I read the entire article, I am a volunteer co-ordinator for an RSVP Program here in Wichita, Kansas with the
Sedgwick County. I have done this for the last fourteen years.
I have gathered som very important information from the above article. Thank you for this information,
I am going to use some of it.
A lot of the findings and thinking in the article resonates with what I have found to be true in working with nonprofits and volunteers. But as I was finishing the article, I was surprised to see the Volunteer Management Cycle on page 36 outlined in the diagram ‘Creating a Strategic Volunteer Plan’. Besides taking a different approach to the process of developing an effective strategy for managing volunteers, I am a bit confused about the origination of this diagram. As far as I know, it has been known as the Volunteer Management Cycle and has been around for a number of years - http://volunteer.ca/en/resources/management/theory.
It is laid out slightly differently, but is too close in style and content to be legitimately claimed to have been developed last year by 11 major nonprofits and the authors of the article (page 36). Not a big deal in my mind, as I believe the cycle facilitates some of the very ineffectiveness that the article rightly uncovers. Not that it isn’t good, it just isn’t good enough.
But mostly I am wondering how the diagram was developed, and why there is no reference to the existing Volunteer Management Cycle.
Thanks, hope this doesn’t come across as contentious (remember, I cited the article in my blog and told my readers they should read it themselves…).
Great article summarizing the better practices that have emerged across the sector and in the literature. Readers will be interested in “Corporate Philanthropy at the Crossroads,” (1996) especially the chapters on volunteerism, and also “Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses” (Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, 2005). http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/alice-korngold/leading-companies-good-0
All of us at Volunteer Vancouver applaud this article – it is completely in line with our key messages!
At Volunteer Vancouver, our passion is people—working with organizations to strategically engage specifically-skilled people at all levels. After all, people are *the* competitive advantage of the not-for-profit sector.
The good news: the word is getting out. We are starting to hear more and more examples (like your story of Jim & The March of Dimes) of how organizations are successfully engaging the “next generation” of volunteers (often referred to as “knowledge philanthropists”). The challenge: not enough organizational leaders have adopted this “people-first” philosophy…so, we’ve decided to publish a book: “101 Ways to Move Your Organization Forward”. Think of it as “Strategic Volunteer Engagement for Dummies” meets “Chicken Soup for the Soul”. The idea is that not-for-profit leaders will be inspired by the many ideas, possible volunteer roles and success stories.
If you have a success story to contribute—we’d love to hear it. Email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Great post. I blogged a response to it at the link below in which I propose that we can go further than this article suggests by re-envisioning the business model of volunteerism.
Here’s a quote:
“I’m convinced that volunteerism of the 2010s will look nothing like we’ve ever seen and that it will go by a different name. And you won’t think of it as “donating your time.” You’ll think of it as something fun, social, and good for you. You may even think of it as entertainment for a cause. “
Mr. Jarvis: Thank you so much for your positive feedback and for referencing the valuable contributions to the volunteer sector made by our northern neighbor Canada. The eight-step framework presented in the article builds upon the collective wisdom of practitioners like you and decades’ worth of volunteer management theory, practice, and research from a variety of sources. While similar to the Volunteer Management Cycle to which you refer, the framework refines and further delineates the steps an organization needs to take in order to reap the greatest return on its investment in a volunteer strategy. The framework was developed to emphasize two of the most critical and yet often neglected steps in the volunteer management process: strategic planning to maximize volunteer impact and measuring the outcomes of volunteers. The Volunteer Management Cycle you refer to speaks more to operational planning than strategic planning at the leadership level of an organization. Step 8 is equally important: organizations need to evaluate their volunteer management systems for continued improvement but also measure the social and economic impact of their volunteers. Unless an organization can quantify the value of volunteers, it becomes difficult to justify investments in volunteer infrastructure.
Superb article- quantifying the loss to nonprofit groups is a real eye-opener and your concrete suggestions are extremely valuable. I recently leaped into the nonprofit world as an older volunteer after a career as a corporate attorney. While my circumstances were somewhat unique, I did fashion a volunteer position that is working very well for me and Per Scholas. I just wrote about fashioning my volunteer role in a Chronicle of Philanthropy Regeneration article and my story may be of interest to your readers or other potential volunteers.
As I read the article, I was excited to see how it fits nicely into a community based learning model or service learning model. I was a bit confused regarding the implied verbage of volunteers replacing staff. Is this not a violation of labor laws? Volunteer directors and coordinators have been “warned” against making statements regarding replacing a paid person with a volunteer. In fact, I tell volunteers they are here to supplement staff not replace. There have been lawsuits (one in Florida) where a hospital volunteer sued the organization where they volunteered stated they did the exact job of a paid employee and therefore were entitled to the same benefits and wages. I believe the volunteer won this suit. If you have information regarding the labor laws changing in relation to volunteers, please forward this to me as I would be quite interested.
