Nurturing resilience is a gift to your future self. It doesn’t matter if change is upheaval or small, it upsets the status quo and we can nurture a “change is not the end of the world” mindset, so that when changes occur, volunteers are prepared to work through them.
We invest in people. But we don’t often measure our investment’s growth. We’re too overwhelmed with daily work to stop and take stock of our positive influence on volunteers and our missions.
Experiential learning teaches us to apply knowledge from doing. It forces us to experiment until we get things right.
-Meridian
Some of the cards I received included timely messages about the organization’s work. I find that more engaging than a simple signature. But a message to me as an active volunteer when I’m not, is tone-deaf.
Let those tucked away regrets motivate you to be constructive so they don’t turn into full-on guilt. Regrets can either keep us paralyzed by guilt or they can motivate us to grow by making us constructive.
To reframe volunteer engagement and impact, we first need listeners who become supporters who then become advocates for our vision. Our reputation needs to reflect our self-identity as leaders of volunteers.
Being zombified means through stressors, you’ve lost your vitality, your human essence. You’ve lost you.
Think about a potential volunteer’s questions when navigating your site. “Who is the first person I will meet? Who will train me, direct me, encourage me, coach me, teach me what I need to know to succeed? Who will be there for me when I have an issue?”
Nonprofits no longer have the monopoly on solving issues. What can business teach us about our current volunteering model?
