive.org):

Brussels army of ‘slave’ trainees escapes EU gaze, Reuters, June 27, 2013
Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/brussels-army-slave-trainees-escapes-123155558.html The European Commission offers some 1,400 sought-after five-month traineeships a year… Yet the pay is well below the Belgian minimum wage requirement of 1,500 euros per month. Many other advertised positions offer monthly stipends of a few hundred euros and sometimes nothing at all. Traineeships are supposed to provide training, but the line between that and actual employment is often blurred.

Are charities’ unpaid interns really ‘volunteers’?
A legal loophole means charities needn’t pay their interns. But pricing graduates out of the sector is damaging and unfair, The Guardian, 28 June 2011
Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/28/charities-unpaid-interns-graduates.
“You have to be rich to work for a charity now,” an intern told me recently. “I’m passionate about helping others but after six months of unpaid work it’s a luxury I can’t afford any more. So I’m giving up to do something else.”

NUJ wins first unpaid internship tribunal, The Drum, May 2011
Retrieved from http://www.thedrum.com/news/2011/05/13/nuj-wins-first-unpaid-internship-tribunal.
Payment for interns looks likely to become a reality as the National Union of Journalists celebrates having successfully sued TPG Web Publishing to pay a member who had untaken an unpaid internship at the company.

There are consequences for this confusion: unpaid interns are mobilizing and voicing their own concerns about their employment status and treatment – and not just at for-profit companies, but at nonprofits and NGOs. There are at least seven Twitter accounts representing the interests of such unpaid interns:

@HagueInterns – Hague Interns Association. “HIA is an association of interns working at UN-related and intergov’t orgs in The Hague. We work to improve intern welfare & promote intern rights.”

@UnpaidIsUnfair – “Unpaid internships are unfair. The United Nations should be no exception. Please sign our petition and tell the UN that young people matter.”

@EricGlatt – Interns ≠ Free Labor. “Working to end #wagetheft guised as #unpaidinternships. Law student & Public Interest Fellow at Georgetown.”

@InternLabor – Intern Labor Rights. “In this era of historic inequality, class divide, soaring student debt and persistent unemployment we call for an end to unpaid internships: Pay your interns!” internlaborrights.com

@FairPayCampaign – Join the fight to end unpaid internships in the U.S.A. Launching Summer 2013.

@canadianinterns – “The Canadian Intern Association advocates against the exploitation of interns and aims to improve the internship experience for both interns and employers.”

@InternJustice – “Protecting the rights and wages of interns.”

The debate regarding whether or not unpaid interns at charities, nonprofits, NGOs and other organizations are volunteers doesn’t just complicate discussions about volunteerism; it also complicates discussions and policies about volunteering as a tool for increasing marketable skills or career exploration, especially for young people.

Author, researcher and trainer Susan Ellis, who has authored or co-authored of 12 books related to volunteer management, researched and written more than 120 articles on volunteer management for dozens of publications, trains worldwide regarding volunteerism, and founded the largest publisher of volunteerism-related books, addresses this debate regularly. For instance, in this November 2004 “Hot Topic” blog, she notes:

It’s fine to distinguish specific challenging volunteer assignments that need to be filled by qualified people with more-than-average hours available per week. But why not make these available to anyone willing and able to meet the requirements – not just students? Think about the illogic of assuming that a student, often quite inexperienced, can fulfill an intensive role just because s/he is a student, while an adult “volunteer” who may be truly qualified is relegated to less consequential tasks simply because of being placed into a different category of worker.

Further, the skill necessary to create a meaningful “internship” is exactly the same task analysis that ought to be brought to any work designed for volunteers. It might even elicit more creativity if staff were asked to develop volunteer roles that allowed the doer to grow and learn – at any age and for any reason…

Maybe it’s time to examine our own reactions to the words volunteer and intern. Both are descriptors, not job titles. Neither really tells us what the person is actually doing, nor necessarily the skills the person brings. But if one connotes nice helper to you and the other connotes serious learner, ask yourself why both can’t be both. Then ask yourself whether the distinction has been made in your agency mainly to professionalize internships… and why that wouldn’t be positive as an approach to all volunteered assistance. (Ellis 2004).