Thank you for promoting utilization of volunteers. We are blessed with a retention rate of 85% and this includes college student volunteers returning semester after semester (leaving once they graduate) and I believe the sites where these volunteers are placed do a great job of utilizing the skill set of the the volunteers, thanking them, and making them feel they are a vital part of our mission.
Completely Agree. I represent The Electronic Recycling Association and we are actually looking for volunteers right now :-
Volunteers wanted . Fixing computers for charities. The Era is looking for
volunteers to help fix computers and electronic for donation to charity. ERA
collects computers, laptops, monitors, lcds, servers and electronics for
donation and recycling. Volunteers can earn a free computer for spending
time at ERA and helping out. Volunteers can earn a free laptop for spending
time at ERA and helping.
Thank you for this article. As a professional working with volunteers for many years, I am happy to see this article. Volunteering has become an important aspect in community-based organizations as well as members of our community. We are beginning to see the definition of ourselves not in terms of what job we have, but what are values are and how we live our lives according to those values. With that in mind, think about what you can do for your volunteers and it will come back to you ten-fold in what your volunteers can do for you.
Thank-you for a stimulating article. It contains much that I teach others and your research is helpful. I was curious that in your description of investing in the leadership of volunteers that you neglected to mention that many organizations have trained, experienced and effective coordinators of volunteers who help capitalize on people just like your March of Dimes volunteer. In fact, CEOs rarely touch the majority of volunteer talent.
While your 8 point program suggests good management strategies, I was surprised that you didn’t point out that Baby Boomers who aren’t stimulated and given opportunities to use their initiative are very likely the people who don’t come back, as well as the fact that the young volunteers who are so eager to help are interested in one-time activities, in a group, and deliberately want to help as many agencies as they can. They have no intention of coming back. The planning for them requires what you suggest as well as an understanding of the specific population.
Congratulations on a stimulating read.
BYMary Quirk, Minnesota Association for Volunteer Ad
There are many exciting initiatives around the country to build capacity to engage volunteers. In Minnesota, the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA) has trained over 1,000 leaders of volunteers across the state on best practices of leadership of volunteers to address the issues raised in the research mentioned in this article We are doing advocacy with decision makers on the importance of investing in volunteers, the importance of this so well highlighted in the article. We are starting an initiative on building capacity to engage boomers as volunteers, which will bring the information to organizations on changes to better engage the new wave of volunteers. We are also doing original research on volunteerism in immigrant and refugee communities to address how mainstream and immigrant/refugee organizations can build capacity to engage volunteers from immigrant/refugee communities.
Thank you for such a rich article. I think it’s important to recognize the ‘hassle factor’ in volunteer drop-out rates. We’ve found that often people don’t return to volunteering because of little coordination breakdowns—taking time off work to volunteer only to be turned away because too many people showed up, reply-all email messages, phone calls and cumbersome sign up sheets—just to get on the schedule. At VolunteerSpot.com, we’ve addresses a focused piece of the volunteer engagement equation by automating volunteer scheduling, sign ups and reminders in a free online tool so easy that ANYONE can coordiante volunteers. Simpler, streamlined communication makes it easier for volunteers to say YES and keep coming back. http://www.volunteerspot.com
It’s always nice when someone outside the volunteer management sector learns about the issues and realities that those of us in the sector regularly discuss. This article brings up issues that volunteer managers across the USA (and, indeed, the world) are all discussing frequently. Much more than “a few” nonprofits have grasped the concepts noted in this article, and much more than a few are taking what this article calls “a talent management approach.” We volunteer managers are all only too painfully aware of the lack of infrastructure at many organizations to involve volunteers effectively. You don’t need to convince nonprofit organizations that they need to involve volunteers more effectively as much as you need to convince governments, corporations, foundations and other donors that the infrastructure to involve volunteers costs money. What this article doesn’t talk about—at least that I can find—is the reluctance of donors to pay for that infrastructure. Volunteers are *never* free. It takes money and resources to involve them effectively. But ask a donor to fund a volunteer manager, or a database program that will track volunteers, or training for staff to more effectively involve volunteers, and the donor will sniff, “I don’t fund administrative costs.”
Also, I cringe at the old-school comment “Volunteers, for example, can help nonprofits save money” and “Naming individual volunteers with the number of hours they have contributed (and perhaps the dollar value) is one way to demonstrate a culture that values volunteers.” I discourage organizations from using dollar value for volunteer hours to show volunteer value—if it’s included, it should come only after a long list of the many other reasons to involve volunteers. An organization that emphasizes money saved is an organization that has just said, “We’d love to replace paid staff with volunteers, so we don’t have to pay people.” That not only gets the hackles up of union folks—it gets the hackles up of trained professionals who have chosen to work in the nonprofit sector and invested a huge amount in their own education and training to do so. It also can (and DOES) cause donors to say, “Please reduce your overhead by reducing your paid staff by such-and-such percent and replace them with volunteers.” NOT a good way to create good staff and volunteer relations.
