{"id":137,"date":"2011-08-04T16:09:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyoteblog.posterous.com\/keeping-volunteer-management-skills-sharp"},"modified":"2017-06-26T13:26:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T20:26:21","slug":"keeping-volunteer-management-skills-sharp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2011\/08\/keeping-volunteer-management-skills-sharp\/","title":{"rendered":"How TechSoup Helped Keep My Skills Sharp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/techsoup_logo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3231\" src=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/techsoup_logo-300x71.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"71\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/techsoup_logo-300x71.jpg 300w, https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/techsoup_logo.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Among <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/me\/speak.html\" target=\"_blank\">the various topics I train<\/a> on is volunteer engagement<\/strong> &#8211; how to create opportunities for a variety of different kinds of volunteers (short-term, long-term, teens, university students, highly-skilled professionals donating their work pro bono, onsite, online, etc.), how to recruit different kinds of volunteers, how to measure success in a volunteer program, virtual volunteering, how to build the capacity of staff to involve volunteers, etc.<\/p>\n<p>How do I keep my volunteer management skills and knowledge up-to-date so I know what the heck to say in a training or a blog? In addition to reading, reading, reading &#8211; not just materials specific to volunteer engagement, but also materials regarding telecommuting \/ work shifting, team-building, project management, human resources management, conflict resolution &#8211;<strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/asavol.html\" target=\"_blank\">I also volunteer frequently volunteer myself<\/a>, and I try to have regular experiences as a manager of volunteers. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For five months &#8211; ending this week &#8211; I&#8217;ve been the interim <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.techsoup.org\/cs\/community\/f\/\" target=\"_blank\">online forum community manager for TechSoup<\/a>. I approach online community management as volunteer management, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.techsoup.org\/cs\/community\/f\/\" target=\"_blank\">TechSoup Community Forum<\/a> is a perfect example of that: <strong>online community members are volunteers<\/strong>. They contribute time and expertise, and they aren&#8217;t paid for it. It&#8217;s the community manager&#8217;s role to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>encourage their participation,<\/li>\n<li>create opportunities for their participation,<\/li>\n<li>acknowledge their contributions and their feedback in a meaningful way, and<\/li>\n<li>promote their accomplishments and feedback within the organization, making sure their contributions are valued within the organization, across departments and staff hierarchies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s easier said than done, particularly when in an interim, part-time role: I don&#8217;t want to create any systems that the permanent person will inherit and hate. I don&#8217;t want to start a bunch of processes that the permanent person will decide aren&#8217;t what he or she really wants, and when done away with, leave people feeling like their time has been wasted. In an interim, part-time role, sometimes the best thing you can do is identify what the permanent, full-time person will need to focus on &#8211; although that can feel like, &#8220;Hi, here&#8217;s all the problems I found, good luck!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>These kinds of experiences provide the kind of reality check I need in order to stay sharp regarding volunteer management training. How can I blog, or get up in front of a room full of people in charge of volunteer engagement at nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies, schools and other mission-based organizations, and make lots of recommendations about volunteer engagement that I haven&#8217;t tested myself &#8211; and tested relatively <em>recently<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>This experience has challenged me on a lot of levels, as all these experiences do. It&#8217;s sent me running to re-read materials about working with highly-skilled, high-responsibility volunteers and how to deal with conflict online. But the experience has also confirmed a lot of what I&#8217;ve been writing about and training on, particularly about the importance of<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>written task descriptions for ALL volunteers, and ensuring expectations are understood<\/li>\n<li>having an end date for EVERY volunteer role \/ assignment, and giving volunteers that are approaching that end date the opportunity to renew their role for a set amount of time (creating a new end date) or to withdraw from the role altogether<\/li>\n<li>having various staff people work with\/listen to volunteers, not just the volunteer manager<\/li>\n<li>involving volunteers in the organization&#8217;s decision-making in <em>some<\/em> meaningful way (even if final decisions are not in their hands)<\/li>\n<li>continuously cultivating new volunteers for leadership roles<\/li>\n<li>encouraging long-term volunteers to change roles, even temporarily<\/li>\n<li>encouraging long-term, high-responsibility volunteers to take breaks from their roles every few years<\/li>\n<li>lots and lots of communication &#8211; including telling volunteers in high-responsibility roles what YOU are doing every week!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I could go on and on as well about what I&#8217;ve learned in this experience about remote staffing, remote management, workshifting\/telecommuting, virtual teams, time management, staff time budgeting and project management! You can never know-it-all on those subjects&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>As I review my experience over the last five months, a lot is on my mind:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>what I would have done differently had I known I would be in the role for five months instead of three months, or had I been full-time instead of part-time, had I known a bit more about the overall mood and outlook of the volunteers when I started.<\/li>\n<li>what I did that worked, and what didn&#8217;t.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s important to review that for yourself, even if you are in a permanent volunteer management position &#8211; do you do that for yourself after ever major project, or at least twice a year? You should! You can&#8217;t improve without that kind of assessment.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been involved with TechSoup since the early 1990s, when it was called CompuMentor and was focused on matching IT volunteers with nonprofits &#8211; I started off as a client, and most of my experience has been as a volunteer. It&#8217;s been fascinating to see the organization from this different point-of-view, as a paid consultant. In fact, this experience has renewed my desire to continuing volunteering to moderate one of the <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.techsoup.org\/cs\/community\/f\/\" target=\"_blank\">TechSoup Community Forum<\/a> branches! Thanks, TechSoup, not just for the paycheck, but for the incredible learning experience!<\/p>\n<p>On a related note, here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.volunteermatch.org\/engagingvolunteers\/2011\/04\/14\/volunteers-lead-the-way-at-exhale\/\" target=\"_blank\">profile of Exhale&#8217;s new strategy of turning over more decision-making and responsibilities to its leadership volunteers<\/a>. Volunteers <em>are<\/em> capable of leadership roles, and this is a good example of that. It&#8217;s not always appropriate in every situation, it&#8217;s not always best for every organization, and I&#8217;m not at all commenting on my experience with TechSoup by posting this &#8211; rather, I&#8217;m trying to counter some comments I&#8217;ve seen online lately along the lines of, &#8220;But that role is too important for <em>just<\/em> a volunteer!.&#8221; I share this as a great example of an organization making a conscious choice to put volunteers in charge because the organization has realized it&#8217;s what&#8217;s best for the organization. If anything, this link is a comment for GIRL SCOUTS OF THE USA. And that&#8217;s another blog some other time&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Also see: <a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2011\/03\/09\/knowledge-transfer-its-more-than-a-buzz-phras\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Knowledge transfer \u2013 it\u2019s more than a buzz phrase<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tags<\/strong>: <span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>project, program, programme, volunteer, volunteers, volunteering, engagement, involvement, management, community, stakeholders, charities, charity, NGOs, non-governmental, organizations, nonprofit, civil, society<br \/>\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among the various topics I train on is volunteer engagement &#8211; how to create opportunities for a variety of different kinds of volunteers (short-term, long-term, teens, university students, highly-skilled professionals donating their work pro bono,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[100,334,477,599],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-tools","tag-community","tag-online","tag-tech4good","tag-volunteer-management"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-2d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3402,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/3402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}