Volunteer Managers - Step Up and Influence!

I am thoroughly enjoying my current role in the volunteerism world. Working with the largest volunteering organisation in my state, my role is to design and implement a renewed volunteer framework, policy, standards, guidelines and tools. I’m like a kid let loose in a candy store! It’s a good place to be with my career at the moment. I’ve been managing programs and leading volunteers for over 21 years. To this role I am bringing much experience and it’s a learning curve for me also.  It is also empowering to get organisational support and resources for such a big and important project and I do believe that organisations that invest in excellent volunteer management systems truly value volunteering.

It has been a reflective time for me as well. A part of me still misses the day to day contact that can come with managing volunteers. ‘It’s all about the people” is a mantra I often use for myself and it keeps me “real” in my current work.

Personally it is satisfying to be doing this current project and it goes to what we can do, as volunteer leaders, with our skills and knowledge. Too often, volunteering strategy and policy is designed by people who do not have subject matter expertise. While the involvement of HR in a collaborative way, along with other stakeholders is important for project design and input, delivering projects like these without volunteer management expertise simply does not make sense and can in fact be detrimental to volunteering.

Too often I see Volunteer Managers underselling and undervaluing their own skill set. There remains an unconscious bias, to some degree, that they are after all “just” managing volunteers. Yet, we should all know by now how complex effective volunteer management is. We should know how many skills it requires and that a skilled volunteer leader is worth their weight in gold!

What I love about volunteering the most is that it is ever changing and fluid. The volunteering space can be a breeding ground for innovation. The volunteering world is one of opportunity as well as hope. Shifting volunteering trends, customer experience and sustainability drivers require us to build and implement the appropriate standards, systems and processes to support leaders to manage volunteering resources responsibly, fairly, effectively and creatively. As trends in volunteering show, the volunteering marketplace is becoming increasingly competitive. So now is the time to be reviewing your volunteering strategy!

This is the opportunity for Volunteer Managers to step up to the plate. Maybe your organisation does not have a strategy to begin with? If not, it can all begin with a conversation and a chance for you to influence up or across in your organisation. If you have a current framework check to see if it is still current!

I still remember clearly a Volunteer Management network meeting I attended about 10 years ago. Present amongst the large group were 3 Volunteer Managers from a hospital group. They wanted to discuss a new policy their organisation had released about volunteering. They had some serious concerns about aspects of this policy. When I asked if they had been consulted about the policy before it was released they said no and actually seemed surprised I had asked! This brings me to the crux of the matter. It’s not about power and it’s not about status. As Subject Matter Experts we should have a thorough understanding of the history, culture, objectives and priorities of volunteering in our organisations. We are the ones who should have the thorough understanding of the world in which volunteering operates.

I would go as far to say that effective volunteer leadership needs far more than the operational day to day duties that go hand in hand with volunteer coordination. It needs collaboration and design skills and a strategic overview that aligns your volunteering service to your organisational mission. In the process you have the opportunity to tick the boxes of recognition, renewal, and innovation and enhancing the service you provide to the people we are helping in our communities. And at the end of the day that end result is what it is all about.

To sum up I am encouraging you to step up. Volunteer Managers should have the opportunity to influence and impact your organisations volunteering practice strategically as well as operationally.

Good luck!

 

 

 

I am saying NO to Racism - Can you Share?

This is a copy of a an article I posted to LinkedIn today. I would also like to record it on my blog. Because our volunteers matter. Because Respect matters. If you come across this article - please share the shit out of it! 

LinkedIn is not a forum for political debate and neither should it be. There is enough debate on Social media today, much of it very divisive. And hurtful.

But this post does concern the workplace and the people who work or volunteer for you. After a recent speech in the Australian parliament where a senator spoke of a “final Solution” and denigrated people of the Muslim faith my mind cast back to when I was living and working in London. Back then the IRA were active and an Irish accent was viewed with suspicion.  Many Irish were falsely detained and imprisoned. There was an atmosphere of fear and distrust and I felt it. Had someone back then said “Not all Irish are terrorists but all terrorists are Irish.” I would have been dismayed and scared.

I have managed many volunteer programs which had people of the Muslim faith in the team as well as Christians, Hindus, Buddhist, others and those of no faith.   Your faith never made a difference. You were a volunteer and your service made a difference.

The Senate speech has been roundly and rightly condemned by most people. Not all but most. Today my heart and my thoughts go out to those wonderful people I have had the privilege of meeting from different background and different religions.  I hope they feel supported in their work places this week.

I hope that our organisations are caring enough to know that this very public debate may be hurting some among our people, our staff and our volunteers. Because right now they need our support more than ever.

I find myself blessed to live in a multicultural Australia and I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land. I acknowledge too that we will have our differences but everyone in our workplace deserves respect and I hope today we give thought to some humanitarian principles that can unite us all.

Volunteering Stories

Ebony* used to volunteer for a program I managed many years ago. She used to volunteer on Mondays and Fridays and was a committed, kind and friendly volunteer. Ebony would sign in for her shift every Monday morning in the sign in book which was next to my desk. On Monday mornings, like clockwork, she would sign in at 8am on the dot with a sigh and usually a comment and then head to her volunteering post. I would sometimes check on her during the day and she would as usual be doing her task with a big smile and she seemed to love her role. But the sigh in the morning intrigued me. Ebony would often comment that the weekend had gone too quickly or say something a little negative about Mondays.

I found this intriguing because in many presentations I did on volunteering I would say that one of the joys about working with volunteers was that you never came across the volunteer who was grumpy because it was a Monday or saying out loud at the end of the week “Thank God it’s Friday eh?”  

Ebony was an exception to this rule. And I heard many a “TGIF” coming from her lips on a Friday. From a volunteer. From a person who choose to be there on a Monday and a Friday! But it was Ebony’s routine and I would often engage her in it to her delight. Had I found a tape of the Boomtown Rats “I don’t like Mondays” I would have had it playing and she would have loved that! (yeah tape – it’s that long ago!)Ebony didn’t see herself as a volunteer per se ,you see, she saw herself as “one of the team” and she loved to fit in with the people around her which allowed her to continue her slight disdain for Mondays for the rest of her life! I loved it and it taught me valuable lessons about volunteer motivation and how so many different aspects can be the prime motivators for people to volunteer.

Last week I visited another place for a meeting where I had managed volunteers over 13 years ago. Sitting in their café memories came flooding back when I saw Alison* sitting in a table near me. Alison was a volunteer at this place when I first started working there 18 years ago. Living with a disability had never hindered Alison in her inspiring work. She had inspired me back then and now sitting opposite her I felt tears well in my eyes.

I left my table to stand near hers. She didn’t recognise me at first but as soon as I said her name and she heard my accent she was standing and hugging me. In fact the hugs kept coming! Alison informed me that she had now been volunteering there for 23 years.

These are volunteering stories. This is why I do what I do.

*Names have been changed