United States

Volunteers are the backbone of our communities, a fact that we all appreciate every day on the job while coordinating and managing volunteer programs. This article is about one volunteer manager’s successful experience helping a valued community member with special needs connect with a volunteer role that would suit her. Author Kayla Young explains that she decided to share her experience to provide encouragement to all leaders of volunteers who work with people who may need a bit of extra initial training and support. “With our busy schedules, a common reaction to special needs may be, ‘I’m sorry but I don’t have time for that,’” writes Young. “But as you’ll see from this story, a tiny investment in standing up for the potential of others can often yield big results for your organization.”

What do cats have to do with training?

As a trainer, it is often easier to facilitate sessions when the group has similar experiences and similar levels of expertise or starting points. Yet there is a richness of knowledge and experience that diversity can yield. Cats are not naturally herding animals, and to get them to come together as a group can be challenging. In this Training Designs, author Reva Cooper shares what she has learned about training groups when participants are at very different starting points. Her experiences and insights will no doubt stimulate your own thoughts about facilitating and “herding cats” so that differences are honored and everyone learns and grows through the training experience. 

What does it mean to move beyond volunteers as a “program” and, instead, embrace engagement as a strategy to fulfill your mission? The shift starts by understanding the benefits of developing a strategic plan for volunteer engagement. In this article, writer Beth Steinhorn highlights some of the research behind volunteer engagement strategies and shares a step-by-step process for developing a volunteer engagement strategic plan. She traces how one regional humane society developed such a plan and, as a result, is now lightening its staff’s heavy workload, bringing more skills into the organization, gaining more advocates, increasing resources, and ultimately helping more animals. 

 

On June 6, 1939, youngsters who loved to hit a ball and run some bases played the first Little League baseball game at Park Point in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Today, what began as a three-team organization has grown into Little League^® International (LLI) – spreading across the United States and into 100 countries, involving nearly 1.5 million adult volunteers committed to helping young Little League players develop athletic skills alongside concepts of character and loyalty.

Despite its world-famous work and engagement of volunteers, there has been little exchange between LLI and the volunteer management field. In this Voices, Lori Renner Larsson sets out to fill this void with her review of Little League volunteers, answering questions about their structure and how they are coordinated while sharing insights about the lasting appeal of volunteering around children and baseball.

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.