Too often, the first position cut at a nonprofit organization or a
community program facing financial difficulties is the manager of
volunteers. Why? Because most people, even senior management at nonprofit
organization, do NOT know what the manager of volunteers does, not
really.
They think anyone can manage a
volunteer engagement program, and that such management is easy. After all,
a manager of volunteers just has a box and she reaches into it and pulls
volunteers out of it as needed, right? The manager makes a few phone
calls, tells volunteers where to be, hands out thank you mugs – the job is
easy peasy! And volunteers
are free, right? They
don't cost any money, because they are unpaid staff, right? And
volunteers are always SO easy to work with!
In some ways, managers of volunteers have themselves to blame for
these unfortunate and pervasive misunderstandings about what it takes to
involve volunteers effectively and why
an organization even involves volunteers at all. Most people in
these positions, I'm sorry to say, do a poor job of making sure that every
staff member at their organization knows the time and expertise they bring
to the position, and the essential nature of their role in recruiting and
supporting volunteers.
Managers of volunteers also often isolate themselves, seeing their work as
somehow separate from the rest of the organization. They can also have a
victim mentality, talking constantly about all the work they have to do,
but not talking about just how important volunteer engagement is to an
organization.
Contrast this with the fundraising manager at an organization, who
often does a great job of letting everyone know how much money he or she
has raised, making sure funding successes are celebrated internally,
talking endlessly about the importance of networking and cultivation
and, by default, making his or her role seem absolutely essential to the
organization. The marketing manager does the same. Even the human
resources manager is seen as an expert. Why shouldn't the manager of
volunteers make sure volunteering successes have just as high a
profile in an organization as well, cultivate an image of herself
or himself as a specialist, as an expert, and make sure she or he is
seen as also absolutely essential to the organization?
If you want your organization to understand and value its engagement of
volunteers, and understand your role as a manager of volunteers in
the success of the program, you have
to take charge of communicating this. And changing minds will
be an ongoing process - one workshop, one report, isn't going to do it.
At minimum, the board of your organization, all paid staff and all
volunteers should know:
- the basics of how volunteers are recruited (where and how do you
get the word out?)
- the basics of what
information is available on the web site for volunteering
candidates and about volunteer activities/successes
- what volunteers actually do
at the organization. Everyone
may know about the volunteers who help at events, but do they know
about the pro bono consultant helping the organization regarding human
resources management? Do they know how much of your organization's
services are delivered to clients by volunteers rather than paid
staff? Do board members know that they themselves are volunteers?
- what
impact volunteers have had at the organization (not just how
many hours contributed, but also, what qualitative impact volunteer
service has had)
- how many volunteers have been engaged in the last month, the last
quarter and the last year
- how different paid staff or volunteers have been successfully
engaging volunteers at the organization (the manager of volunteers
should NOT be the only person working with volunteers!)
- new ways to involve volunteers (do they know about virtual
volunteering? do they know how to identify a high-responsibility
role for a long-term volunteer? do they know how to identify a tech-related
assignment for a volunteer? do they know how to identify a
short-term assignment for a volunteer with a particular area of
expertise? do they know what microvolunteering
is? do they know what a
hackathon is?)
- where they can go for help in working with volunteers (and their
first stop should be the manager of volunteers, the volunteerism
specialist at the organization!)
To create this understand and knowledge, you, the manager of
volunteers, are going to have to undertake an ongoing communications
campaign. No one will do it for you - you have to be directing this,
even if you get others to help you in this campaign.
Do not assume that staff already
know what you do!
To build the value of the volunteering specialist / manager of
volunteers, and to raise the profile of volunteering engagement
internally and externally for your organization:
- Start submitting a short, pithy report of interesting data about
your volunteering engagement for every staff meeting. This
could be a link to a blog that one of your volunteers wrote, text of
an email that a client sent to say how much a volunteer's work meant
to him or her, data on how
diverse your volunteer engagement is - or isn't, data on how
many volunteers completed microvolunteering
projects in one month's time, a fun photo taken at a recent activity
by volunteers, and on and on. Always have something new
to say at every staff meeting about volunteering
engagement at your organization. Don't ask for permission to do this -
JUST DO IT.
- Submit a similar report or data for every board meeting,
just as your fundraising manager probably does. Do not wait to be
asked - just do it. That may mean asking someone else to deliver the
data, if you aren't allowed to present at the board meeting. If you
aren't at the meeting, ask after the board meeting how the data was
received. Even if there is no reaction, keep getting that info
presented at every meeting;
you are building understanding and awareness, and that takes time.
Make sure the report or data is short and interesting. Even if it is
just in the board book and isn't actually talked about at the board
meeting, it's THERE, and that's a start.
- Negotiate with the appropriate staff to get at least one page in
the next annual report to talk about volunteer impact at the
organization. This impact should NOT be about number of hours
volunteers contribute or the monetary value of such hours; this
implies that volunteers are valued because they are "free labor", and
implies you could replace paid staff with volunteers. More
about why this approach to valuing volunteers is dangerous.
