{"id":7234,"date":"2023-11-20T03:37:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T11:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/?p=7234"},"modified":"2023-10-05T13:01:12","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T20:01:12","slug":"how-high-is-your-bar-for-volunteer-commitment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2023\/11\/how-high-is-your-bar-for-volunteer-commitment\/","title":{"rendered":"How high is your bar for volunteer commitment?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/wizard-e1696535876596.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"211\" height=\"203\" src=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/wizard-e1696535876596.jpg\" alt=\"a simplistic drawing of a wizard\" class=\"wp-image-1920\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>I read these words a lot about volunteers from the organizations they support:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>unwavering dedication and selflessness <\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>tireless commitment<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>always ready and available<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Those qualities are, absolutely, worthy of recognition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I wonder&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Does your nonprofit require volunteers to have &#8220;unwavering dedication&#8221;? Or &#8220;Selflessness?&#8221; Do you expect volunteers to be &#8220;tireless?&#8221; Is that realistic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve touched on this before, back in 2018 with the blog <a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2018\/08\/perfectvolunteers\/\">Some people think they aren\u2019t perfect enough to volunteer with you<\/a>. It&#8217;s fine to have minimum time requirements for volunteers, and to celebrate volunteers that go above and beyond, but here&#8217;s the reality: most of your volunteers aren&#8217;t going to have unwavering dedication, they aren&#8217;t going to be tireless, and they aren&#8217;t selfless and THAT&#8217;S OKAY. Those dedicated volunteers who also have strong personal boundaries and don&#8217;t want to overextend themselves can also be really terrific volunteers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Absolutely, honor your outstanding volunteers, but also have frequent messaging about <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>how easy it is to sign up to volunteer (<em>and is it?<\/em>)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the variety of ways to help as a volunteer in terms of time commitment and time of day to help (<em>and is there?<\/em>)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the benefits to volunteering for the volunteer (<em>because the reality is that very few of us are completely selfless!<\/em>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And you also need to have a culture with volunteers that, while it absolutely can encourage a high quality of service, it also welcomes suggestions, even criticism, from volunteers, and that volunteers won&#8217;t be penalized for needing a break &#8211; for not being &#8220;tireless.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also see:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2022\/12\/volexpectations\/\">Expectations for volunteering by the volunteer \u2013 too much?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2013\/04\/02\/do-you-welcome-people-with-your-language\/\">Do you welcome people with your language?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" src=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/donate_icon_small.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4685\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotebroad.com\/\">my web site<\/a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/jcravens42\">my YouTube videos<\/a>&nbsp;and would like to&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotebroad.com\/me\/payme.shtml\">support<\/a>&nbsp;the time that went into&nbsp;researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work),&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotebroad.com\/me\/payme.shtml\"><strong>here is how you can help<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I read these words a lot about volunteers from the organizations they support: Those qualities are, absolutely, worthy of recognition. But I wonder&#8230; Does your nonprofit require volunteers to have &#8220;unwavering dedication&#8221;? Or &#8220;Selflessness?&#8221; Do you expect volunteers to be &#8220;tireless?&#8221; Is that realistic? I&#8217;ve touched on this before, back in 2018 with the blog [&hellip;]<\/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":[20],"tags":[1624,398,529,530,532],"class_list":["post-7234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","tag-awards","tag-recognition","tag-volunteer","tag-volunteering","tag-volunteers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-1SG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234","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=7234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7235,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234\/revisions\/7235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}