Is the message FINALLY being heard re: managing & supporting volunteers?
07:35, 4 February 2010
.. Posted in Volunteerism and Volunteer Management.. Link
The sermon volunteer managers keep preaching (also known as the plea the nonprofit sector keeps making): Volunteers are not free, and involving volunteers successfully takes time, resources and expertise, whether it's a student mentoring program or a one-day beach clean-up (or its online equivalent, "micro-volunteering"). Volunteers don't just waltz in and start working on assignments laying around -- there are no assignments "laying around", and volunteers need support and guidance just as paid staff do. For volunteers to be of real value to an organization, and for them to get a return on their own time investment, assignments must be defined in writing, procedures to screen, orient and place volunteers quickly must also be defined in writing and understood by all employees, and procedures to support volunteers must also be defined, understood and used throughout the organization. And that takes time, money and expertise.
And the private sector doesn't hear the message. Corporations, government officials and the press have largely ignored the sermon (or the plea) over the years. They make speeches and launch campaigns to encourage people to volunteer and promise the volunteers incredible rewards, all without giving organizations the resources they need to involve and support volunteers. Most donors have balked at the idea of funding anything to do with volunteer management (training for staff, software for management, salary for a volunteer manager, etc.). The private sector and government haven't understood why the 20 volunteers that show up at an organization Saturday morning per the latest campaign encouraging people to volunteer are turned away -- because, after all, volunteers are FREE, right?
We've all blogged about this. Okay, I've blogged about it more than once. But maybe the message is, finally, getting through?
In December 2009, the New York Times did an article about student volunteering from the perspective of the organizations expected to involve them. It opens with a woman running a tiny nonprofit in Massachusetts who dreaded students descending on her organization each year. "Droves of students were walking through my door, interrupting my day and asking, ‘What can I do here?’ ” she says. “A whole other crowd would send résumé after résumé after résumé expecting me to call them back... It was total havoc.” But that changed when she got the resources she needed to work with these student volunteers, and the article notes that "a positive experience usually requires a considerable investment of time and planning."
A month later, the New York Times did another article, highlighting the involvement of nearly 200 AmeriCorps Vista members who worked in nonprofits and schools across the city "as a kind of consulting force, helping nonprofit agencies fine-tune their programs and recruit and deploy even more volunteers." In other words, they were deployed as volunteer managers, and the volunteer management expertise and resources they brought "resulted in 18,000 new volunteers serving 67,000 New Yorkers." AmeriCorps Vista members are not free; they receive a stipend for their activities, and this comes from government funding. That means it took serious cash to mobilize these people to support volunteer management functions.
Are at least the press and government officials understanding the considerable investment of time and planning successful volunteer involvement takes? Will corporations follow suit eventually? Is the tide turning at long last?
Stay tuned...