Ellis’s blog resulted in more than 20 comments, some from Europe, from both organisations and interns, further demonstrating that there is not universal agreement regarding the status of unpaid interns as volunteers.

This is a real controversy, and the issue remains unresolved. The next time someone tries to tell you there is no debate on this subject, that the issue is resolved, even in Europe, feel free to share the information in this blog!

Footnotes:

1 UKVPMs Messages 8992 to 9005, most under the subject line “volunteering vs unpaid internships – the debate continues.”

2 UKVPMs Most of the messages between 7846 through 7909, under the subject lines “Who is a volunteer and who isn’t?” and “Should charities offer unpaid internships?”

Also see this web page, Online & print articles about or addressing controversies regarding volunteers replacing paid staff, and these blog posts:

Free training video: Using Internet & Smartphone Apps to Work With Volunteers

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This workshop, Real Tools for Real People: Using Internet & Smartphone Apps to Work With Volunteers, is a 90 minute training video made at the October Corporation for National and Community Service 2013 Pacific Cluster Learning Community Conference, with twang (I’d been in Kentucky two weeks previously). It’s focused on managers of AmeriCorps, VISTA, SeniorCorps and other national service members, however, it’s applicable to any initiative involving volunteers.

Sorry that the video doesn’t pick up the laughs from the terrific audience of about 50 or more people.

 

New report NOT by me re: microvolunteering

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At long last, someone that is not me has conducted a fact-based, non-hype review of micro volunteering, and not just from the volunteers’ point of view, but from the volunteer-involving organizations point of view as well. Hurrah!

Published by the Institute for Volunteering Research and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), the report, The value of giving a little time Understanding the potential of micro-volunteering, is focused on United Kingdom-based efforts, but is applicable to other countries regarding what micro volunteering really looks like, and what it takes for it to be successful.

Do I agree with everything in the report? No. For instance, the writers don’t believe micro volunteering is episodic volunteering; I’m adamant that it is. The writers include offline activities within their definition of micro volunteering, something that is a very new way of thinking. But every researcher has to define the parameters of their study, and I respect how they’ve chosen to define the practice, even if I don’t agree with it 100%.

And is it micro volunteering, microvolunteering, or micro-volunteering? I just do whatever spell check tells me…

That said, it’s a good report and worth your time to read, particularly if you are skeptical of the idea of micro volunteering. My favorite part was part 6, “What are the challenges of micro- volunteering?” It’s the part of the report that breaks new ground, because (1) it admits that there ARE real challenges to creating micro tasks and involving volunteers in those tasks, something people promoting micro volunteering to date have been reluctant to admit, and (2) it offers a detailed list of those real challenges, and a start on how they might be addressed.

I have managed probably hundreds of online volunteers in micro volunteering projects – though it didn’t have a snazzy name for most of the years I did so. In September 2013, I blogged at TechSoup about what it’s like to manage its micro volunteering initiative, Donate Your Brain, pointing out just how much time and effort it takes to look for micro volunteering opportunities in relation to the TechSoup community forum. I’d like to see others that are creating micro volunteering tasks and supporting the volunteers in them do this as well: talk about what it REALLY takes!

I have to say that Table 3 in the report, “Are organisations experiencing the benefits of micro-volunteering?”, made me laugh out loud – it reads oh-so-much like the benefits of virtual volunteering for organizations that was written back in the 1990s!

Here’s more of my own recommendations regarding micro volunteering. And in January 2014, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook will be published, and it includes practical guidelines on how to create micro tasks for volunteers, and how to support volunteers in those tasks. But more information, and voices, are needed! We need more, real research that answers these questions, in detail:

  • What does successful micro volunteering look like for an organization? I don’t mean just a list of tasks; how do they measure success? What measurable impact does engaging with volunteers in micro tasks look like, for the organization and those it serves?
  • How much time and other investment, in detail, is required by the organization to create successful micro volunteering that makes the investment of time and effort by the organization worth it?

