by Meg Davis
This is part three of our manual on volunteer management.
Now that you have a plan for the volunteers, the next task is to find them, which you can do by talking up your volunteer program in social situations, giving out flyers, sending out emails, posting an ad on your website, or holding volunteer recruitment meetings.
When you have found someone who is interested in volunteering, you should have a set of steps that you can follow for interviewing and “hiring” the volunteer. The steps should be a procedure that is the same for each person, whether the volunteer is someone you just met on the street, or a friend you’ve known for 20 years. Making everyone follow similar steps for recruitment, and having everyone begin and start at the same time, creates an ethic of fairness in the organization and avoids the impression that the organization is run by cliques (more about that in our section on management).
Our recruitment steps include:
1. Give them the job description.
As part of your project planning (see our earlier post on this), you should have some short job descriptions that you can show to potential volunteers. This makes it clear what you expect volunteers to do, any special skills or experience required, and how much time volunteers commit for each job. Reading the job description, the person can decide whether one of the jobs is appropriate for her.
2. Application form.
A simple application form for volunteers to fill out that includes the basic information you need to follow up with people: name, address, phone number(s), email address, areas of interest, skills to offer, hours of availability, some relevant work or volunteer experience, and emergency contacts. This will make it easier for you to assess the right person for each job, and will also make it easier for you to find someone if she doesn’t show up when she is supposed to, or if there is an
emergency.
3. Conduct an interview.
Yes, we do formal interviews with volunteers! The reason for this is that you could wind up spending a lot of time managing or dealing with the wrong person; it’s better to spend the time in advance to find out if the person is a good fit for your organization. A short interview, one on one, gives you an opportunity to talk to the potential volunteer about their interests and experience. You should also take the opportunity to really listen to the person and hear what her concerns and interests are. Listen to see if she sounds reliable and sensible. Does the person really understand and care about the mission of your organization? What is it that she needs or wants from the experience? Can she explain how she would implement a difficult task? Give her a chance to ask questions as well. If you’re not sure about whether or not to bring someone into the organization, have her interview with other colleagues also.
Also, some organizations need to be careful about spies or agents who come in with the intention of disrupting the work or inciting conflict. This is an old tactic used by many countries, and is yet another reason to start off new volunteers with very minimal levels of responsibility, so that you can learn about new people gradually over time.
4. References
If the volunteer job involves any special responsibility or experience, especially handling money or working with vulnerable people, ask for references, and call the references to ask about the person. Listen for what the referee does not say, as well as what she or he does say.
NEVER just bring someone into your organization because “We need to have someone right now, it doesn’t matter who
it is.”
We’ve learned this one the hard way: it ALWAYS matters who it is. An organization is a living organism made out of people, and every single person in your organization is important. A few months later, when you are stressed out over managing a difficult or crazy person, you can really regret that you weren’t more careful. Be objective during your interview, and don’t let yourself be charmed too easily just because someone has a nice personality. If you’re not sure, ask another colleague to give you their opinion.
Once you have made a decision, get back to people quickly. If you find someone good, get them involved early and often. The longer you take to get back to them, the greater the chance that they will change their minds about volunteering. Even if you don’t have a volunteer orientation right away, maybe you have some events coming up that they could participate in.
Orientation
The volunteer orientation is an important building block in the new relationship you develop with volunteers. It is your chance to get everyone together and make sure that all the volunteers know your organization’s mission, what you are about, and what you expect from them. Remember, once they begin to volunteer for you, they are representing your organization to the public. So you want to make sure that they get a sufficient understanding of the organization to be able to describe it accurately to others.
For the volunteers, the orientation is a way to feel confident about what they have committed to, and a way to get prepared to do their work. They learn how what they do fits into the big picture of everything the organization does. They also learn about the culture of the organization and the personalities of the people involved, both from things you say and how you behave during orientation. They learn how decisions are made, and what it will feel like to be a part of this group.
For orientation, we recommend setting at least a few hours aside and providing some drinks and snacks. We also hand out a short manual for volunteers with all the information they hear in the orientation, since some people will forget some things.
Our orientation agenda
includes:
· Getting to know you: A chance for each person to introduce him or herself, and a game to break the ice and get everyone talking.
· An overview to the history of the organization.
· An overview of the mission and the programs.
· Some group discussion of the issues the organization deals with, and what the organization’s views or philosophies are about those core issues.
· An overview of our organization policies (on sexual harassment, anti-discrimination, how to handle conflicts between volunteers, etc.) and volunteer policies (call the team leader if you have to cancel, no talking to media on behalf of the
organization, no plagiarism, etc.)
· A team-building game, to practice and get a feel for what it’s like working together as a team.
· Introducing the goals and schedule for volunteer projects.
· Getting down to work — We always end the orientation with a short ten-to-fifteen-minute team meeting, in which the volunteers split into teams to talk about what they will do in the next week on their projects. This gets people involved right away, and the meeting ends with everyone feeling energized about the future.
If your volunteers will need to learn to do special tasks, or need special knowledge, this may also be the time to train them.
Time management — We try very hard to end all our meetings, but especially the orientation, when we said we would. We know that our volunteers have other commitments in their lives, including work, school and family, so we try to show in that first orientation that just as we expect volunteers to respect their time commitment to the organization, we will
respect their time and not abuse it.
If it looks like a meeting may run late, we stop and ask everyone if they have time to stay for another half hour. If that is inconvenient for a majority of people, we reschedule the meeting for another time. Part of what you are doing in this orientation is building trust and mutual respect with your volunteers that will, hopefully, last for the whole relationship.
For this section, I recommend consulting Energize!
Especially for Leaders of Volunteers, https://www.energizeinc.com/index.html.
Next up: How to manage volunteers and avoid burning them out.
Meg Davis is the
founder and executive director of Asia Catalyst.
