In this very personal Voices, join a conversation with Agnetta Nyalita as she takes you through her journey as a young African promoting volunteerism in her home in Kenya and across Africa. Nyalita will share stories of the struggles and progress made on the continent, how her quest affected her personal and career development, and how her efforts connect to the global landscape.
As every volunteer manager knows, your mission is BIG! It takes a lot of creativity, funding, and work from staff and dedicated volunteers to accomplish. But what happens when those very volunteers detract from your efforts instead of supporting them? Are some volunteers in a heated conflict with one another or, worse, in conflict with you and maybe even the direction of your organization? As a volunteer manager, how would you respond to such a negative but entirely possible scenario?
In this feature story, Marla Benson, creator of the Volunteer Conflict Management SystemSM, offers five key strategies to manage volunteer conflict before, during, and after it occurs.
Do church volunteers ever experience conflict? Of course they do. Conflict is unavoidable and, when handled in a healthy way, can even result in benefits. Identifying strategies for building unity and minimizing unhealthy conflict among church volunteers are crucial steps in a ministry’s success.
In his doctoral dissertation, Shan Caldwell explored whether applying the recognized secular principles of conflict management and volunteer management would succeed in dealing with disputes among church volunteers. In this feature article, Caldwell shares a set of simple concepts with implications for any faith-based organization. By putting these concepts into action, Caldwell examines how the possibility for healthy, productive, and successful volunteer teams in any setting grows exponentially.
We often think of well-functioning volunteer programs as happy little families, systems in which people get along so well that they resemble the idyllic picture of family relationships portrayed in U.S. television shows from the 1950s. And while this is often true, occasionally we run into situations where the family more resembles the Ozzy Osbournes.
The notion of families volunteering together is one that has a lot of intrinsic appeal and a lot of value. In this Points of View, however, we look at things from a slightly different perspective: the potential conflicts that arise when individuals with close outside relationships – spouses, siblings, relatives, close friends, co-workers, fellow church members – are volunteering “inside” the same organization but those “outside” relationships, either positive or negative, begin to affect volunteering behavior.
We examine what happens when volunteer programs actually involve those with family-like relationships in volunteering together, analyze what is likely to happen in these scenarios (and why), and offer some tips for what to do if you encounter problems or to prevent them in the first place.
As we’ve often noted, the most frequently-requested topic for a workshop that any volunteer management trainer receives has always been, and continues to be, employee/volunteer relationships. The tension between paid and unpaid staff surfaces in all types of organizations and settings, and program leaders want to find ways to develop effective teamwork.
Less often discussed, but just as prevalent, is conflict in volunteer-to-volunteer relationships. This can express itself in various ways, from long-time volunteers being less than welcoming to newcomers; to generational, ethnic or cultural groups that don’t mix with others; to “true believers” versus those who are “just helping.” The truth is that volunteers do not automatically work well together or even like each other. It’s up to us to foster good relationships among volunteers just as we seek to assure teamwork between volunteers and paid staff.
In this “Points of View,” Susan and Steve discuss the consequences of volunteer-to-volunteer tension, why you neglect such relationships at your peril, and how to assess if you are helping or hindering volunteer unity.
Nametags are your best friends – especially in volunteer situations where new people constantly come and go. They provide outlets for communication not unlike front porches, in that they make people less uncertain and more approachable. What’s more, with the disclosure of personal information, nametags close the chasm between synergy and isolation, thereby transforming strangers into friends.
This Training Design explores four basic principles of nametags:
And it does so with humor, illustrations, and even a cartoon! Scott Ginsberg is "the world's foremost field expert on nametags" and the author of HELLO my name is Scott.