Let’s hope that national institutes that study community engagement, as well as traditional volunteer centers, will, at last, embrace micro volunteering (and all virtual volunteering, for that matter) and start including it in their studies, workshops, publications and trainings.

With all that said, and as much as I really do like this report, the reality is that not every organization is going to be able to create micro tasks for micro volunteering. Just as not every organization can, or should, create opportunities for family volunteers, or other group volunteers. Not every task can be altered so that any volunteer can do it. Not every task can be done by episodic volunteers – sometimes, the best person for a task or role is a long-term volunteer who can give a substantial amount of time every month. Different tasks require different kinds of staffing. And all volunteering, including micro volunteering, takes real time – let’s NOT say it’s perfect for people that don’t have time to volunteer, because it DOES take real time, even if it’s just a few minutes.

The challenge isn’t creating micro tasks for volunteers; the much greater challenge is supporting those charged with supporting volunteers at organizations large and small with the resources they need to create all of these different avenues for volunteer engagement. Are you ready to fund and equip your manager of volunteers with the resources he or she needs to make this a reality?

The question I get asked again & again

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I often feel that most letters to Dear Abby and other advice columnists can be summed up thusly:

There is this thing I need to do or say, because I’m suffering per the behavior of someone else, but I don’t want to address it because it’s going to make me uncomfortable to say or do what I need to say or do, it’s going to make other people uncomfortable, and the people I’m speaking about/to may end up not liking me, have their feelings hurt, etc. So how can I do or say this thing that I really need to do in such a way that no one will be angry, I won’t be uncomfortable, everyone will listen, all is well afterwards with no resentment or hostility, and I get the change in behavior I need?

And I realized over the course of the four presentations I did in the last two weeks that most questions asked by managers of volunteers can be summed up thusly as well.

Two of my most popular blogs are about how managers of volunteers are under pressure to always please volunteers  and The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer. Both of these blogs reflect the aversion of managers of volunteers to conflict, complaints and uncomfortable conversations.

This aversion comes from a misplaced notion that managers of volunteers must be:

  • always nice
  • never confrontational
  • always welcoming of all volunteers no matter what those volunteers might say or how they may act
  • make everyone happy at all times

How do we change that expectation of managers of volunteers – both from others and by ourselves?

Also see this oh-so-popular blog, the Volunteer Manager Fight Club.

No complaints means success?

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Back in April 2010, I published the following blog. It became one of my most popular entries. Later that year, my blog home moved – and then, just two years later, it moved again. I managed to recover this via archive.org, and am republishing it here on what I hope will be my blog home for a long, long time:

——-

During my workshops in Australia last month, I asked managers of volunteers how their executive leadership at their organizations define success regarding volunteer involvement. And one of the answers really disturbed me:

“It’s successful if no one complains.”

The person who made this statement didn’t think this was a good measure of volunteer involvement at her organization; she was acknowledging a reality at her organization, but did not like it. And at least two other people said similar things about their organizations — that senior management did not want to hear about any problems with volunteers and, if they did, it meant the volunteer manager wasn’t doing her (or his) job.

It means that just one volunteer complaint — including complaints about being reprimanded for not following policy —  would result in senior leadership displeasure with the volunteer manager. One person said that her supervisor, in regards to complaints by a long-time volunteer who did not want to follow policy, “I just don’t want to hear it. Make her happy.”

I heard this theme a few times, in fact: that senior management was more displeased about getting a complaint from a volunteer than they were that the volunteer had violated a policy and been given a verbal or written reprimand.

