volunteerplaintalk

Category: fund raising

Volunteer Fresh

Every day, volunteer managers witness the passion brought by volunteers. We marvel at their skill. We see their pure work, unencumbered by thoughts of pay, or chains to the financial burden of staying somewhere not fulfilling.

But there is another positive that we can attribute to our volunteers. The number of hours they volunteer a week or month is often misconstrued as a shortcoming, but in reality is a gift: Volunteers are not burdened by the stress of working for us full-time.

Volunteers who show up once a week or month are like opening the window to let in the breeze. They come in, trailing currents of fresh air. They bring with them new experiences, a taste of outside ideas, and rejuvenated enthusiasm to our stale environment.

What factors contribute to a stale environment? Compassion fatigue, burnout, overwork, repetition, familiarity, slow to change movement, it’s always been done thus mentality, funding worries and stress. Each of these freshness killers lurks in the halls of non-profits, waiting to blow their stale breath into our lungs.

There is an under current of pressure on non-profit workers to be “on” at all times. This Pedestal of Perpetual Caring implies that every moment is as intensely compassionate as the first one. Who can live up to that standard when reports are due, projects need attention and budgets are withering?

Enter Volunteer Fresh:

Our volunteers, unburdened by the stresses of working with us full-time can and do exhibit the intense compassion every client needs.

Our volunteers are out there in the world 98% of the time and bring with them outside opinions, trends, ideas and methods.

Our volunteers bring infectious enthusiasm and continually remind us why we love our work. They plug us back into our missions.

Marketing Volunteer Fresh: (or, at your next staff meeting, use gimmicky but visual aids to encourage your organization to embrace volunteers as more than just those people who fill preconceived slots)

Bring a sandwich from a vending machine along with a fresh sandwich from wherever staff loves to eat. Use each ingredient of the fresh sandwich to explain the layers of volunteer fresh and compare the two.

Videotape volunteers speaking from the heart. Show staff the infectious enthusiasm volunteers bring. Remind them that opening up to each volunteer re-ignites their own passion.

Use a radiating circle of connections chart to show the connections our volunteers are making within the community. Use arrows in both directions to illustrate the wide swath of information and influence our volunteers create, both coming and going.

Here are some concrete ways to offer Volunteer Fresh:

Schedule “sit downs” between community engagement officers and volunteers. The engagement officer can ask volunteers to take the pulse of the community by asking pertinent questions of their friends, neighbors, civic groups, church members etc and then report back.

Create a campaign via WOMM (word of mouth marketing). Marketing can release a sub-campaign via volunteers to reach out into the community on a specific hot topic. Equip volunteers with flyers, business cards, etc. to launch campaign and monitor feedback.

Engage volunteers in stress relief. Create a team of volunteers to develop a stress relief program for staff and other volunteers. This volunteer team can institute ways to help over burdened staff cope with burnout.

Volunteers are a gift of freshness. How fortunate we are to be able to incorporate fresh ideas, enthusiasm, and passion into our culture by people who offer all of this for free.

Let’s encourage our organizations to open the window and let the freshness in.

-Meridian

June 3, 2017
We Should Start Our Own Cirque du Vol Show To Raise Money!
After Harry closed the door, Rasheem just sat for a moment, allowing himself to refocus. “Harry is one of those volunteers,” he said, “whose brain is constantly on the move. He is forever suggesting ways to improve and ways to reinvent. Often his ideas have nothing to do with the volunteer department. No, often he wants me to bring his ideas to marketing, fund-raising, finance, administration, and just about every other department we have. He’s not critical, but rather a great volunteer and he just wants us to be the best. But, this is exhausting.”

Some volunteers are their own whirling mini brain trust. They see a challenge or an area that needs improvement and their minds go into overdrive. Funny thing is, most of the time, they’re right and you can see their point.

But when they come to you with their ideas, all you feel is the burden that comes with one of these choices facing you:
1. Present the new idea to the appropriate person/dept and become a stressed middle man/woman.
2. Tell the volunteer that while the idea is valid, this is not a good time.
3. Refer the volunteer to the department in question and hope that they do not brush him/her off.
4. Fib and say you’ll look into it and string the volunteer along for as long as you can.
5. Quit-which is cowardly, but feels like the easiest thing to do.
Each choice presents such a VM burden that just hearing the words, “I have an idea,” sends you into a catatonic state. You begin to create little hiding places in your office so that you can slip under your desk, hands over ears, mumbling “If I don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist.”