In addition, this emphasis on monetary value of volunteers says, “Volunteers are only free labor and potential donors.” If you gave me all the money in the world to hire all of the staff I needed, I would *still* create high-responsibility roles for volunteers, to give the community a way to be involved in the organization and a direct view of the work we do, to show donors that the community believes in the work we do, to get alternative viewpoints (sometimes volunteers will criticize in ways staff may be reluctant to do), and oh-so-many other non-monetary reasons.
So—a good article, but it sounds like you think volunteer managers aren’t already aware of the points you have raised. We are. Acutely.
I am glad to see the Corporation paying attention to sector-wide infrastructure issues, but I have some serious concerns about this article. There are gross overgeneralizations and the conclusions you draw are not always supported by the data you use.
First, although the Corporation’s well-circulated report on turnover legitimately calls attention to the need to invest more organizational resources in retention, I would ask WHY one in three individuals does not return to the same assignment in any year before I conclude that “most CEOs do a poor job of managing them.” That statement is simply not supported by the 2003 Urban Institute study, which finds that most nonprofits invest at least some effort in volunteer management and that large scale investment in volunteer retention practices is more likely to be associated with the presence of a volunteer coordinator than it is with some characteristic of the CEO. And since the Urban Institute study failed to screen out those nonprofits that—for reasons of mission, service demands or other legitimate reasons—simply didn’t require volunteers, it is impossible to draw generalizable conclusions about which nonprofits or CEOs really need to improve their volunteer management skills. In other words, the Corporation’s conclusions and recommendations only make sense if they are applied selectively to those nonprofits that actually report they depend on volunteers to the extent that a volunteer management program makes sense.
Moreover, I would not conclude from the turnover data that those volunteers who have left an assignment have stopped volunteering. They could have moved on to another organization, and they could represent short-term volunteers who have completed their assignment. This criticism has been made before about the Corporation’s turnover report, so you should be addressing it.
Next, this article overgeneralizes the problem. You refer liberally to “most nonprofits”, or simply to “nonproifts”. Are you really applying the same problems and the same expectations to two million diverse organizations. Should all nonprofits be expected to follow your prescriptions? To what nonprofits are we referring: charities? churches? Hospitals? Mental institutions?
Finally, I share Jayne’s concern about using volunteer dollar value (or any wage replacement method) to value volunteer impact. The principal limitation is that it’s not a cost-benefit analysis. As you mention yourself, there are better ways, where the emphasis is on program improvements, secondary benefits such as increased donations, and other more qualitative and important impacts.
Although I appreciate immensely the research efforts of the Corporation, and although I agree with many of your suggestions, I expect the Corporation to be more nuanced in its arguments and more careful in its use of the data it generates.
Perphaps I can share trends or shifts within the 3rd sector….I agree with collecting data on volunteers. Better tools are needed (such as Volunteer Spot- which is a free online service for scheduling volunteers in a self-directed respectful manner). There are new tools and services available that make tracking hours and make tracking the dollars easier to monitor as well. We (volunteers and contractors and staff) wrote our own code to accomplish exactly this… because we didn’t like what was available on the market.
From my point of view, hours & a dollar value make sense. There are several perks to tracking this data. Blue Avocado has one of the best articles I have seen on this topic. http://www.blueavocado.org/content/tracking-volunteer-time-boost-your-bottom-line-complete-accounting- Donors want and deserve to understand why overheads are as high as they are in the 3rd sector. Often the lack of transparency with costs associated with managing volunteers is in fact part of the puzzle. Going deeper, the board of directors or executive staff may want to clearly understand the contributions volunteers make (beyond anecdotal evidence). It is hard to ignore numbers and sometimes helps business minded folks listen or relate better.
For example, I am one of two full time staff. We have 3 part-time staff so our total is 2.80 FTE (full time equivalent personnel). We rent a 2,400 square foot office space. Why? Not for our staff…for sure. The reason is “we manage our mission through the support of our wonderful volunteers”. Today is a typical day…we had our “volunteer” volunteer coordinator in , her new assistant, a grantee support person, a graphic designer, and a project manager for our IT issues in, plus 5 others who worked from home from 3 different states (web developer, editor, and copywriters). Each year our volunteer program has grown. Each year we report in our annual report the number of volunteers, how many hours they contribute and yes the total $ volunteer contribution. The messaging is like any other PR campaign…it needs to be thoughtful and carefully written.