If you are facing this, confront it head on:

  • Consider meeting one-on-one with the senior leader who thinks this way, to discuss why a complaint from a volunteer isn’t a sign of a failure in the program, why it’s often necessary to do something that upsets a volunteer (just as it’s sometimes necessary to do something that upsets an employee), etc. Talk about the consequences of not addressing problems with volunteers. Even if you walk away thinking you haven’t changed his or her mind, you’ve at least planted a seed of doubt in the senior manager’s mind about his or her thinking about volunteer management.
  • While volunteer management is not exactly the same as HR management, volunteer management does involve HR management, and reprimanding volunteers because of policy violations is an example of that. Meet with the HR manager to make sure your policies and procedures — and enforcement — are in line with each other, and that he or she endorse your practices at a staff meeting or a meeting with senior management.
  • Consider conducting a brief workshop for staff (over lunch is a great time) about how and why volunteers may be disciplined, why following policies and procedures is vitally important for the organization’s credibility and for staff and volunteer safety, the consequences of not addressing policy violations, how complaints from volunteers are handled, etc.
  • Include information about problems you face as the volunteer manager in your regular reporting and how you systematically, dispassionately address such.

And on a related note, here is my interview with OzVPM Director Andy Fryar, talking about the trainings in Australia last month.

Also see

The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer.

With Volunteers, See No Evil?

Microvolunteering: beyond the hype

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The buzz about microvolunteering continues – but, IMO, this form of virtual volunteering is still being talked about it terms of hype, rather than practicalities and concrete benefits. It’s being talked about by bloggers and consultants more than organizations creating microvolunteering activities. The vast majority of blogs and articles about microvolunteering are focused entirely on supposed benefits for volunteers, with not even anecdotal information to support assertions (not even testimonials from online volunteers, for instance, about why they undertook such activities, what exactly they did, etc.), and often without providing actual examples of what online volunteers do in microvolunteering activities, or details on how organizations benefit in such a way that the return on investment is clear. An example: this article from the Institute for Volunteering Research: “Micro-volunteering: doing some good through smartphones?“, about users of the Orange’s Do Some Good smartphone App.

Having promoted this form of online volunteering since 1997 – back when I gave it the not-at-all catchy name of byte-sized volunteering – having created such assignments for volunteers and, even now, managing a microvolunteering initiative, I offer the following:

My experience managing the Donate Your Brain initiatives for TechSoup. In this blog, I try to show just how much work it takes to provide meaningful microvolunteering opportunities. This isn’t a blog to discourage organizations from creating online microtasks for volunteers, but it is insight from a manager of volunteers point of view – and I would love to see many more such testimonials from the people that are actually creating these assignments and supervising the contributions made by volunteers.

A very long list of examples of microvolunteering really looks like. You won’t find a longer list anywhere of what microvolunteering assignments can look like. This web page also provides lots of advice on how to create such assignments and make the program worth doing.

For you researchers out there: it would be so refreshing if, instead of only focusing on the motivations of volunteers to engage in microvolunteering, you did some research on the organizations that involve volunteers in microvolunteering assignments:

  • What ultimately prompts them to start creating these assignments?
  • What type of microvolunteering assignments are the most common to start with at an organization?
  • What type of microvolunteering assignments are the most common across organizations?
  • Do most organizations start with a formal microvolunteering program – using that name, getting approval from senior staff to engage volunteers in this way, having a web page and blog announcing such, having an official launch of such activities, etc. – or do they just start offering such assignments without fanfare, even without calling them “microvolunteering”?
  • Do most organizations have just one person, or multiple people, creating microvolunteering activities and supervising volunteers?
  • What percentage of volunteers engaged in microvolunteering became longer-term volunteers, or became financial donors?
  • If an organization’s engagement of volunteers through microvolunteering went away tomorrow, what would be the impact?

And, yes, microvolunteering is talked about in the upcoming Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – just like it was in the last one back in 1999, but this time, we use the snazzy new name.

One (-ish) Day “Tech” Activities for Volunteers

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A new resource on my web site:
One(-ish) Day “Tech” Activities for Volunteers
Volunteers are getting together for intense, one-day events, or events of just a few days, to build web pages, to write code, to edit Wikipedia pages, and more. These are gatherings of onsite volunteers, where everyone is in one location, together, to do an online-related project in one day, or a few days. It’s a form of episodic volunteering, because volunteers don’t have to make an ongoing commitment – they can come to the event, contribute their services, and then leave and never volunteer again. Because computers are involved, these events are often called hackathons, even if coding isn’t involved. They also sometimes get called edit-a-thons. This page provides advice on how to put together a one-day event, or just-a-few-days-of activity, for a group of tech volunteers onsite, working together, for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), community-focused government program, school or other mission-based organization – or association of such.

