Copyright, 2014 Knowledge Transfer Publishing

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Knowledge Transfer, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-928794-03-5

Editor: Andrea Pitcock

Knowledge Transfer Publishing
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Revised 2014
First e-book edition 2014

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To Ann, my life and business partner, without whose love and support this book would still be in my dreams

Contents

Introduction

Introduction

No matter how big and powerful government gets, and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers.

Ronald Reagan

The purpose of this book is to help you build a more successful volunteer program. Simply stated, that is it, but simple the task is not. It will require a large dose of common sense, combined with a solid understanding of people, a dab of contemporary management and leadership theory, plus a large amount of praise and recognition ideas. People volunteer for many different reasons and the more we know about our volunteers the easier our recruiting and the higher our retention rate. Getting, and keeping good people is really the key to a successful volunteer leadership.

The Care & Feeding of Volunteers seminars, and this book, have evolved from many years of working with volunteers. Having worked as a volunteer in many different settings, I was usually well treated and therefore enjoyed my volunteer activities. But every once in a while I felt a little exploited or even ignored by my volunteer organization and therefore found myself losing interest in volunteering. Sometimes, it was simply a feeling of a lack of appreciation on the part of the director of the volunteer program. Quite often, as a volunteer coordinator, I found myself doing things that caused me to lose volunteers, even though I was unaware of exactly what was causing this to happen. This book will share a number of these situations and hopefully my experiences and stories will give you food for thought.

Corporate America has moved from a psychology of management as controller of people to an aura of leadership allowing employees to develop their own environment. The tools they use to create this setting are empowerment, team building, recognition, praise, and coaching. As I reviewed these leadership practices, it became clear that much of what was shining in that arena would directly transfer to the volunteer setting. The practice of empowerment, team building, coaching, praise and recognition all apply with little or no change.

This book will alter the paradigm of how we in the non-profit and governmental volunteer settings manage volunteers. Much of this book is simply commonsense, and some of it is restating age old principles of doing the right thing. Hopefully, this book reinforces Nordstrom’s one-page employee handbook which states that associates should “use their own best judgment in all things.” My thoughts have been influenced by the writings of Ken Blanchard and that wonderful little book, The One-Minute Manager, which stresses that the best way to develop people is by catching them doing something right and praising them for it.

Truthfully, the job of being a volunteer coordinator is whatever it takes! And what it takes is a person willing to practice many roles, being a social director, a coach, a cheerleader, a task master, a facilitator, an entertainer, a leader and a friend. Our volunteers enjoy their work as a volunteer and want to have fun. I suggest that we all look at Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kellegher as a model for creating a work environment that is absolutely fun. This theme of lightening up the volunteer place will run through the chapters of this book. It is my hope that you will find each chapter of this book refreshing and that all of us can find new ways to care and feed our volunteers.

Chapter 1

No More Warm Bodies!

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Stephen Jobs

Recently, while wandering through a mall, I saw a large poster on the wall. It stated:

Wanted, Volunteers
No Experience Necessary
Warm Bodies Wanted
Just Come On In!

Is this really what you want? Just warm bodies? No experience? Anyone who is interested regardless of their motives? I don’t really think so.

The first point is that advertising doesn’t really work. In fact, a recent study has shown that only about 9% of all volunteers come from an advertisement. In fact, over 90% of all volunteers come from someone asking them to volunteer.

The real danger of the “warm body” ad is that you might just have 100 volunteers show up excited to start! Let’s be honest, you post the ad expecting to locate those five to ten volunteers you need. What do you do with those 100 people that responded? You select the first ten and lose the other 90 volunteers. These 90 volunteers that you do not select will be “unhappy campers” and will probably never volunteer for you again, and in fact, will spread the negative word about how you operate. One thing we do know, is that if we ask someone to volunteer, we had better be ready to use their talents. Volunteers have little patience for someone who doesn’t use their interest in a reasonable amount of time.

The real issue is that you were really not interested in warm bodies - you were looking for experienced, knowledgeable, talented volunteers to perform specific tasks. In fact, I don’t even search for volunteers, I search for work that needs to be done. At one point I was working to start a city volunteer program, and to gather enough jobs for volunteers I sent out the typical letter calling for support from various city departments. My letter to each department manager stated the following, “Do you have any work in your department that volunteers can do?” This was the wrong letter! What came back from these department heads was the following. No! We have no work that volunteers are capable of performing. You see the mindset of these department heads? They were afraid of getting a group of warm bodies, untrained and incapable of performing anything but basic tasks. Even for basic tasks, volunteers require a large output of training and supervision, hardly worth the effort. I was confused and even hurt by their lack of support for the new volunteer effort our city was putting together. But after a few cups of coffee, I found out that each manager had a concern about the time and effort required to work with volunteer.

Having realized my naive efforts, I sent another letter requesting any assignments that the departments needed filled and that they might schedule over the next year, if the required resources appeared. Of course, the departments thought I was indicating dollar resources, but I meant highly qualified professional talent who could perform those jobs. For example, one department indicated a need for a web site. I contacted a local university and obtained the services of an outstanding graduate student in engineering who gave the city their web site. Not once did the department have any thoughts about the quality of work performed by this computer consultant. The department head said they would like to retain this expert if the consulting budget would allow. They had no idea that I had recruited the services of a student volunteer from the university service-learning program. The difference was clear, It was the attitude of the department heads that working with volunteers was more work than the amount of effort coming forth from the volunteers. But the real issue was the way I had approached their support. I needed to stress the fact that I had a group of fellow professionals willing to assist their program.