My belief is as our 3rd sector emerges, grows and changes best practices will emerge. For example, now many foundations and companies are accepting volunteer contributions as part of matching funds raised. To say we should not quantify the gift of time is to say our development staff shouldn’t use the contributions for our fundraising for matching for corporate gifts or matching grants.
Our volunteers login daily and love the feedback of their contributions. We have an annual volunteer recognition event, like many other non profits. By tracking volunteer hours our volunteer will be eligible for the Presidential citation with serve.gov . Tracking hours is important. But quantifying is also important. As our volunteer program grows we need to educate our board, donors and volunteers that more funding will be needed. The more volunteers we have the more financial support/help from the agency we will need. For example, as volunteer hours grow and volunteers grow so does the needs for more bus passes, parking, treats(we provide pop, fruit, chocolates often), L & I insurance (we pay .10 per hours for all in state volunteers), etc.. I call this the care and feeding of the volunteers. Four 1/2 years ago we had 15 volunteers…now we have 70=90. It costs to run a quality program however what we receive must go beyond anecdotal warm fuzzy stories. Gee…the irony is if you knew me you would think I am a numbers person. I am totally NOT…I am our chief storyteller…but to ignore dollars, is to ignore the impact and relevance to our budget and financials.
If anyone wants to discuss this more, receive our annual report or discuss “best practices” please connect. I am reachable at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or http://www.haasfoundation.org Bonnie Hilory, Executive Director, Haas Foundation
We are starting an initiative on building capacity to engage boomers as volunteers, which will bring the information to organizations on changes to better engage the new wave of volunteers. We are also doing original research on volunteerism in immigrant and refugee communities to address how mainstream and immigrant/refugee organizations can build capacity to engage volunteers from immigrant/refugee communities.
I was just about to write an article like this; googled a few key words and voila! There the article was! Similar ideas have been milling around in my head the past two days!! I was going to title my article THE NEW AGE OF HIGH-VALUE VOLUNTEERS, referring specifically to retiring baby boomers who have the potential to enter the volunteer work force in droves over the next few decades—if their energy and skills are properly harnessed and they find the work rewarding and results-oriented. This work force has the added-value of being DONOR-VOLUNTEERS.
The ideas dawned on me when I realized most of the foreign volunteers at a dog rescue shelter and sterilization clinic where I live in Mexico are retirees (or those in their 50s/60s not really retired//perhaps we can call them an ‘unencumbered lifestyle set’?) - who not only volunteer their time but also funds and much of the material and logistical items needed to carry out the work.
Makes me so happy to know this trend is backed by facts and figures. We can improve our world, one good turn at a time!
Our nonprofit is just starting to recruit volunteers. We agree with everything about managing them in this article. But, where is the best place to find the people we need? There are so many sites that provide volunteer matching or listing in some way. We cannot find any listings or reviews of them. How do we know where to focus our efforts? This article is relatively mute on getting started with using a volunteer workforce.
Stimulating article.Having previously worked as a volunteer co-ordinator in the UK many of the issues raised relate to the UK experience too.I am often surprised that volunteer co-ordinators receive limited training in supporting and managing volunteers.You need to be much more skilled in managing volunteers than you do with employees who are paid to be present. The suggestion to tap into religious organisations as a means of broadening the diversity of volunteers is a good recruitment strategy. I do have some reservations with respect to blurring the boundaries between volunteer and paid staff. We should always be mindful that organisations are not using volunteers as a cheap source of labour and in so doing not only exploiting volunteers but also denying someone a paid job.Finally on a personal note I was alwaysin awe of my great aunt who volunteered for the British Red Cross for most of her adult life. At age of 91 she still continued to help with serving lunches to the `old people’ most of whom were younger than her. The older generation are indeed an untapped and often under valued resource.
COMMENTS
BY Ashok Aurora
ON December 1, 2008 01:56 PM
I read the entire article, I am a volunteer co-ordinator for an RSVP Program here in Wichita, Kansas with the
Sedgwick County. I have done this for the last fourteen years.
I have gathered som very important information from the above article. Thank you for this information,
I am going to use some of it.
BY Chris Jarvis
ON December 2, 2008 02:44 PM
Great article. I referred to it in a recent blog post http://realizedworth.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-volunteers-dont-come-back.html.
A lot of the findings and thinking in the article resonates with what I have found to be true in working with nonprofits and volunteers. But as I was finishing the article, I was surprised to see the Volunteer Management Cycle on page 36 outlined in the diagram ‘Creating a Strategic Volunteer Plan’. Besides taking a different approach to the process of developing an effective strategy for managing volunteers, I am a bit confused about the origination of this diagram. As far as I know, it has been known as the Volunteer Management Cycle and has been around for a number of years - http://volunteer.ca/en/resources/management/theory.