Volunteer engagement is MUCH more than just HR management

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Back in 2010, when my blog was somewhere else other than WordPress, I blogged about how the then new Reimagining Service initiative promoted the idea of applying private sector human resources practices to nonprofit organizations. Per some recent online discussions I’ve seen where this issue is rearing up again, I am reposting those two original blogs, which detail why I (and so many other managers of volunteers) believe that volunteer engagement is so much more than just HR management.

All links are on archived on archive.org.

Part 1: Don’t let them equate volunteer management with HR management
(08:15, 6 April 2010)

Human Resources (HR) management and volunteer management are NOT the same thing. It’s not just that one deals with paid staff and one with unpaid staff. The bigger difference is that HR is about getting the work that needs to be done in the most efficient way possible with paid staff. And that’s great. That’s absolutely necessary. But volunteer management is NOT getting the work that needs to be done completed by unpaid staff, in order to save as much money as possible. That’s old paradigm. That’s an idea the modern volunteer manager or “service leader” is trying to shed.

My favorite question to ask people who think HR management and volunteer management are the same thing is this: if I gave a nonprofit all the money in the world to hire all the staff needed for absolutely every possible position, to get absolutely all the work done that needs to be done, would that nonprofit still involve volunteers? If their answer is “no”, or “Yes, because nonprofits always need to be looking for ways to save money” or “Yes, because nonprofits will always have more work to be done than paid staff can do”, I know they don’t really understand the true value of involving volunteers.

If you see volunteer management as just HR management, then you will love Reimagining Service, which promotes the idea of applying private sector human resources practices to nonprofit organizations. It’s all about “there’s a lot of work to be done; let’s get volunteers to do it!” It ignores emerging trends regarding volunteer management and takes us several steps back. Don’t get me wrong – “Reimagining Service” is not without some good ideas; it’s nice that it says that volunteers aren’t free (something the nonprofit sector has been saying for many years). It’s nice that the people behind it see a need to fund volunteer management.

But I hope that some folks will crash the Reimagining Service Forum, to be held on Tuesday, June 29th, from 10:30am – noon, in New York City at the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service and try as much as you can to educate the HR professionals and corporate representatives there about the new paradigms regarding volunteer management and the realities of the nonprofit sector.

  • Do your best to help the panelists and speakers understand that there are better reasons to involve volunteers far beyond “there’s work to be done.”
  • Explain to them that some tasks are actually best done by volunteers — because that’s what the clients want, or because of the nature of the task. Explain to them that some organizations remain volunteer-only not to save money, but because of the nature of the organization’s mission.
  • Explain to them that organizations involve volunteers when it’s not always cost-effective to do so — it may be because the organization wants the community to be involved in their work, or because they organization wants to be more transparent to the community regarding its operations, or because the organization must address criticism or misconceptions about the organization. That’s why many organizations reserve certain assignments for volunteers, even if there might be funding for paid staff.
  • HR management is most certainly a part of the responsibilities of volunteer managers — ensuring policies and procedures are being followed, recording the service volunteers are providing, overseeing the performance review process, etc. But volunteer managers are also entrepreneurs and program managers, looking for ways to involve volunteers not based entirely on the work that needs to be done but, rather, based on the mission the organization is trying to achieve, and reporting on the results of volunteer involvement far beyond number of hours donated, number of volunteers involved and amount of money saved.

I wonder how these folks are going to respond to union representatives who, based on the message of Reimagining Service, are worried that volunteers replace paid staff to save money? Or paid nonprofit professionals who see this as an effort to replace them with with corporate employees on-loan and other volunteers — why pay for qualified, trained nonprofit professionals when you can get corporate folks acting as paraprofessionals “for free”?

