Having managed over 250 student volunteers over the last five years, I can definitely say that volunteers are harder to manage than paid employees. Yet when a group of motivated volunteers work together well, the impact on them and on the organization’s goals is unparalleled in the world of 9 to 5.
Having witnessed exceptional volunteer teams, as well as those ending in utter catastrophe, there are a few commons aspects of productive, motivated volunteers.
Understanding Their Priorities: To engage volunteers effectively, you need to realize that most don’t work on your initiative 8 hours a day. For most volunteers, you are 5th or 6th on their priority list, with the top 4 including themselves, their family, their friends, school (or work), and, for students, maybe a hobby or a part-time job. This means you need to recognize where your organization exists in their priorities. By doing this exercise, you can determine how much time and energy they are willing to invest so you can best gauge their level of involvement. Improperly done, volunteers will either be overwhelmed, often resulting in them leaving without addressing the issue with you, or become disengaged with your organization since you didn’t properly identify their desire for more what?.
Providing Meaningful Experiences: With an idea about their desired level of commitment, in order to keep them stimulated, you need to provide them with meaningful experiences. Unless they are head-over-heels for your cause and just want to help out where they can, most volunteers won’t be enthusiastic about folding informational brochures for 10 hours a week. In addition to helping a good cause, many (especially students) are looking for opportunities to grow and develop personally. This is by far the hardest aspect of volunteer management – providing growth experiences for their few dedicated hours a week, which may require you to delegate a task? of a rather critical aspect of your organization. This is a highly accentuated instance of the traditional management scenario of delegation vs ‘doing-it-yourself’. Do you get a volunteer to help define your new marketing strategy? But if they botch it, you’ll have to significantly redo it - how will your volunteer feel about their usefulness when you do this? But if you tried to avoid these growth experiences, how do you ensure volunteers feel valued?
Goal Congruency is essential: Up until this point, you have focused on your volunteers, a necessity to running a non-profit organization, but your organization will not achieve its goals without aligning them with your now properly identified and stimulated volunteers. The key to this is proper planning. Figure out what you need done, who you have to do it, what they wish to get out of volunteering, and what they can offer. With those questions answered you can then devise roles and responsibilities that meet their goals and your goals. Sounds easy? Think again. Properly delegating tasks to part-time volunteers is a science. As well, being 5th on their priority totem pole gives volunteers at least 4 potential ‘outs’. Being low on the list means their loyalty to your organization is much lower than to the higher rungs. If any of the higher priorities need more of their time (school is getting busy, part-time boss wants me to work weekends now, etc), you are first on the chopping block. To effectively manage a team of volunteers, the planning process needs to be constantly reviewed to ensure your goals are being met, something which in itself can take up an enormous amount of your time.
Develop volunteer loyalty – communicate and empower: As a manager of volunteers, you will most likely be more committed than your volunteers to the cause and the organization. To help develop a greater sense of loyalty in your volunteers, show them why you are so committed and make them feel that they are an integral part of the organization. As volunteers start to drive results, many will begin to internalize the organization’s goals and won’t be helping to reach ‘your’ goals, but they will be helping to reach ‘their’ goals.
If this has scared you from working with volunteers, that was definitely not the intention. Working with volunteers has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. When these four things listed above are present with your volunteers, the results are simply euphoric.
Having witnessed exceptional volunteer teams, as well as those ending in utter catastrophe, there are a few commons aspects of productive, motivated volunteers.
Understanding Their Priorities: To engage volunteers effectively, you need to realize that most don’t work on your initiative 8 hours a day. For most volunteers, you are 5th or 6th on their priority list, with the top 4 including themselves, their family, their friends, school (or work), and, for students, maybe a hobby or a part-time job. This means you need to recognize where your organization exists in their priorities. By doing this exercise, you can determine how much time and energy they are willing to invest so you can best gauge their level of involvement. Improperly done, volunteers will either be overwhelmed, often resulting in them leaving without addressing the issue with you, or become disengaged with your organization since you didn’t properly identify their desire for more what?.
Providing Meaningful Experiences: With an idea about their desired level of commitment, in order to keep them stimulated, you need to provide them with meaningful experiences. Unless they are head-over-heels for your cause and just want to help out where they can, most volunteers won’t be enthusiastic about folding informational brochures for 10 hours a week. In addition to helping a good cause, many (especially students) are looking for opportunities to grow and develop personally. This is by far the hardest aspect of volunteer management – providing growth experiences for their few dedicated hours a week, which may require you to delegate a task? of a rather critical aspect of your organization. This is a highly accentuated instance of the traditional management scenario of delegation vs ‘doing-it-yourself’. Do you get a volunteer to help define your new marketing strategy? But if they botch it, you’ll have to significantly redo it - how will your volunteer feel about their usefulness when you do this? But if you tried to avoid these growth experiences, how do you ensure volunteers feel valued?
Goal Congruency is essential: Up until this point, you have focused on your volunteers, a necessity to running a non-profit organization, but your organization will not achieve its goals without aligning them with your now properly identified and stimulated volunteers. The key to this is proper planning. Figure out what you need done, who you have to do it, what they wish to get out of volunteering, and what they can offer. With those questions answered you can then devise roles and responsibilities that meet their goals and your goals. Sounds easy? Think again. Properly delegating tasks to part-time volunteers is a science. As well, being 5th on their priority totem pole gives volunteers at least 4 potential ‘outs’. Being low on the list means their loyalty to your organization is much lower than to the higher rungs. If any of the higher priorities need more of their time (school is getting busy, part-time boss wants me to work weekends now, etc), you are first on the chopping block. To effectively manage a team of volunteers, the planning process needs to be constantly reviewed to ensure your goals are being met, something which in itself can take up an enormous amount of your time.
Develop volunteer loyalty – communicate and empower: As a manager of volunteers, you will most likely be more committed than your volunteers to the cause and the organization. To help develop a greater sense of loyalty in your volunteers, show them why you are so committed and make them feel that they are an integral part of the organization. As volunteers start to drive results, many will begin to internalize the organization’s goals and won’t be helping to reach ‘your’ goals, but they will be helping to reach ‘their’ goals.
If this has scared you from working with volunteers, that was definitely not the intention. Working with volunteers has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. When these four things listed above are present with your volunteers, the results are simply euphoric.
Contributed by: Greg Overholt
Greg Overholt is the founder and executive director of the national student-led social venture SOS: Students Offering Support and a recent business and computer science graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University. Students Offering Support supports local SOS chapters residing in universities across Canada who offer SOS’s interactive ‘Exam-AID’ group review session to their peers. Over the last six years, SOS volunteers have tutored more than 10,000 university students and raised over $440,000 for sustainable educational projects in developing nations that are built by SOS volunteers on annual outreach trips. By using inventive entrepreneurial business practices, the SOS model provides university students a unique means to acquire valuable extra-curricular and entrepreneurship experience while helping children around the world gain break the cycle of poverty through access to a quality education.
No comments:
Post a Comment