It is laid out slightly differently, but is too close in style and content to be legitimately claimed to have been developed last year by 11 major nonprofits and the authors of the article (page 36). Not a big deal in my mind, as I believe the cycle facilitates some of the very ineffectiveness that the article rightly uncovers. Not that it isn’t good, it just isn’t good enough.
But mostly I am wondering how the diagram was developed, and why there is no reference to the existing Volunteer Management Cycle.
Thanks, hope this doesn’t come across as contentious (remember, I cited the article in my blog and told my readers they should read it themselves…).
Chris
BY Alice Korngold
ON December 4, 2008 09:41 PM
Great article summarizing the better practices that have emerged across the sector and in the literature. Readers will be interested in “Corporate Philanthropy at the Crossroads,” (1996) especially the chapters on volunteerism, and also “Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses” (Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, 2005). http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/alice-korngold/leading-companies-good-0
BY Shirley Weir
ON December 5, 2008 04:39 PM
All of us at Volunteer Vancouver applaud this article – it is completely in line with our key messages!
At Volunteer Vancouver, our passion is people—working with organizations to strategically engage specifically-skilled people at all levels. After all, people are *the* competitive advantage of the not-for-profit sector.
The good news: the word is getting out. We are starting to hear more and more examples (like your story of Jim & The March of Dimes) of how organizations are successfully engaging the “next generation” of volunteers (often referred to as “knowledge philanthropists”). The challenge: not enough organizational leaders have adopted this “people-first” philosophy…so, we’ve decided to publish a book: “101 Ways to Move Your Organization Forward”. Think of it as “Strategic Volunteer Engagement for Dummies” meets “Chicken Soup for the Soul”. The idea is that not-for-profit leaders will be inspired by the many ideas, possible volunteer roles and success stories.
If you have a success story to contribute—we’d love to hear it. Email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
BY Ben Rigby
ON December 5, 2008 11:23 PM
Great post. I blogged a response to it at the link below in which I propose that we can go further than this article suggests by re-envisioning the business model of volunteerism.
http://www.theextraordinaries.org/2008/12/the-new-volunteer-workforce-reading-notes.html
Here’s a quote:
“I’m convinced that volunteerism of the 2010s will look nothing like we’ve ever seen and that it will go by a different name. And you won’t think of it as “donating your time.” You’ll think of it as something fun, social, and good for you. You may even think of it as entertainment for a cause. “
BY Shannon Maynard
ON December 9, 2008 05:26 PM
Mr. Jarvis: Thank you so much for your positive feedback and for referencing the valuable contributions to the volunteer sector made by our northern neighbor Canada. The eight-step framework presented in the article builds upon the collective wisdom of practitioners like you and decades’ worth of volunteer management theory, practice, and research from a variety of sources. While similar to the Volunteer Management Cycle to which you refer, the framework refines and further delineates the steps an organization needs to take in order to reap the greatest return on its investment in a volunteer strategy. The framework was developed to emphasize two of the most critical and yet often neglected steps in the volunteer management process: strategic planning to maximize volunteer impact and measuring the outcomes of volunteers. The Volunteer Management Cycle you refer to speaks more to operational planning than strategic planning at the leadership level of an organization. Step 8 is equally important: organizations need to evaluate their volunteer management systems for continued improvement but also measure the social and economic impact of their volunteers. Unless an organization can quantify the value of volunteers, it becomes difficult to justify investments in volunteer infrastructure.
BY Gary Rindner
ON December 11, 2008 06:17 AM
Superb article- quantifying the loss to nonprofit groups is a real eye-opener and your concrete suggestions are extremely valuable. I recently leaped into the nonprofit world as an older volunteer after a career as a corporate attorney. While my circumstances were somewhat unique, I did fashion a volunteer position that is working very well for me and Per Scholas. I just wrote about fashioning my volunteer role in a Chronicle of Philanthropy Regeneration article and my story may be of interest to your readers or other potential volunteers.
The article is posted at http://philanthropy.com/regeneration/
BY michelle peters
ON December 12, 2008 07:28 AM
As I read the article, I was excited to see how it fits nicely into a community based learning model or service learning model. I was a bit confused regarding the implied verbage of volunteers replacing staff. Is this not a violation of labor laws? Volunteer directors and coordinators have been “warned” against making statements regarding replacing a paid person with a volunteer. In fact, I tell volunteers they are here to supplement staff not replace. There have been lawsuits (one in Florida) where a hospital volunteer sued the organization where they volunteered stated they did the exact job of a paid employee and therefore were entitled to the same benefits and wages. I believe the volunteer won this suit. If you have information regarding the labor laws changing in relation to volunteers, please forward this to me as I would be quite interested.