- Regularly ask members of senior staff to attend workshops regarding
volunteer engagement. Workshops regarding risk management in volunteer
programs, social media use for volunteer recruitment and recognition,
and innovations in volunteer engagement, such as virtual volunteering,
should be of particular interest to your executive director, program
director, and others from your organization. Let them see and hear,
first hand, from experts, about these activities, so they start seeing
YOU more as a specialist, someone who has particular skills and
knowledge and will need specific tools to engage volunteers
effectively at your organization. Also, sometimes, staff needs to hear
from someone outside the organization that you, the manager of
volunteers, should be doing such as such (like engaging volunteers
online), or should be using social media as a part of your work, etc.
- Send a short email to all staff and volunteers every now and again
to update them about the volunteering program, or about something
innovative in volunteering. Provide data, tell them about a page on
the web site that's been updated with volunteering photos, point them
to an article about virtual volunteering, point them to an article
about the importance of diversity in volunteer engagement, point them
to an article about the dangers in not reporting suspicions of child
sexual abuse (and how it makes an ENTIRE organization libel), etc.
Even if there is no reaction, keep getting that info out there; you
are building understanding and awareness, and working to raise your
profile as a volunteer engagement specialist, and that takes
time.
- Create a brag
board about volunteering activities. Put up newspaper articles,
blog posts, emails, a compilation of tweet mentions, photos - anything
that shows what volunteers are doing, what they COULD be doing, trends
in volunteer engagement, etc. Put up stories about controversies
about volunteering as well. You can put it outside your office,
or in a common area, like the break room, or just outside the
bathrooms. And don't be surprised if other people start posting to the
board for you!
- Involve marketing staff as much as possible regarding your
program's outreach and promotion needs. For instance, ask your
marketing staff to help you develop a video of testimonies by
different clients talking about the impact volunteers make, and/or by
volunteers themselves talking about why they enjoy volunteering for
your organization. If your marketing staff says they cannot help
because of other commitments, make sure that you report at each staff
meeting about what you are doing with regard to meeting your program's
marketing needs, so that it's clear that you should get credit for
such and that you are not getting support from the marketing team. The
marketing staff should be posting messages to Facebook, Twitter and
other social media regarding volunteer engagement as well, as directed
by you: recruitment messages and recognition messages via these
channels are absolutely essential. The audience you will reach isn't
just outside your organization; this builds awareness among internal
staff as well.
- If the marketing staff says it cannot use the organization's
Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels for
volunteering-related messages, create your own Faceboook page, your
own Twitter account, your own GooglePlus account, your own Instagram
account, your own Flicker account and any other accounts needed, to be
devoted to sharing information about your volunteering engagement:
about recruitment needs, about success stories, photos of volunteers
in action, profiles of volunteers, etc. Recruiting volunteers to help
you with this is a great way to both involve more volunteers in your
organization's work, walk your own talk about the importance of
involving volunteers in the work of the organization, and sharpen your
own skills for working with volunteers with particular areas of
expertise.
- Make
the volunteering section of your organization's web site
content-rich, with lots of information about the impact
volunteers have with your organization, photos of volunteers in
action, testimonies about why volunteers are important to your
organization, a blog by you talking about what volunteers are up to,
etc. If your web master or marketing staff says there is no room for
such material on the web site, or they don't have time, work with
volunteers to create your own web site for these materials. The web
site should look exactly like your organization's web site, with all
the same layouts and links. When you present the finished web site to
the organization, don't be surprised to find that the marketing
manager or web master suddenly does, indeed, have plenty of room on
the web site for your finished pages.
- If any
staff at the organization blogs, ask them to blog about the role
of volunteers at your organization, and provide assistance on such
blog topics to make sure they are accurate.
- Celebrate staff members who are doing a good job of creating
volunteering opportunities or working with volunteers, by calling them
out at a staff meeting, or sending around an email to all staff
highlighting the involvement by the staff superstars of volunteers.
- Be persistent in talking to other staff members about how they
involve volunteers, what help they need from volunteers, what help
they need in involving and supporting volunteers, etc. This takes lots
of one-on-one meetings: drop by different people's offices regularly,
set up formal meetings, etc. You need to do this with confidence - if
you are worried, then REHEARSE what you are going to say. Remember:
you are the volunteerism specialist at your organization. Act like
it!
- Do all of the above more than
once! Don't rely on a one-time presentation or report to get your
message across regarding volunteering impact.
- Do presentations for individual departments, or meet one-on-one
with key staff, to talk about how to identify volunteering
assignments, how to support volunteers, what assistance you provide,
and where they can get help for working with volunteers.
