Tags
groups, managing volunteers, NGO, non-profit, organizations, recruiting volunteers, training volunteers, volunteer, volunteer coordinator, volunteer management, volunteer manager, volunteer retention, volunteering, volunteers
Part 2 of the interview with Sadie on corporate volunteering-the day of the event.
VPT: So, on the day of the event, you and several other employees met up at the location. How did it go?
S: Well, we had an issue with parking. There were street parking spots, but a sign said ‘two hour parking only.’ We parked anyway. It was a four-hour shift so we figured we would have to come out and move the cars. Later, when we asked, they told us that the city had waived that rule and we could stay in our spots.
VPT: After you parked, you went in and what happened?
S: The building was a warehouse type of building and we had no idea how to get in.
VPT: What did you do?
S: We went around back, found a back door and went in through there.
VPT: And then what?
S: We found the makeshift kitchen where there was coffee and donuts and we announced ourselves to the people in there. They asked if this was our first year and we said yes, so they got another person to come and train us.
VPT: Were they volunteers or staff? How did you know they were part of the event?
S: I honestly don’t know if they were paid or not. But they wore stick on name badges.
VPT: Did they greet you?
S: They seemed stressed. It felt like they didn’t know what to do with us. They consulted the printed out sign up sheet and saw that we were listed so they said they would try to find a spot for us.
VPT: What did the training consist of?
S: About two minutes worth of what we were supposed to do.
VPT: And that was….
S: We were to walk around with the clients. They would have a shopping cart and we would go from station to station where they would pick out toys according to how many children they had and their ages. Then we would escort them to the stations where they would get boxes of donated food. I will say, the person who showed us what to do was very nice.
VPT: How were the stations?
S: The stations were very well set up, and organized. You could tell they had done this many times before.
VPT: Were you given any information on how to act around the clients, anything about sensitivity or confidentiality?
S: (laughs). At one point we were told to try to get stories of hardship from the clients so that we could direct them to a station that had extra toys. They had more toys than they needed, so I guess that’s a good thing.
VPT: Did someone check in with you during your shift to see if everything was ok.
S: Not with me, I don’t know about the others.
VPT: And you were there for four hours.
S: Longer. One of our group, Justin, who was helping at a food station, was told he could not leave until his replacement showed up. After thirty minutes of waiting, we just left. Some of us rode together and had to go.
VPT: Did anyone acknowledge you when you left?
S: No. Justin told his station manager and we left.
VPT: How was it working with the clients?
S: That was great. The people were very grateful and appreciated our being there to help.
VPT: Were you comfortable with the clients, given you had minimal training?
S: Surprisingly, yes. It felt very natural.
VPT: Did your firm get any acknowledgement, thank you, write-up, mention on website, anything?
S: No, nothing that I am aware of. In hindsight, we should have worn company t-shirts or brought something for them to use. They didn’t ask, though.
VPT: Did you have some sort of follow-up meeting with your fellow employees after the event?
S: No, we probably should have done that. But I did check in with them individually.
VPT: What feedback did you get from the other employees?
S: They thought it was worthwhile. They felt like they made a connection with the people being helped.
VPT: Will you be back next year?
S: Yes.
VPT: What will bring you back?
S: As much as I didn’t appreciate how it was run, it is about the people I was helping and it makes me feel good to help them. I wasn’t able to volunteer until I was a point in my life where I felt I was able to help others. Now that I can do that I feel like I’m also able to take on obstacles such as the people running the show. Maybe they started off like me, caring about the people more, and they never transitioned over to caring for the volunteers that help the people in need. I’m not sure, but I do feel like it comes with the territory.
VPT: Anything else?
S: Second reason I’ll go back is because it might not be the best environment to make me feel appreciated, but I’m comfortable now. I do have a busy life and I chose this organization for a reason. To find another one like it is time-consuming and what if it was just the same or worse? I feel comfortable at this organization now and next year I will be able to walk in, do what I came to accomplish and leave.
VPT: Thank you Sadie for sharing your experience with us.
Huh. Well, that was definitely eye-opening. So, I guess the takeaway is we should be relieved when volunteers put up with us because it’s just too darned time-consuming to find another place to spend their time and talents. And luckily for us, that new place might be worse.
And hey, here’s a thought. Maybe we should thank the people we serve for being needy. Maybe we could just give them a reward for keeping our volunteers coming back. We could call it the “Sob Story of Retention” award.
Or maybe we could just do better.
-Meridian
volunteerplaintalk 
Meridian,
I knew the story would end the way it did. Not a “terrible” experience for the volunteer, but certainly not a model example for volunteer administrators to replicate. The reason I knew it would end this way is because it’s simple pattern analysis… This is the outcome I hear about too often by volunteers. Heck, I’ve experienced this myself as a volunteer, and have sadly been a contributing factor to this through my own work in earlier years.
Both parts of your interview coincidentally came out just in time as I’ve been writing about this disconnect experienced. I just posted this morning, the first of a three-part series titled The “No Man’s Land” Between CSR and Non-profits (Part 1 of 3) (https://medium.com/@JDTennille/the-no-mans-land-between-csr-and-non-profits-part-1-of-3-57821aed751c#.wf3tonq6r) where I express my thoughts about this specific issue illustrated in your interview.
If you don’t mind, and certainly with your permission, I’d love to reference your interview (part 1 and 2) in one of my follow on series posts. Both interviews are a treasure trove for folks in our industry, and equally valuable for those in corporate social responsibility.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, there’s a lot to be taken from each of your articles.