The question then becomes: Are volunteers just there to do what is asked or do volunteers bring vast amounts of creativity, knowledge, energy and experience to our organizational table? We, VM’s know the answer. So, what do we do? Besides quit.

One way to handle a volunteer improvement idea (vii)is to start a volunteer think tank. Gather your most creative volunteers and ask them to sort through each vii. Let them decide which ones are worth pursuing.

And here’s the thing about vii’s. They take an enormous amount of work to implement. No wonder marketing doesn’t want to hear how a cirque show will bring in loads of publicity. They’re busy with 50 other organizational ideas that they need to implement.

And while vii’s are lovely concepts, it is the results that matter. A think tank can pilot a program on a small-scale and present the results. Ask them to work on one project at a time to keep from overwhelming the system.

Your volunteer think tank wants a cirque? Pare that big vii down to a manageable beginning. Maybe they can hire a juggling clown for a marketing event so the kids in attendance will be entertained. See how that goes. Tell the think tank to: Start small. Get results. Gather stats. Take pictures. Tell the story. Compile feedback. Then do it all again.

We all have great ideas. But, ideas without the willingness to do the hard work are worthless. Instead of hiding under your desk, throwing your volunteers to chance, and passing ideas on to other swamped departments, create a volunteer think tank and put those creative ideas to this test: Are we, the volunteers who believe in this great idea, willing to pilot a smaller project to prove that it is viable? And are we willing to put in the hard work in order to show results?

If the answer is yes, then who knows? The volunteers may start with a juggling clown. Then they’ll add acrobats. Then a full-blown cirque du volunteer may result. And you may just keep your sanity.

-Meridian
March 8, 2017
Eureka! I’ve Discovered the Value of a Volunteer!

Volunteer manager Lilly looked up to see the CEO standing in her doorway. “I’m trying to remember our volunteer, Gladys Williams, can you tell me about her?”

“Oh,” Lilly said, “Gladys was a wonderful volunteer who did office work in finance. She volunteered there for about 12 years, even before I got here. I attended her funeral last month.”

“I think I remember her. Small lady, white hair?”

“Ahhh, yes,” Lilly said thinking that description fit any number of office volunteers and added, “she always wore a purple ribbon in memory of her husband.”

“I think so. Well, we were just told that she left us $25,000 in her estate. I thought you should know.” The CEO paused for a moment. ” Now I’ll have to let finance know too.”

I read an article recently about the generous surprise gift bequeathed to a Detroit museum from the estate of a 19 year volunteer. While the incredibly benevolent support of her organization speaks volumes, the tone of the article made me wonder how this volunteer would have been remembered (beyond the staff that obviously cared about her) had she not given such a sizable donation. And exactly how much does a volunteer have to give before the fundraising arm of our charities becomes giddy?

We all know our volunteers regularly donate money and goods, which seems to now be a trendy topic among the fund-raising gurus who gleefully point to these stories as if they’ve discovered a whole new vein of gold. But again, how much do volunteers have to give in order to be smiled at and afforded that extra bit of silky attention normally reserved for the donor crowd? Is it $1,000, $10,000, $24,999 or more? Will $50,000 pressure upper management into inviting a volunteer to an exclusive luncheon? Will $27,856 make the organization really, sincerely interested in the wonderful work that volunteer is doing?

So, I’ve hatched a plan in the basement laboratory of my brain. I think all volunteer managers should include an estate planned giving form with our volunteer applications. We should coerce our volunteers into committing to an amount they will bequeath after they die. Then, that amount should be printed in bold type on their badge. On a really valuable volunteer, it will look something like this:

That way, at a glance, everyone in the organization can see the worth of that volunteer. Now granted, those, like volunteer Mary above, who are not giving very much may be relegated to the nameless rabble heap, but hey, at least some of our volunteers will achieve recognition.

And so, when volunteer Imani holds the hand of that distraught client and gently dries flowing tears while staying that extra two hours until family members arrive, her pledged gift of $14,000 might just get some notice.
After all, it’s all about the ~~money~~, er work, isn’t it?
-Meridian

January 20, 2016