Volunteer Databases

Developing Your Volunteer Strategy for the New Year

Copyright © 2011 by Primary Key Technologies, Inc. and brought to you by YourVolunteers.

2012 is nearly here and given the slow recovery of the world economy, your organization may be looking to improve upon its 2011 volunteer strategy to either expand or better utilize an existing volunteer program. We offer a few tips to consider when building a new volunteer strategy.

Volunteer Involvement

CVS Northhamptonshire makes a great point about the importance of involving volunteers in the development of a strategy (“Developing”). The last thing that you want is a mass exodus of your existing, dedicated volunteers because of changes to your program. Keeping your volunteers aware of upcoming changes is vital to keeping your volunteers happy. If you plan to expand your program, volunteers need to know that their efforts were not lacking. Additionally, if the duties of the volunteers will be expanded to cover more of what paid employees used to do, it’s important to know that the volunteers agree that the new duties are appropriate.

The Recruiting Plan

We’ve previously offered tips on how to recruit volunteers, but as a volunteer manager, you still have to decide whether you will be interviewing all applicants yourself, if you will be asking trusted volunteers to help, if you will be accepting all who want to help, and if necessary, what your budget will be for background checks. Consider spending a significant amount of time developing precise job titles that let your potential volunteers know exactly what your potential volunteers will be doing. Expecting that all volunteers will be willing to spend their time peforming all of the tasks that your organization has is a quick way to lose said volunteers. It should be noted that giving a volunteer position the wrong job title is the Seventh Deadly Sin of recruiting volunteers according to VolunteerPower.com (McKee).

Expanding the Virtual Volunteer Program

We have recently offered some tips on managing a virtual volunteer program and have received good and bad feedback. Good from virtual volunteers and bad from volunteer managers. When developing a volunteer strategy, it may be easy to think that expanding or creating a virtual volunteer program might be the answer to your organization’s limited space, to your recruiting challenges, and to finding the specific skills that may be mostly contained in individuals who are not generally available during your office hours (e.g. web developers). However, as we mentioned in the post and as we received in feedback, working with virtual volunteers may be challenging since you do not have them onsite for a set number of hours and they may be distracted by other work, by their families or by the excellent season of television. If you will be adding a virtual program to your volunteer strategy, be sure to remember that you may need to include generous timelines and you should definitely seek to recruit more volunteers than you think you need.

Changing the Way that You Manage Your Volunteers

It should be crystal clear that we are partial to one particular free online volunteer management system, but we are fully aware that there are other systems available. If you will be expanding your volunteer program and you do not currently use a system, you should consider including the use of a volunteer management system in your plan. In addition, if you are expanding your program because your organization has fewer paid employees, it’s likely that your duties will be expanded beyond the management of volunteers. More volunteers mean more management, more data to enter, more spreadsheets, more emails, more phone calls, more training and more more more more. Online systems allow your volunteers to come to a website and enter their own information and to help manage their own schedules. If their updated schedule information is available online, you will less likely to be contacted when a volunteer has a question.

In leiu of or in addition to using a volunteer management system, you may want to consider creating a hierarchy where a volunteer reports to another volunteer (with a proper title, of course). However, as many of you know, volunteers are not always willing to follow the rules of traditional hierarchies (McDuff et al, 2009) and may want to report directly to you anyway to get faster answers and to move into different volunteer roles.

Build in the Ways to Thank Them (or Not)

There have been numerous articles, posts and books dedicated just to the topic of thanking volunteers published in the past few years which reflects the recent emphasis on gratitude. Nonprofit organizations are now competing with the increasing volunteer needs of schools, libraries, parks departments and for-profit corporations. Volunteers need to know that their work is appreciated and word will spread that your organization is one that understands the value of their service.

However, in an article he wrote for Nonprofit World, Nick Levinson makes the case that you should forget the “thank you” and you should instead take full advantage of what they have to offer and encourage them to grow and learn like you would a paid employee (Levinson, 2004). This could mean setting aside funds for educational programs that would benefit both the volunteer and your organization. Further, Levinson states that volunteers are self-motivated and generally do not expect a plaque or certificate and would prefer the constant recognition of their contributions rather than just an annual dinner (Levinson, 2004).