- Stay on top of news relating to volunteer engagement, and be ready
to respond to such. If a city official is calling for nonprofits to
involve more court-ordered community service people, what might that
mean for your organization? What would you need in terms of financing
and other resources to involve more of such volunteers? If the major
is calling on nonprofits to involve more youth as volunteers, or more
families as volunteers, what might that mean for your organization?
What would you need in terms of financing and other resources to
involve more of such volunteers? If your organization does not want
you responding to such activities as a representative of the
organization, you can still write to appropriate officials and express
your opinion, making it clear that you are not representing the
organization but you are speaking as a manager of volunteers. Your
local association of managers of volunteers, sometimes called DOVIAs,
should be responding to such actions by city officials, as well as to
proposed legislation at the local, state and national level. That
association - or you - should also be responding to media reports
related to volunteering, especially when those reports get something
wrong about volunteering - like that people volunteer only because
they have good hearts, or that the primary reason to involve
volunteers is to save money.
(The National Forest System Trails Stewardship Act, currently working
its way through the USA Congress, would mandate government agencies to
increase volunteer involvement in trail maintenance on public lands,
such as national forests, but it does not provide funding for
necessary volunteer management: for screening volunteers, training
them, supervising them, etc. Please
sign my petition telling Congress that more volunteers means we need
MORE FUNDING!)
- When you return from attending a workshop or conference related to
volunteerism, send a short update to your supervisor and, perhaps, to
all of your volunteers, telling them about what you learned, where
they can find more info, etc.
Volunteers
can help with many of these activities. They can help you manage
and monitor social media accounts, help you prepare web site materials,
help you crunch data and create graphics using such, take photos at
events, monitor the news and legislation and more. If you involve
volunteers in this work, you are going to not only get your organization
to understand and value its engagement of volunteers, and to understand
your role in the success of the program, you are also going to greatly
sharpen your skills at volunteer engagement - at talent management. You
are going to increase your expertise in volunteer engagement. And that's
what you have to do to be seen as an expert within your organization, and
to see volunteer engagement valued appropriately at the local, regional
and national level. No one is going to do this for you! You
have to do it yourself!
How strongly do I feel about this? Honestly, if you aren't going to do the
above, then stop complaining that you, as manager of volunteers, aren't
valued at the organization. If you aren't going to push for a change in
how you are viewed, then you shouldn't complain. It won't be easy and you
will meet resistance. But it's a fight worth undertaking.
And speaking of fighting, how about you join the Volunteer
Manager Fight Club?
Also see:
- Mission statements for your volunteer
engagement
(Saying WHY your organization or department involves volunteers)
This is at the heart of everything I say and recommend regarding
volunteer engagement. This idea is what I would like to be identified
with even more than virtual volunteering: that, in addition to
carefully crafting the way you talk about the value
of volunteers, your organization creates 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.
- The Information About &
For Volunteers You Should Have 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 - not by law, of course, but from a point of view
of ethics and credibility. To not have this basic information about
volunteer engagement on your web site 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. This resource is a reflection of my firm belief in
having a mission
statement for volunteer engagement.
- Promoting your volunteering program
internally
Too often, the first position cut at an organization facing financial
difficulties is the volunteer coordinator. Most people in these
positions, I'm sorry to say, do a poor job of making sure that every
staff member at their organization knows the time and expertise they
bring to the position, and the essential nature of their role in
recruiting and supporting volunteers. The volunteer coordinator should
make sure he or she is seen as also absolutely essential to the
organization. This page talks about how a volunteer coordinator can
make sure the board, all paid staff and all volunteers at an
organization know the essential value of not only volunteers, but also
the volunteer coordinator.
- Resources
Regarding USA Labor Laws and Volunteering
How should you determine who is a volunteer and who should be paid for
the hours they work at your organization? Your method should NOT be
Who can we pay and who can't we pay? In the USA, there are laws and
rulings from the Department of Justice that guide what tasks may and
may not be done by volunteers (as opposed to paying someone to do the
work), whether paid staff can be asked to volunteer (work unpaid) at
the nonprofit where they work and more. This is a blog, rather than a
resource page on my web site, and is therefore more about linking to
other sources and quoting other sources than me actually writing the
guidance. Although this is US-centric, some of the criteria is
applicable in any country in trying to determine what is ethnically
appropriate regarding volunteer tasks, including internships.
- Screening Volunteers for Attitude
Screening is vital to finding the right people for some, maybe all,
volunteer roles, particularly those where the volunteer will work with
clients and the general public, and to screen out people who may be
better in shorter-term assignments or assignments where they would not
work with clients or the general public, or who would not be
appropriate in any role at the organization. We put all sorts of
emphasis on criminal background checks and reference checks for
volunteers, but the reality is that a mismatched volunteer, in terms
of attitude, can be a program-killer. Screening volunteers for
attitude will reduce volunteer turnover and ensure everyone has a more
satisfying experience as a volunteer or working with volunteers.
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