My approach since that time has been to assume that every person being asked to volunteer is a professional with skills and talent. That is so true, everyone in life has gathered a collection of specific skills and talents that they use as moms and dads and employees. My job is to search out these talents and put the volunteer to work making use of these talents. The right person, at the right time, with the right talents, is the key to good volunteer assignments. The key then, to the quality of the team of volunteers, is selecting the right people. John Maxwell, in his book, Developing the Leaders Around You, quotes Red Auerbach, longtime Boston Celtics president, who says, “How you select people is more important than how you manage them once they are on the job. If you start with the right people, you won’t have problems later on. If you hire the wrong people, for whatever reason, you’re in serious trouble and all the revolutionary management techniques in the world won’t bail you out.”

Many leadership gurus suggest that selecting the right players determines 80% of the success of any organization. But equally important to selecting the right people, is having the right expectations for your volunteers. You have all heard about the “ Pygmalion Theory”, that says that if we expect someone to succeed, they probably will and if we expect them to fail, they probably will. This theory has a lot to do with the “self-fulfilling prophecy” idea. That is, when a person predicts that something will happen, they setup an expectation. This expectation actually changes the way the person behaves. Think back to a time in your life when you had someone, your dad or a coach, who believed in you and pushed you to excel. You did excel. Their support or, more importantly, their expectations about you, created a positive feeling in you that led to improved performance.

James Kouzez and Barry Posner, in their book, Encouraging the Heart, share a thought by Tom Melohn that says, “Simply stated, people must believe that they are capable of solving the problem, of finding a new and better way. Or they won’t. They can’t if they don’t believe in themselves, in their own capabilities…” This feeling in volunteers of self-expectation is key to their success in their volunteer assignments. But more important than the volunteer’s self-expectation is the support and reinforcement that the volunteer coordinator must give to each volunteer.

Chapter 2

People Really Don’t Volunteer

The most enthusiastic givers in life are the real lovers of life. They experience the soul-joy that comes from responding with the heart rather than the head.

Helen Steiner Rice

Think about it. When you were sitting in a PTA meeting and the leader asked for volunteers to head a busy committee, did everyone say YES? Or did anyone say YES? Did you immediately throw up your hand? Me neither. I always need more information before I decide. In fact, usually, unless someone directly asks us and tells us why they selected us, we don’t volunteer.

Ask - that’s the critical item. I recently saw an article in the Los Angeles Times with the headline “More Teens Would Volunteer If Asked, But Many Just Aren’t Approached.” It basically says that America’s teens are likely to become community volunteers, if they’re asked. But nobody is asking them. The latest Gallup Poll shows teens are four times more likely to volunteer if asked, than if they are not asked. Since people really don’t walk in and say, “I want to volunteer,” we need to design our training program around two things. First, how to find people to ask and then, that all important training in how to ask.

Where should we be looking for volunteers? It’s not so much where to look as it is how to look for volunteers. It’s a change in mindset. Think about visiting one of your local stores. Maybe it’s Kinko’s, your local speedy print shop. You walk in and the woman behind the counter says, “Good morning, can I help you?” What about her? Isn’t she a potential volunteer for your organization? Of course. But how do we convert her from a person helping us in a store to a person helping us as a volunteer?

Recruiting volunteers is a three-step process. The steps are prospect, cultivate, and ask (PCA). Prospects are potential volunteers. Where do we find potential volunteers? Well, the answer is everywhere, but your best prospects are those close to you. I call this the ONE SQUARE MILE rule. By this, I mean that the people within your one square mile are your most likely volunteers. One square mile is just a way of saying that people like to affiliate with organizations where they already have a connection. This connection might be the school where their children attend. Or it might be the church they attend, or even the city they live in. It makes a lot of common sense for someone to volunteer for an organization that they have an attachment with already.

Let’s go back to that prospect at your local Kinko’s print shop just down the street from you. You go there all the time and probably know the sales people in the store. In order words, you already have a relationship with these people. They are within your one square mile rule. Everytime you visit the store and converse with these people, you talk about your needs. Is that true? Well, you do talk about your printing needs, correct? But you do not talk about your volunteer needs. These are prospects, potential volunteers, and they might find your organization of interest. It is true that most people do think about giving a little time to a volunteer organization, but most have no direct connection to a volunteer place, and without that connection the thought remains just a thought and it never moves to action.

So how do you get this person at Kinko’s to consider volunteering for you? Step 2 of the PCA approach, CULTIVATE. Cultivation simply means to inform people of the volunteer opportunities that your organization offers. And to do it in as exciting a way as you can. Most people looking for volunteers use the old tin cup method, they go begging. Wrong! The best way to attract people to volunteering is to excite them about the opportunities for them when they volunteer with your organization.

Let me give you an example of cultivation. My friend Jefferey was a prime prospect to volunteer for the Friendly Visitors program of which I was a volunteer. One day, following a round of golf, I asked Jefferey if he would consider becoming a volunteer for the group. He said, “Bill, that is so weird!” That surprised me. I said, “Why is that weird, Jefferey?” He said that just this week he had received a brochure on the Friendly Visitor program. I laughed and said, “Yes, you did, I sent it to you!” My point is that before I asked my friend to volunteer I made sure that he had all the information about the program.

This is the cultivation we are discussing. Cultivation means nothing more than giving someone all the information about your group that they need to help them decide to volunteer. People do not volunteer for organizations that they know nothing about. People need to be informed as to the needs, and the groups filling those needs. Everyone has only so much time to volunteer, and they will consider whether your group is the most effective use of their time.