Thank you for promoting utilization of volunteers. We are blessed with a retention rate of 85% and this includes college student volunteers returning semester after semester (leaving once they graduate) and I believe the sites where these volunteers are placed do a great job of utilizing the skill set of the the volunteers, thanking them, and making them feel they are a vital part of our mission.
BY Shawna Gnutel
ON December 23, 2008 09:44 AM
Excellent article…will pass along too colleagues. We all know it’s a new age of volunteerism but some are still stuck in the past…time to wake up.
BY Vancouver Computer Recycling
ON January 9, 2009 02:33 AM
Completely Agree. I represent The Electronic Recycling Association and we are actually looking for volunteers right now :-
Volunteers wanted . Fixing computers for charities. The Era is looking for
volunteers to help fix computers and electronic for donation to charity. ERA
collects computers, laptops, monitors, lcds, servers and electronics for
donation and recycling. Volunteers can earn a free computer for spending
time at ERA and helping out. Volunteers can earn a free laptop for spending
time at ERA and helping.
BY Mia
ON January 9, 2009 02:52 PM
Thank you for this article. As a professional working with volunteers for many years, I am happy to see this article. Volunteering has become an important aspect in community-based organizations as well as members of our community. We are beginning to see the definition of ourselves not in terms of what job we have, but what are values are and how we live our lives according to those values. With that in mind, think about what you can do for your volunteers and it will come back to you ten-fold in what your volunteers can do for you.
BY Sarah H. Elliston
ON January 10, 2009 07:38 AM
Thank-you for a stimulating article. It contains much that I teach others and your research is helpful. I was curious that in your description of investing in the leadership of volunteers that you neglected to mention that many organizations have trained, experienced and effective coordinators of volunteers who help capitalize on people just like your March of Dimes volunteer. In fact, CEOs rarely touch the majority of volunteer talent.
While your 8 point program suggests good management strategies, I was surprised that you didn’t point out that Baby Boomers who aren’t stimulated and given opportunities to use their initiative are very likely the people who don’t come back, as well as the fact that the young volunteers who are so eager to help are interested in one-time activities, in a group, and deliberately want to help as many agencies as they can. They have no intention of coming back. The planning for them requires what you suggest as well as an understanding of the specific population.
Congratulations on a stimulating read.
BY Mary Quirk, Minnesota Association for Volunteer Ad
ON February 9, 2009 03:05 PM
There are many exciting initiatives around the country to build capacity to engage volunteers. In Minnesota, the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA) has trained over 1,000 leaders of volunteers across the state on best practices of leadership of volunteers to address the issues raised in the research mentioned in this article We are doing advocacy with decision makers on the importance of investing in volunteers, the importance of this so well highlighted in the article. We are starting an initiative on building capacity to engage boomers as volunteers, which will bring the information to organizations on changes to better engage the new wave of volunteers. We are also doing original research on volunteerism in immigrant and refugee communities to address how mainstream and immigrant/refugee organizations can build capacity to engage volunteers from immigrant/refugee communities.
BY Karen Bantuveris
ON February 19, 2009 06:23 PM
Thank you for such a rich article. I think it’s important to recognize the ‘hassle factor’ in volunteer drop-out rates. We’ve found that often people don’t return to volunteering because of little coordination breakdowns—taking time off work to volunteer only to be turned away because too many people showed up, reply-all email messages, phone calls and cumbersome sign up sheets—just to get on the schedule. At VolunteerSpot.com, we’ve addresses a focused piece of the volunteer engagement equation by automating volunteer scheduling, sign ups and reminders in a free online tool so easy that ANYONE can coordiante volunteers. Simpler, streamlined communication makes it easier for volunteers to say YES and keep coming back. http://www.volunteerspot.com
BY Jayne Cravens
ON February 22, 2009 01:52 AM
It’s always nice when someone outside the volunteer management sector learns about the issues and realities that those of us in the sector regularly discuss. This article brings up issues that volunteer managers across the USA (and, indeed, the world) are all discussing frequently. Much more than “a few” nonprofits have grasped the concepts noted in this article, and much more than a few are taking what this article calls “a talent management approach.” We volunteer managers are all only too painfully aware of the lack of infrastructure at many organizations to involve volunteers effectively. You don’t need to convince nonprofit organizations that they need to involve volunteers more effectively as much as you need to convince governments, corporations, foundations and other donors that the infrastructure to involve volunteers costs money. What this article doesn’t talk about—at least that I can find—is the reluctance of donors to pay for that infrastructure. Volunteers are *never* free. It takes money and resources to involve them effectively. But ask a donor to fund a volunteer manager, or a database program that will track volunteers, or training for staff to more effectively involve volunteers, and the donor will sniff, “I don’t fund administrative costs.”
