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?
I think we, volunteer managers tend to deny our negative feelings because we’re always “on.” We’re looked at as cheerful people with can-do attitudes and we don’t think we can have bad days. But we can. Because we’re human and our human-ness is what makes us so darned effective.
We, leaders of volunteers (#LoVols) have shared experiences, shared hopes, shared challenges and a shared future. We are a family, …
we can’t say no-which creates a loop in which we never get anything done or we have the best of intentions- but the road to the volunteer apocalypse is paved with good intentions
Picture a student, late at night, phone in hand, swiping through ads that will fulfill their desire to be a change maker. Or a senior, recently widowed, searching in the still morning for something that will add meaning to a bruised soul
The visionary approach is to offer the impact of volunteer involvement and remove the objections to it.
