Is Volunteer Management Just a Stepping Stone?

Allyson Drinnon, a Volunteer Management expert and the author of this Engage feature, admits that she “stumbled into a career as a Volunteer Engagement professional without any formal training, and without a real plan.” Her professional career began at a large international organization, where she provided training and resources that helped volunteer administration professionals. She eventually noticed that no one stayed in the Volunteer Management roles for very long, a situation she wanted to change. Armed with data, she took her concerns to the COO of her organization, and his replay shocked her: “Maybe you are looking at this the wrong way. Maybe this is just a stepping stone that brings people onto better positions.”     

In this first-person feature story, Drinnon describes her “heart-stopping” reaction to this comment, and her journey to understand the truth in the COO’s statement, why people leave the field and if there’s an upside to this reality. As Drinnon writes, “As a sector, we can think outside the box and not be so focused, as I was, on Volunteer Management as a single-track career path, but rather as a potential cross-cutting stepping stone on everyone’s path that connects people no matter what journey they are on as a career.”