Also, I cringe at the old-school comment “Volunteers, for example, can help nonprofits save money” and “Naming individual volunteers with the number of hours they have contributed (and perhaps the dollar value) is one way to demonstrate a culture that values volunteers.” I discourage organizations from using dollar value for volunteer hours to show volunteer value—if it’s included, it should come only after a long list of the many other reasons to involve volunteers. An organization that emphasizes money saved is an organization that has just said, “We’d love to replace paid staff with volunteers, so we don’t have to pay people.” That not only gets the hackles up of union folks—it gets the hackles up of trained professionals who have chosen to work in the nonprofit sector and invested a huge amount in their own education and training to do so. It also can (and DOES) cause donors to say, “Please reduce your overhead by reducing your paid staff by such-and-such percent and replace them with volunteers.” NOT a good way to create good staff and volunteer relations.
In addition, this emphasis on monetary value of volunteers says, “Volunteers are only free labor and potential donors.” If you gave me all the money in the world to hire all of the staff I needed, I would *still* create high-responsibility roles for volunteers, to give the community a way to be involved in the organization and a direct view of the work we do, to show donors that the community believes in the work we do, to get alternative viewpoints (sometimes volunteers will criticize in ways staff may be reluctant to do), and oh-so-many other non-monetary reasons.
So—a good article, but it sounds like you think volunteer managers aren’t already aware of the points you have raised. We are. Acutely.
BY Nonprofit Prof
ON April 7, 2009 01:40 PM
I am glad to see the Corporation paying attention to sector-wide infrastructure issues, but I have some serious concerns about this article. There are gross overgeneralizations and the conclusions you draw are not always supported by the data you use.
First, although the Corporation’s well-circulated report on turnover legitimately calls attention to the need to invest more organizational resources in retention, I would ask WHY one in three individuals does not return to the same assignment in any year before I conclude that “most CEOs do a poor job of managing them.” That statement is simply not supported by the 2003 Urban Institute study, which finds that most nonprofits invest at least some effort in volunteer management and that large scale investment in volunteer retention practices is more likely to be associated with the presence of a volunteer coordinator than it is with some characteristic of the CEO. And since the Urban Institute study failed to screen out those nonprofits that—for reasons of mission, service demands or other legitimate reasons—simply didn’t require volunteers, it is impossible to draw generalizable conclusions about which nonprofits or CEOs really need to improve their volunteer management skills. In other words, the Corporation’s conclusions and recommendations only make sense if they are applied selectively to those nonprofits that actually report they depend on volunteers to the extent that a volunteer management program makes sense.
Moreover, I would not conclude from the turnover data that those volunteers who have left an assignment have stopped volunteering. They could have moved on to another organization, and they could represent short-term volunteers who have completed their assignment. This criticism has been made before about the Corporation’s turnover report, so you should be addressing it.
Next, this article overgeneralizes the problem. You refer liberally to “most nonprofits”, or simply to “nonproifts”. Are you really applying the same problems and the same expectations to two million diverse organizations. Should all nonprofits be expected to follow your prescriptions? To what nonprofits are we referring: charities? churches? Hospitals? Mental institutions?
Finally, I share Jayne’s concern about using volunteer dollar value (or any wage replacement method) to value volunteer impact. The principal limitation is that it’s not a cost-benefit analysis. As you mention yourself, there are better ways, where the emphasis is on program improvements, secondary benefits such as increased donations, and other more qualitative and important impacts.
Although I appreciate immensely the research efforts of the Corporation, and although I agree with many of your suggestions, I expect the Corporation to be more nuanced in its arguments and more careful in its use of the data it generates.
BY Bonnie Hilory
ON July 29, 2009 12:13 AM
Perphaps I can share trends or shifts within the 3rd sector….I agree with collecting data on volunteers. Better tools are needed (such as Volunteer Spot- which is a free online service for scheduling volunteers in a self-directed respectful manner). There are new tools and services available that make tracking hours and make tracking the dollars easier to monitor as well. We (volunteers and contractors and staff) wrote our own code to accomplish exactly this… because we didn’t like what was available on the market.
From my point of view, hours & a dollar value make sense. There are several perks to tracking this data. Blue Avocado has one of the best articles I have seen on this topic. http://www.blueavocado.org/content/tracking-volunteer-time-boost-your-bottom-line-complete-accounting- Donors want and deserve to understand why overheads are as high as they are in the 3rd sector. Often the lack of transparency with costs associated with managing volunteers is in fact part of the puzzle. Going deeper, the board of directors or executive staff may want to clearly understand the contributions volunteers make (beyond anecdotal evidence). It is hard to ignore numbers and sometimes helps business minded folks listen or relate better.
