volunteerplaintalk

Category: organizing volunteer management

  • You Can Water Plastic Flowers, But They Won’t Grow

    In a volunteer manager’s chaotic day, volunteer impact is difficult to plan, hard to complete and often impossible to execute. We laughingly describe our chaos in phrases like, “herding cats,” “wearing many hats,” and “controlled chaos.” But, the inability to move ourselves and our volunteers forward due to chaos is no laughing matter.

    I’d like to add another phrase to the lexicon: “Watering plastic flowers,” which means time spent on futile activities. But wait, futile is a strong word; it means “pointless,” or “incapable of producing results.”

    So, let’s eliminate the word futile, because there’s always hope right? As volunteer managers, we hold hope in our hands: Hope for that volunteer who is hurting and wants to help, but keeps canceling. Hope that our impassioned speech about volunteer value changes minds. Hope that today we will fill a role no volunteer wants to do.

    Instead, let’s look at ROI-return on investment. When our time investment does not produce enough results to continue, this doesn’t mean we must stop reaching out to that volunteer who never shows up; it means we have to weigh how much time we spend doing it.

    And remember, for every minute we spend on something with little ROI, we miss spending that minute on something with a large ROI that has impact and moves us in the direction we want to go.

    What steps can we take to determine where we should invest our time?

    • Volunteer ads: Analyze ads’ effectiveness and spend more time on effective ads. Relegate lesser producing ads to your office volunteers to manage. (and if you don’t have a team of volunteers helping you in every aspect of your job description, what the heck are you waiting for?)
    • Volunteers who are unreliable: Set a tolerance number-I will contact a volunteer X number of times and after no response, I will send them a letter/email/message thanking them, inviting them to contact us when ready.
    • Conflict challenges: If a challenging volunteer repeats egregious behaviors, craft a policy on expectations and stick to it. Make sure every volunteer is given a copy, reads and signs the copy and is aware of your policies and the final dismissal step.
    • Educating staff on the many aspects of volunteerism: Start with one important point and repeat, repeat, repeat; then build on that one concept. Too many concepts dilutes the ability to absorb it all.
    • Staff who improperly manage a volunteer’s time: Move the volunteer to a department that effectively engages volunteers. Make no apologies for moving volunteers to departments or positions that meet the volunteer’s needs.
    • Report, speak and substantiate the why: Want change? Infuse the why (specifics) into everything you say and do. For example, “We have an opportunity to partner with a local florist whose employees want to volunteer and potentially donate flowers, fund-raise for us and help advocate for our services. This will lead to other business partnerships so I need support from multiple departments.” Or, “I moved volunteer Tess to finance because her skills were underutilized in client records.”
    • Close your open door: Set aside planning time and remove yourself from distractions. With any repeated behavior, people will grow accustomed to “oh, yeah, Julie’s out right now. It’s planning time. She’ll be back in an hour.”

    Overloaded volunteer managers have no time for weak ROI. Under our careful cultivation, we need flowers that bloom and grow into effective volunteer engagement and impact.

    So, watch out for plastic flowers; they may look colorful, but water them all you want and they still won’t grow.

    Instead, water the flowers blooming with impact and watch your garden grow into a lush volunteer initiative.

    -Meridian

  • The Terrible, Horrible Phone Call or Why Purging Matters

    The Terrible, Horrible Phone Call or Why Purging Matters

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    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    I answered the phone one day to hear, “Yes, this is Juan, the son of Adelia and I just received an invitation in the mail for my mom to this year’s volunteer luncheon. She died. Last year. I thought I’d let you know.”

    “Ohhhhhh, crap.”

    I also vividly remember sitting at a sign-in table for an invitation only event attended by donors, volunteers and dignitaries. And I looked up to see the volunteer we dismissed two months before presenting the invite we sent him.

    Countless volunteer managers have said that the first thing they had to do when they came on-board at their organizations, was purge hundreds of volunteer names off the list.

    We have a difficult challenge because we don’t manage employees. Employees are either in or out. They’re working or they’re not.  They don’t get paid once they quit, move, get fired or die. They are removed from rosters and lists and don’t get official invitations or phone calls. They don’t get calls asking them to “please, just come in for a few hours because we need extra help this week.” Nope, doesn’t happen. We can’t do that. Our volunteers don’t get paid. They exist in a grey area. And we work hard to keep our volunteers engaged enough in this grey area so they return again and again.

    We worry that if we remove a volunteer due to temporary inactivity, we will forget to contact them and therefore, lose them permanently. I remember the thought of forgetting good volunteers was more horrifying to me than leaving my stove on.

    But when can we remove volunteers from an active list? After six months, two years, death? The problem with keeping volunteers who are not active on an active list, is we can’t give an accurate volunteer count. If we say we have 125 volunteers, then staff assumes we have 125 volunteers to choose from when they make a request. That’s far different from choosing from 60 currently active volunteers.

    So, how can we keep volunteers, yet not confuse temporarily inactive volunteers with active ones?

    • Enlist the help of a key volunteer. Ask your volunteer to help maintain a current list by making check-in phone calls. Not only will you be able to distinguish who is active at the moment, you can ask the key volunteer to conduct an informal survey on satisfaction, training, communication or any other topic. And this periodic “checking in” will flesh out problems before they get out of hand.
    • Send the volunteer newsletter to all volunteers. Keep everyone in the loop. Newsletters are great for showcasing new projects, calls to action and for encouraging inactive volunteers to get involved again.
    • Remove the “quitting” stigma. Assure volunteers that you don’t view stepping back as quitting. Show them you have other volunteers on a temporarily inactive list and explain there are many reasons for volunteers to step back. Encourage them to take time they need and let them know you will be checking in with them periodically because they are valued.
    • Keep several lists or use templates that allow you to sort. I’m a big proponent of categorizing volunteers by locale, assignment, training completed, and current availability. It gives a much clearer picture than putting all names on one list. We wouldn’t expect all staff to be listed as substitutes for social workers or accountants. (“Hey, call accounts payable and see if one of their staff can come and do wound care for a day.”) It’s no different with volunteers. If your volunteers need specialized training for an assignment, then just like staff, only those volunteers who have had the training should be in that category.

    Leading volunteers casts a much wider net than managing employees. You don’t hear the phrase “episodic employees” for a reason. Volunteers drop in and out, and some hover on the periphery. (for a take on periphery, see https://volunteerplaintalk.com/2017/09/06/the-volunteer-periphery/ ) (more…)