LikeLike
Hi Jerome and thank you for your insight-yes, please use any portion of this interview-the more we all talk about issues, the better chance for problem solving. Sadie was quite surprised that her experience was instructive and she is glad to have been of assistance.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank You!
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Volunteering Counts in Dudley borough.
LikeLike
Thank you Eileen hope all is well
LikeLike
You’re welcome. Love your blog posts, you are so good at sharing a huge range of volunteering related issues. You must spend hours researching and preparing them.
I’m good thanks, just got back from nearly two weeks off and feeling quite revitalised. How are you doing? 🙂
LikeLike
Doing great! So glad you had some time off you deserve it!
LikeLike
I did need it after Christmas I can tell you. Sorted, counted and shared over 12,000 donations, most of which were in the three weeks before Christmas – phew! Very successful though.
I need to get my head around some new Wise Up Wednesdays now I’m back, but I’m ruminating about topics at the moment. So much to choose from and I try to make them quite generic about volunteering good practice. Wish me luck 🙂
LikeLike
What worries me, having read the second part of your excellent article is how little effort the organisation needing the help put in. I think it’s probably because they are busy providing a service as many organisations are, but surely they could have organised a briefing at the start. It would also have been good to send out some info beforehand so corporate volunteers knew what to expect. At least a phone conversation beforehand would be good too. This would help build a relationship and maybe get other corporate volunteers from the same company. This can lead to lots of positives, such as ongoing support and fundraising too.
Conversely there was another issue which I get with corporate volunteers sometimes and that is the insistence that they have to meet the “needy” face to face and can’t see any value in doing anything behind the scenes. This happens every year with our annual Operation Santa and it’s quite upsetting when businesses suddenly pull out when they can’t meet the “poor little children” face to face for safeguarding reasons. Does anyone else have this problem sometimes?
LikeLike
Eileen, you raise some excellent points. How do volunteer organizations who need volunteers accommodate corporate volunteering? How do we accommodate the wishes and desires of corporate volunteers while maintaining the privacy of the client? How do we incorporate team building and outreach while preserving the integrity of the event? Are all these things mutually exclusive? And, when saying no to additional help because it is self-serving, do we hear flak from higher ups?
This is a fine line for everyone-does outreach outweigh intimacy? Do numbers offset the personal touch? I hope we have more conversations on this topic so thank you for your call to talk about this.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s one of my frustrations to be honest as the two worlds often don’t get each other at all and see the value of a relationship. I’ve brokered some great successes but at other times had nothing but negatives from both sides. All tips gratefully received 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
So Sadie confounds me by saying she will go back again, despite “obstacles such as the people running the show”. What a pity she did not push back and talk to the organisation about how to do better for volunteers. Would she accept such conditions in her professional role? But it’s the feel-good factors from supporting client needs that count most for her. Anyway Sadie chose “the organisation for a reason”, and “it’s just too darned time-consuming to find another place”. Which begs a big question for me about how we come to choose where we want to volunteer and why – beyond our primary motivations to volunteer. Thanks for stimulating my thinking on this thread Meridian. There is big consolation in discovering how Sadie and her group overcame all the hurdles put in their way, without any apparent disorder. Does this indicate we underrate volunteer capabilities by insisting on induction and training and detailed instructions?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Sue! There is so much to think about here…
Is corporate volunteering a get in and get out quick couple of hours?
Are these volunteers too busy to bother with pointing out volunteering shortcomings?
What is our goal with corporate volunteers-keep them coming back year after year, or get some to become regular volunteers, or just use them and lose them?
If you have any questions, let me know and I will ask Sadie…
LikeLike
I have a whole heap of questions about corporate volunteering Meridian, and CSR in general. I know it’s a significant contribution to our sector but there are times when I wonder if the purposes are not really ‘volunteering’, as in team-building exercises or company self-promotion and getting paid leave to do a spot of ‘doing good’. In your account Sadie showed she had a personal investment in the organisation and the role she accomplished. My question remains, in general terms, why do volunteers choose a particular organisation and not any one of hundreds of others?
LikeLiked by 1 person
HI Sue I’ve got the same questions. I’ve brokered lots of these challenges over the years and it’s either quite tokenistic – helping those poor needy people [hate the word needy!] or the business is very picky about what they want to do. I have a list of team challenge roles which I keep updated and there are some that are really critical to support a local not-for-profit, but the business says they are boring! My latest challenge is trying to find team challenges for 200 staff from a local college for the same day in July … .wish me luck!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow, Eileen, your statement here pretty much highlights the challenges facing volunteer managers-” I have a list of team challenge roles which I keep updated and there are some that are really critical to support a local not-for-profit, but the business says they are boring!”
Not to be depressing, but add to that the problems volunteer managers face when they do not “find” a perfect role for a group. Then someone from that group complains to the organization’s CEO and the volunteer manager is blamed!
Corporate and student required volunteering is a whole new box of a million parts for volunteer managers on top of the challenges already on the plate.
And incidentally, good luck with the 200! Let us know how that goes….
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes it’s a good job we all like a challenge and don’t expect any thanks isn’t it? Had the CEO conversation at couple of times too! I try to do positive case studies with feedback from org and business volunteers, but it’s an ongoing challenge.
Regarding the 200 challenge, that would be a blog post all of its own I reckon, as it’s likely they will want to do different things. Wish me luck 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person