United States

A community organizer is usually a social agitator who wants to build grassroots power. While a volunteer manager may be working toward social justice, the primary goal of this position is usually tied to a pre-determined objective, like service delivery or broader organizational support like fundraising. In practice, the roles often overlap. Both require a high level of interpersonal skills, insight into what motivates people, and the leadership to get those people to act in ways that benefit the community.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, author Aimee Inglis discusses the often fine line between the two fields and the tension this creates in the volunteer community. Inglis explains that “as a volunteer manager who is also trained in community organizing — and currently working at a nonprofit that organizes for social and economic justice and tenants’ rights — I have felt the line blur between the two fields. I have also felt the tension as both fields professionalize and learn the same lessons in silos where they would be stronger sharing notes.”

Inglis builds on her personal experiences as she examines not only the history of community organizing but also how community organizing and volunteer engagement have become part of the profession. Inglis also proposes ways for volunteer managers to bridge what she calls the unnecessary divide between these fields.

 

When it comes to volunteer leadership, experienced volunteer manager Meridian Swift believes that two models dominate: reactive or proactive. But in this e-Volunteerism feature, Swift argues that it’s time to break the cycle of being a reactive volunteer manager – someone who waits for volunteer requests and then works hard to fulfill them – and ease into proactive volunteer management that anticipates needs and consistently networks with the decision-making staff.

“While reactive volunteer management will get the job done, proactive volunteer management frees us to take control and responsibility for volunteer services, to become creative, expand our circle of influence, have a hand in decision making and ultimately elevate ourselves within our organizations,” writes Swift. Through examples and additional insights, Swift outlines the way to proactive leadership for current and future volunteer leaders.

 

Reflection is essential for learning. In order to “make meaning” of an experience, the learner must have an opportunity to reflect on or process the experience. To help ensure that program participants transfer learning and training experiences into real-world applications, we must be intentional about both engaging the learners and creating opportunity for meaningful reflection. 

In this Training Designs, author Anne Stevenson offers a variety of strategies and tools to help engage learners and embed more reflective learning into volunteer-centered workshops, meetings, or educational programs.

Think of how meaningful and useful it would be to peer inside the heart of every one of your volunteers – to understand what is important to them, what inspires them, what gets them excited, what taps into their passion, and what keeps them dedicated to your mission. Or you could gain insight into the factors that may diminish their enthusiasm or make them feel a little less jazzed about serving the cause. 

Sound like some crystal ball fantasy? It doesn’t have to be. Leaders in high-performing organizations are already doing this through what is called coaching, a form of leadership that sounds deceptively simple yet takes skill to do effectively and some practice to master.

In this feature article, author Barry Altland shows how dedicating time to engage in scheduled, ongoing, and meaningful conversations with longer-term volunteers reveals what is in their hearts that drives their choice to continue to serve. The key? Ask the right questions. Listen intently. Probe a little deeper than the occasional, casual hallway conversation allows. As Altland explains, this strategic, purposeful, and proactive time investment can and will make the difference in sustaining the engagement of more volunteers.       

In this feature article, Elisa Kosarin introduces behavior-based interviewing as an extremely effective screening method for assessing highly-skilled volunteer applicants. 

Kosarin’s article is based on the author’s extensive experience working for Fairfax Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) in Virginia, where highly specialized volunteers advocate for the best interests of abused or neglected children living under the court’s protection. Using behavior-based interviewing techniques, a  reassessment of volunteer screening and interviewing processes produced dramatic and positive results for the program, including: a significant decrease in the number of volunteers dropping or not taking cases (from 25 percent to 2 percent in just two years); and a dramatic increase in volunteer retention (from 29 percent to 48 percent over five years). As Kosarin explains, the implementation of behavior-based interviewing played a major role in this turnaround.

In addition to providing a short narrative on Fairfax CASA’s shift to behavior-based interviewing, the article includes:

• A step-by-step guide for implementing the method in a volunteer program;
• Practical guidelines for conducting the interview;
• Examples of how the method is applied in various other programs.

In this Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews a study examining factors that influence volunteer satisfaction and volunteer contributions, defined as a combination of the number of programs involved in and the number of hours served. Specifically, the study looked at leadership style and volunteer motivations. Mook explains that motives that predicted volunteer satisfaction were different from those that predicted contributions, and that transformational leadership impacted satisfaction but not contributions. In other words, the most satisfied volunteers are not necessarily the ones making the most contributions to an organization’s mission.

Mook also reviews the implications of these findings for organizational administrators who are looking to increase the contributions of their volunteers.  

 

One of the most powerful things a volunteer can do is see a need and start trying to meet it. With enough passion and hard work, that initial maverick will attract other volunteers to the cause and a worthy organization will emerge and grow. That evolution might expand over time to raising money, hiring staff, and moving volunteers to governing boards and service-assisting positions. That’s the history of most of the institutions and organizations we take for granted today.

In this article, we introduce Stephanie Myers, a recent MPA (Masters in Public Administration) graduate at Villanova University in Villanova, PA. As readers soon learn, Myers is a decidedly determined young woman who is taking steps to try and change the world through her role as a volunteer and her dedication to a cause: the unrecognized – and therefore untreated – mental health issues among student athletes. To address these issues, Myers founded Mind4Athletes, Inc. (M4A), an organization so new that it doesn’t even have a Web site yet. In this article, we get to know Myers and her work, and discuss why and how she decided to form M4A.

In future stories published over the next months and years, we’ll revisit Myers and M4A to see how things are going. We hope this shared journey will give our volunteer management readers insight into how to support mavericks, Millennials, and dreamers like Myers.   

In this quarter’s Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews a study by Mark A. Hager and Jeffrey L. Brudney testing whether or not the “adoption of ‘best practices’ (such as interviewing volunteers, matching them to assignments, supervising volunteer activities, and recognizing their contributions to organizations) are associated with program outcomes of recruitment ease, retention of volunteers, and the net benefits that volunteers bring to organizational operations” (2015, 235). The data arise from telephone interviews with volunteer administrators or executive directors in a nationally representative survey of 1,361 organizations in the U.S. Their findings may cause you to rethink (or reinforce!) your approach to volunteer management.

Just think about it: What helps explain why organizations don’t bother giving volunteers proper training or structure? Why do paid staff often act as though volunteers aren’t really human? Why are milk and cookies universally present at volunteer recognition events? In this issue of Voices, Publishing Editor Emeritus Steve McCurley has the answer: “They think they’re elves!”

Although he has presented this talk at many conferences and workshops over the years, McCurley’s witty and thought-provoking discourse on elf management is presented here for the very first time in print. Enjoy.