As volunteer engagement professionals, we scratch our heads and ask ourselves, “how do we harness the enthusiasm we find when disasters strike and how do we keep the volunteer mojo going?” Right there is the problem:
How do we show volunteer value? In the old days, (way before Covid) we, volunteer engagement professionals, used three basic …
I’ve mistakenly done all of it. It was easy to do when I was swamped, struggling and in need of that awesome volunteer who patted me on the head and told me everything was ok.
Volunteers trail portions of us when in the community and bring portions of our community to us every time they volunteer. They bring our mission to the community and the freshness of our communities to us.
What was it that drew me to them, and them to me? Did we share similar backgrounds? Heck no. Did we share similar experiences, thoughts, tastes, preferences? Nope.
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.
volunteerplaintalk 