Let’s stop letting the corporate sector define what’s best for the nonprofit sector. Let’s start advocating for ourselves!

PART 2: Victory! Volunteer management is, indeed, something more than HR!!
(07:17, 15 July 2010)

You may recall that myself (and more than a few others, I’ve since learned), were none-too-happy with the Reimagining Service report, issued earlier this year, which promoted the idea of applying private sector human resources practices to nonprofit organizations. The original report is all about “there’s a lot of work to be done; let’s get volunteers to do it!” It ignored emerging trends regarding volunteer management and, in my opinion as well many others, takes volunteer management / volunteer engagement several steps back.

The report equated volunteer management with human resources repeatedly in the report, and implied that what we need is more corporate HR folks in charge of volunteer management at nonprofits. While there are elements of human resources management in volunteer management, the latter is SO much more. As I blogged back in April: Human Resources (HR) management and volunteer management are NOT the same thing. It’s not just that one deals with paid staff and one with unpaid staff. The bigger difference is that HR is about getting the work that needs to be done in the most efficient way possible with paid staff. And that’s great. That’s absolutely necessary. But volunteer management is NOT getting the work that needs to be done completed by unpaid staff, in order to save as much money as possible. That’s old paradigm. That’s an idea the modern volunteer manager or “service leader” is trying to shed.

I wondered in my blog back in April how the Reimagining Service folks were going to respond to union representatives who, based on the message of Reimagining Service, are worried that volunteers replace paid staff to save money? Or paid nonprofit professionals who see this as an effort to replace them with with corporate employees on-loan and other volunteers — why pay for qualified, trained nonprofit professionals when you can get corporate folks acting as paraprofessionals “for free”?

I emailed the authors of the report, via their web site, to cite my concerns and to beg that they talk to actual volunteer managers. I got no reply other than an automated thank you. I found out that others had also written and gotten no reply as well.

So I encouraged anyone attending the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service in New York CIty last month to crash the Reimagining Service Forum and try to educate the HR professionals and corporate representatives there about the new paradigms regarding volunteer management and the realities of the nonprofit sector.

I didn’t get any updates from attendees to the Reimagining Service Forum. But I did get an email the Reimagining Service on 13 Jul 2010, and imagine my STUNNED surprise: not one mention of human resources management. Not one implication that volunteer management is only about getting free labor in the face of budget gaps (though volunteers-as-free-labor is, indeed, still there). There is still a lot of very corporate language, and no call for corporations and the government to pay for all these resources that volunteer management needs in order to be successful (how many times do we get told by granters that they won’t pay for administrative costs when we ask them to fund volunteer management?!).

Even so — I’m calling VICTORY! The pressure of many people, not just me, has altered the message of Reimagining Service in very good ways! Bravo, everyone who made their voices heard, via email or in face-to-face conversations! Pressure DOES work! Keep it up! Let them know what you think, especially if you manage/support volunteers in any capacity!

Here’s the text of the July 13 Reimagining Service email:

Dear Reimagining Service Community,

We enjoyed seeing so many of you at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service a few weeks ago.  To those of you who attended the Conference and came to the Reimagining Service Forum, thanks for your interest and participation, and a special thanks to everyone who participated in the Forum discussion session.   We appreciate that you took the time to share your valuable insights and expertise.  This work will be better due to your many contributions.

If you were not able to attend the Reimagining Service Forum, here are a few headlines to bring everyone up-to-date (all of the tools and resources referenced below are available at www.reimaginingservice.org):

