The majority of e-Volunteerism readers are leaders of volunteers and many of us play a significant role in training volunteers. But should that be the case? In this Training Designs, editor Erin R. Spink asks some tough questions about the role that leaders of volunteers play in training volunteers. By looking into what she calls “the trouble with training,” Spink offers insights into why and how this could look different.
Have you ever felt like you are working all alone in volunteer management, or being pulled in different directions by groups working in siloes? Then you will be excited to hear about the launch of the new National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement, a group that developed after the 2017 National Summit on Volunteer Engagement Leadership “to guide future collective action at the national level towards embracing volunteer engagement as an effective strategy to address community needs.”
In this Voices, author Allyson Drinnon hears from some of the people active in the National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement movement. They explain why this collective action at the national level will advance the power and potential of volunteer engagement.
In this month's Points of View, Rob Jackson and Erin R. Spink consider the importance of "laddering" in the volunteer management profession. Jackson and Spink define laddering as “the opportunity to report to someone more senior than you who is also a leader of volunteers.” They help explain what difference this does and doesn't make, and why it may be important to the field. Join this important conversation about what could be the missing ingredient and a potential turning point for the future of volunteer engagement.
What role can volunteering and leaders of volunteer engagement play in developing future leaders? This Research to Practice reviews a new instrument developed specifically to help volunteer resource managers identify future leaders in their volunteer base.
Recognizing that many of the qualities that prompt individuals to volunteer are also qualities of leaders, leadership development researchers Janina Fuller and Curtis Friedel set out to develop a way to identify volunteers who had the desire and potential to develop as leaders. To do so, they conducted two surveys with volunteers from HandsOn Network affiliates across the U.S. The first survey aimed to understand volunteers’ perceived advantages and disadvantages of developing leadership as volunteers. The second survey posed questions to volunteers to capture leadership behaviors and intentions. As the authors write, “Organizations that purposefully recognize their volunteers’ leadership skills generate positive consequences not only for themselves and their volunteers, but also for the clients and the communities they serve.”
The disappointment began with a simple question: What are the significant issues facing volunteer managers today? And when the answers mimicked the exact same responses from 10 years before, volunteer management expert and Points of View co-author Rob Jackson’s heart sank: The profession of volunteer management hadn’t progressed at all over the last decade.
That was in 2007. Now, as Jackson and co-author Susan J. Ellis write, “it seems as if our profession is still stuck at the same stage of development. How are we ever going to succeed if we cannot collectively overcome the challenges that continue to dog us in our field?”
In this Points of View, Jackson and Ellis suggest a simple path toward change: Steer clear of the choice to mimic what others are doing and instead develop and follow a passion for volunteer management work by refocusing on its purpose and promise.
Volunteer engagement certainly encounters its fair share of mistakes and failures, which is part of life. But think about it: When was the last time you went to a conference workshop that focused on how someone failed? Don’t we most often focus instead on the successes we've had?
In this Points of View, Rob Jackson and Susan J. Ellis argue that while no one likes to admit – or recall – such uncomfortable experiences, we should learn from them and be willing to share the experiences of mistakes and failures with others. Activities without risk may seem safe, they point out, but “are actually dormant. Worse, they may no longer be helpful to your mission, which means that you are asking volunteers to waste their time.”
Good governance is the foundation of all successful nonprofit and membership organizations, and much has been written to help boards of directors do their work well. But most of the literature and available training about how to develop an effective volunteer board focuses only on groups large enough to have paid staff who handle day-to-day responsibilities. What about the thousands of all-volunteer organizations (AVOs), where the board is in charge of everything and paid employees are rare if nonexistent?
AVOs depend entirely on volunteers to be workers and board members. These leadership volunteers must ensure that by-laws are followed, money is well managed, and legal requirements are met—and also have to plan projects and motivate their many members! One familiar AVO category is friends groups—also known as auxiliaries, depending on the setting—that support hospitals, libraries, museums, parks, and cultural heritage institutions. And though these friends groups serve different institutions, many face the same struggles as they deal with organization management and leadership needed to guide and govern their associations.
This edition of Along the Web focuses on resources to help AVO board members deal with the fundamental issues facing AVO boards. While a few of these resources were developed for specific groups, such as libraries or museums, most deal with challenges that impact all AVOs, and can be useful regardless of your organization’s focus.
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.
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 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.