What Do We Need More: Professional Development or Professional Maturity?

The year 2024 marks the 40^thanniversary of International Volunteer Managers Day. With this in mind, Erin did a little digging. She discovered that in just three years from now, 2027 will mark the 80^th anniversary of the first document that discusses the management of volunteers as a paid job, leading to the development of the professional Volunteer Manager.

So we thought it was a good time to reflect on this upcoming milestone by posing a question: What do we need more – professional development or professional maturity?

Unlike when we entered the field, there is a now a wealth of resources, materials, templates and trainings that cover (with varying degrees of accuracy and quality) the fundamentals of Volunteer Management. In some regards, this material is still rooted in the practices of the past; as changes occur in volunteer motivations, preferences and technological advances, these materials will increasingly need to be updated. Look at how so many of our practices have had to adapt since 2020! With change the only constant in our world, we need to be continually changing and innovating.

What we continue to lack, however, is a robust suite of options for advanced, senior-level dialogue, learning and development. But will training get us where we want to go? Or do we need to critically examine our profession’s level of maturity and make this a more important area of focus?

Professional Maturity

Back in 1997, the late Susan J. Ellis wrote about whether Volunteer Management is a profession or not. Ellis noted that being in a profession is “…different from competence on the job. It means affiliation with a field and a willingness to work together to build that field.”

This astute observation from almost 30 years ago implies that something more is needed beyond mere skill development. That something could be understood as what we are calling ‘professional maturity.’

This question of professional maturity is not one we’ve ever reflected on before in Points of View, nor one we have heard being asked by the profession at large. We think it’s long overdue to explore this idea, not least because we are finally at a point where we have a potential tipping point of people in the profession who have enough experience (say, seven- to 10-years plus) and have an appetite for richer, more complex conversations. VolunteerPros President and Founder Tobi Johnson’s recent Volunteer Management Progress Report seems to support this, with her research showing that “length of professional tenure is on the rise.”

To clarify, professional maturity is not the maturity of the individuals within it. Professional maturity is the culture, standards and rigour that a profession has built and holds itself to as a collective. It can be seen in things like: honest and open conversations about difficult topics;  holding each other accountable for our words and actions; and debates about big ideas and our shared values. The respectful challenging of each other’s work – along with open and common debates about ideas, concepts and values – indicates the maturity of a profession. 

In mature professions, there is a commitment to investing in and sustaining the infrastructure of being a professional. This includes investing one’s time to supporting our associations and journals, particularly by contributing to those. This maturity also means having processes that hold us all accountable for our behaviour, performance and the impact, for good or ill, of our work in the public.

Why aren’t we talking about professional maturity?

After so many years, why aren’t we talking about professional maturity? What drives the tension about whether we need to prioritise more learning and development or more professional maturity?

Here’s Erin’s explanation: It’s very likely due to who makes up the majority of the profession. Consider:

• First, our profession is the formalization of work rooted in traditional women’s work – helpers, kind, smiling people. The broader charitable sector is as well, but certain roles within the sector are more deeply entrenched in these strong, gender normative histories, with Volunteer Engagement definitely being one of them. 
  
  This ‘pink collar’ origin likely continues to have long-term impacts on our professional culture. For example, we tend to avoid speaking up, both amongst ourselves and in our organizations. We don’t have strong advocacy muscles and have long bemoaned the lack of respect we receive, even from other female-dominated fields in the sector.
   
• Second, we need to also reconcile with the fact that it’s not all women who are leaders of volunteers. It’s primarily white women, who tend to be educated, cishet and middle-class. This lack of diversity has long-ranging impacts in our ability to truly engage the full breadth of our communities.

As a profession, we have not come to terms with – or taken action to identify and acknowledge – the privileges we hold. We have not sought to eradicate the systemic barriers and biases we are often reinforcing and replicating in our work. That we haven’t done so, or even had widespread conversations around unpacking this, denotes a significant lack of professional maturity. Even more egregious is that we do not hold one another accountable when micro-aggressions and other forms of harm are done towards those peers who don’t fit the dominant norm.

Do We Need To Make A Choice?

In reality, we need better learning and development opportunities for Volunteer Engagement professionals at all levels and we need to develop our collective professional maturity. This isn’t a zero-sum debate.

Our point is that by focusing our learning on the basic Volunteer Management topics – whether at conferences, networking events, online trainings, etc. – we perpetuate the status quo. Instead, we need to start to discuss and debate the more advanced topics and issues that underpin our practice, steps that will begin to elevate our work and grow our professional maturity.

If we truly want to drive Volunteer Engagement forward in our organisations and societies, then we need to make space for investing the time and effort to become a more mature profession, one that truly lives up to its potential. Our world needs this. Are we willing to rise to the challenge?

What Do You Think? 

Should professional maturity be prioritised over learning and development that focuses on the basics?

Do you have an appetite for professional development beyond the 101 / basic level? On which topics? 

What else are we not tackling as a profession? What else is missing in open, critical conversations?

What do you think the profession needs to continue to evolve?

What can you do today to move this debate forward? (Hint: Leaving a comment on this article is a good start!).