  • Reimagining Service is a self-organized community of individuals from nonprofits, the government, and private sector.  We are inspired by the renewed call to service and believe that volunteerism can help solve some of society’s most pressing problems.  In order to maximize the potential of service, we seek to convert good intentions into greater impact.
  • Reimagining Service believes that one way to increase the impact of volunteering is to encourage the creation of more Service Enterprises.
  • What is a Service Enterprise?  It is a nonprofit or for-profit organization that fundamentally leverages volunteers and their skills to successfully deliver on the social mission of the organization.  Research summaries and tools about both nonprofit and corporate Service Enterprises are available on the Reimagining Service website.
  • Much of the thinking behind Reimagining Service stems from new research conducted by the TCC Group that quantifiably demonstrates that nonprofit Service Enterprises outperform their peers on all measures of organizational effectiveness.  The TCC Group research also shows that strong volunteer management practices are essential to becoming a Service Enterprise.
  • Recognizing that volunteer management and infrastructure require financial resources, the Reimagining Service Funding Action Team has created a resource guide with two objectives: 1) to help nonprofits make the case for funding to support volunteer management; and 2) to share information with funders on the value and need for providing this type of financial support to nonprofits.  The resource guide is available on the website, and the Funding Action Team is also pursuing other strategies to direct more funding to volunteer management and infrastructure support.
  • Reimagining Service is looking at both the supply of and demand for volunteers.  Many of the ideas proposed by Reimagining Service are directed toward businesses and corporate volunteer managers.  To deepen the impact of service, we believe we need to look at the entire “volunteer ecosystem,” not just at nonprofit’s practices.
  • For the past 15 months, Reimagining Service has been entirely volunteer driven, but we have determined that this effort now needs dedicated staff to lead the work on a day-to-day basis.  Instead of creating a new nonprofit, Reimagining Service will “live” at the Points of Light Institute.  Under this new structure, Reimagining Service will continue to function as a multi-sector coalition and maintain an open-source model of operation: all research, learnings, and tools will be posted on our website as they are created, and will be available free of charge.  More detail on this next phase of Reimagining Service will be shared later this summer.
  • We have articulated four Reimagining Service principles (see below), and encourage you to become a signatory to the principles to demonstrate your commitment to bringing these ideas to life.  Please visit www.reimaginingservice.org to sign on.

Well hope you’ll review the materials on the website, and, if you find them useful, please encourage others in your network to do the same and to sign on to the Reimagining Service principles.  If you have questions, feedback, or suggestions about anything on the website, please email us at reimaginingservice@gmail.org.  Please remember that Reimagining Service is still 100% volunteer driven, and it make take a little time for us to reply.  We appreciate your patience.

Many thanks and we hope to hear from you,

Reimagining Service

REIMAGINING SERVICE PRINCIPLES

Principle 1:  Make volunteering fundamental, not an add-on.  Service Enterprises use volunteers to fundamentally increase their ability to achieve their strategic objectives and advance the social mission of their organizations.  Nonprofit Service Enterprises leverage volunteers to deliver programs as well as administrative, fundraising and volunteer management support.  Corporate Service Enterprises align their service model with their business model which allows them to leverage their core competencies to create the most community impact while they inspire, engage and develop their talent.

Principle 2:  Volunteering changes the core economics of organizations.  Service Enterprises have impact beyond what their cash resources allow.  Nonprofit Service Enterprises use volunteers to reach more constituents with quality services at the same level of resources.  Business Service Enterprises deploy employee volunteers and their skills as a multiplier for their philanthropic strategy, greatly increasing their impact on strategic community issues.  In both instances, volunteers partner with paid staff to multiply the impact of the organization.

Principle 3:  Don’t let supply dictate your volunteer programs.  Service Enterprises don’t let the supply of volunteers drive what gets done, they focus on their strategic priorities.  They match those priorities with the core skills that are resident in the community €“ from businesses to professionals to educators to the trades.  They clearly communicate what they need to recruit volunteers and build the required infrastructure to manage them.  Business Service Enterprises identify their company’s core skills, then put them to use to address community priorities.  With this, Service Enterprises have begun to shift the metrics from hours to impact.

Principle 4:  In order to get a return, you have to invest.  Service Enterprises are able to get as much as three to six times the value out of volunteers as the cost to manage them.  This is tremendous leverage for the community, but does require an upfront and ongoing investment.  Both nonprofit and business Service Enterprises invest in people, plans and programs to enable volunteers to create critical impact.