For example, I am one of two full time staff. We have 3 part-time staff so our total is 2.80 FTE (full time equivalent personnel). We rent a 2,400 square foot office space. Why? Not for our staff…for sure. The reason is “we manage our mission through the support of our wonderful volunteers”. Today is a typical day…we had our “volunteer” volunteer coordinator in , her new assistant, a grantee support person, a graphic designer, and a project manager for our IT issues in, plus 5 others who worked from home from 3 different states (web developer, editor, and copywriters). Each year our volunteer program has grown. Each year we report in our annual report the number of volunteers, how many hours they contribute and yes the total $ volunteer contribution. The messaging is like any other PR campaign…it needs to be thoughtful and carefully written.
My belief is as our 3rd sector emerges, grows and changes best practices will emerge. For example, now many foundations and companies are accepting volunteer contributions as part of matching funds raised. To say we should not quantify the gift of time is to say our development staff shouldn’t use the contributions for our fundraising for matching for corporate gifts or matching grants.
Our volunteers login daily and love the feedback of their contributions. We have an annual volunteer recognition event, like many other non profits. By tracking volunteer hours our volunteer will be eligible for the Presidential citation with serve.gov . Tracking hours is important. But quantifying is also important. As our volunteer program grows we need to educate our board, donors and volunteers that more funding will be needed. The more volunteers we have the more financial support/help from the agency we will need. For example, as volunteer hours grow and volunteers grow so does the needs for more bus passes, parking, treats(we provide pop, fruit, chocolates often), L & I insurance (we pay .10 per hours for all in state volunteers), etc.. I call this the care and feeding of the volunteers. Four 1/2 years ago we had 15 volunteers…now we have 70=90. It costs to run a quality program however what we receive must go beyond anecdotal warm fuzzy stories. Gee…the irony is if you knew me you would think I am a numbers person. I am totally NOT…I am our chief storyteller…but to ignore dollars, is to ignore the impact and relevance to our budget and financials.
If anyone wants to discuss this more, receive our annual report or discuss “best practices” please connect. I am reachable at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or http://www.haasfoundation.org Bonnie Hilory, Executive Director, Haas Foundation
BY Michael Gentry
ON January 12, 2010 11:40 AM
We are starting an initiative on building capacity to engage boomers as volunteers, which will bring the information to organizations on changes to better engage the new wave of volunteers. We are also doing original research on volunteerism in immigrant and refugee communities to address how mainstream and immigrant/refugee organizations can build capacity to engage volunteers from immigrant/refugee communities.
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Michael Gentry
BY Julia Stewart
ON December 3, 2013 03:06 PM
I was just about to write an article like this; googled a few key words and voila! There the article was! Similar ideas have been milling around in my head the past two days!! I was going to title my article THE NEW AGE OF HIGH-VALUE VOLUNTEERS, referring specifically to retiring baby boomers who have the potential to enter the volunteer work force in droves over the next few decades—if their energy and skills are properly harnessed and they find the work rewarding and results-oriented. This work force has the added-value of being DONOR-VOLUNTEERS.
The ideas dawned on me when I realized most of the foreign volunteers at a dog rescue shelter and sterilization clinic where I live in Mexico are retirees (or those in their 50s/60s not really retired//perhaps we can call them an ‘unencumbered lifestyle set’?) - who not only volunteer their time but also funds and much of the material and logistical items needed to carry out the work.
Makes me so happy to know this trend is backed by facts and figures. We can improve our world, one good turn at a time!
BY Dara Krute
ON August 27, 2014 01:16 PM
Our nonprofit is just starting to recruit volunteers. We agree with everything about managing them in this article. But, where is the best place to find the people we need? There are so many sites that provide volunteer matching or listing in some way. We cannot find any listings or reviews of them. How do we know where to focus our efforts? This article is relatively mute on getting started with using a volunteer workforce.
BY Joy Merrell
ON January 11, 2016 09:25 AM
Stimulating article.Having previously worked as a volunteer co-ordinator in the UK many of the issues raised relate to the UK experience too.I am often surprised that volunteer co-ordinators receive limited training in supporting and managing volunteers.You need to be much more skilled in managing volunteers than you do with employees who are paid to be present. The suggestion to tap into religious organisations as a means of broadening the diversity of volunteers is a good recruitment strategy. I do have some reservations with respect to blurring the boundaries between volunteer and paid staff. We should always be mindful that organisations are not using volunteers as a cheap source of labour and in so doing not only exploiting volunteers but also denying someone a paid job.Finally on a personal note I was alwaysin awe of my great aunt who volunteered for the British Red Cross for most of her adult life. At age of 91 she still continued to help with serving lunches to the `old people’ most of whom were younger than her. The older generation are indeed an untapped and often under valued resource.
BY john
ON June 28, 2018 09:20 AM
thanks