Works Cited

“Developing a volunteer strategy.” Retrieved 12/14/2011 from the website of CVS Northamptonshire at http://www.cvsnorthamptonshire.org.uk/.

Levinson, N. (2004). What’s Wrong with “Thank You?” Plenty. Nonprofit World.

MacDuff, N., F. E. Netting and M. K. O’Connor. (2009). Multiple Ways of Coordinating Volunteers
With Differing Styles of Service. Journal of Community Practice.

McKee, T. The Seven Deadly Sins of Recruiting Volunteers. Retrieved 12/14/2011 from the website of VolunteerPower.com at http://www.volunteerpower.com/articles/7Sins.asp

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Role of the Volunteer Manager when Using an Online System

Copyright © 2010-2011 by Primary Key Technologies, Inc. and brought to you by YourVolunteers.

You have a huge special event coming up, you’ve signed up for an online managment and scheduling system — now what? After the question about recruiting, this is probably the question that we receive most.

Become Familiar with the System

Many of the available systems are fairly extensive and there is a learning curve. Give yourself plenty of time before using it to be sure that you can work with it. When the usual craziness happens in the days immediately before your event, you don’t want to be struggling with the system trying to figure out how to get it to do what you need it to do.

Set Up the Tasks

It’s important to give your volunteers as much information as possible about the tasks they’ll be doing. Is there a person they’ll need to find? Is there a meeting place? What will they be doing? It’s also important that they know who you are and how they can contact you. Always keep in mind that not all potential volunteers have email addresses so you’ll need to include other ways for them to contact you.

Answer Questions before You Get Them

If you’ve done this before, you know that you’ll get a lot of the same questions (e.g. do I get free admission, will the free t-shirt look good on a burly man in his 40′s, etc.). If you have a place to go ahead and answer these questions, be sure to do so before the first volunteers come to your site. This will save you an enormous amount of time, especially in the weeks immediately before your event (i.e. when there’s no time to spare).

Make Sure that Your Volunteers Know that They Are Part of a Team

We know that you’re busy in the planning of a successful event, but it’s really important to keep in contact with your volunteers. In some cases, they will be flying across the country to volunteer for you, so you’ll want them to know that they’re efforts are appreciated and that the event can’t succeed without them. We don’t have any evidence-based research to support this, but it seems pretty clear to us that volunteer managers who don’t follow this advice seem to have more no-shows than those who do. Tweet, do video blogs, do podcasts, write messages on the website, but just do something to let them know that you are a living, breathing human being and you need their help. Whatever it is that you do, always keep in mind those volunteers without email since they usually are just as dedicated as the others and you don’t want to risk alienating them by only sending out updates by email. If you’re responsibilities to the event keep you from being a good volunteer leader, ask one of the volunteers to take the lead.

New Volunteers

You’ll want to keep a close eye on the online system that you use for new volunteer registrations. When you use an online system, it’s pretty common for volunteers to sign up for an event but not input their availability or choose specific tasks. You’ll need to follow up and encourage them to complete the process or you risk losing their help at the event. Even if they do complete the process, it’s a nice touch to send them a thank you message anyway for their willingness to help.

Recruiting

You’ll be one of the lucky few if you have an event where you’ll have plenty of volunteers coming to you without having to do any recruitment. The earlier that you start the recruitment process (see our previous post for ideas), the better your mental health will be as the event draws near.

Confirm, Then Re-Confirm

If you’ve started the recruitment process well ahead of time (like you should have), you’ll need to check in with your volunteers at least a month before the event to be sure that they’re still able to make it especially if many of them will be traveling. This will give you enough time to find replacements if necessary. Immediately before the event, you’ll want to confirm again. Even if you only have a couple of days to schedule replacements, it’s still better than trying to do it on-site at the event.