Volunteer Management

Introduction

Building upon each volunteer’s unique interests to call forth their leadership.

Overview

Volunteer recruitment, training and management resources.

Page Index

  • Key Issues
  • Common Problems and Solutions
  • Successful Strategies
  • Annotated Web Resources
  • Topic Library
  • Sub-Topics and Vendors


    • Key Issues Related to this Topic

  • Relationships are key to finding and developing volunteer leaders. As we all know, taking time out of a busy day to ask a volunteer how they are doing makes all the difference in the world. Volunteers are in an exchange relationship with your organization. Volunteers give of their time and talents and receive back many benefits: improved neighborhood safety, marketable job skills and most importantly a sense of meaning and connection with others.

  • Neighborhood associations are training grounds for civic leaders. Many City Council members and nonprofit, business and government leaders got their start as neighborhood activists. See each new volunteer who comes into your organization as someone with a potential life-time of contributions to make.

  • Block leaders need ongoing training and support. Block leaders can do much to spark the involvement of their neighbors, but need ongoing support to keep up their efforts. Neighborhoods use many different methods to support their block club leaders including block captain newsletters, training evenings, mini grants and recognition events.

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    Common Problems and Solutions

  • Tracking volunteers. While neighborhood associations often have hundreds of residents attending activities each year, few of these residents become active volunteers. Volunteer sign-up sheets (that request a variety of contact options), a well maintained volunteer data base, a quarterly newsletter and annually-updated phone banks are tools that neighborhood groups successfully use to turn their attendance lists into active volunteer lists.

  • Expanding beyond a small core group. Many neighborhood groups depend upon a small group of a dozen or so committed volunteers to keep the group and its projects going. Potential new volunteers must be given a chance to speak and be heard at meetings so that their ideas, needs and dreams can get included in the group’s work plan. When new volunteers feel a sense of ownership for an organization and its projects, they are more likely to get involved.

  • Volunteer burn out. Community members who have provided valuable service often decide to pull back from volunteering because of pressures in their personal life, unproductive meetings, unresolved conflict, feeling unacknowledged and many other reasons. Strategies which many neighborhood associations are using to prevent volunteer burn out include offering volunteers the opportunity to cut back on volunteering when they need to, providing meeting facilitation training, hosting volunteer recognition events and by encouraging each volunteer to mentor a new volunteer to share the workload and take over their responsibilities when their term has been completed.

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    Successful Strategies

  • Clear job descriptions can reduce the fear of involvement for volunteers. A key to volunteer recruitment and management is writing clear volunteer job descriptions including the responsibilities, required skills and time commitment. Busy people can feel more comfortable about saying “yes” when a volunteer job has a definite start, time commitment and end point.

  • Where and how to find new volunteers. Any one who feels a connection to your neighborhood is a potential volunteer. Neighborhood groups use many channels to get their message out to potential volunteers. Methods include word-of-mouth outreach, door knocking, one-on-one invitations, recruitment tables at meetings, phone banks created from lists of people who have attended meetings, announcements in neighborhood papers, and tapping into church, school and other existing groups of volunteers. Volunteer placement agencies like the United Way Volunteer Center may also help you identify new volunteers.

  • Youth and seniors may be untapped resources. Neighborhood youth and seniors, many of whom are not in the work force, often have the time, energy and motivation to serve their community. With the proper support, youth and seniors can provide valuable leadership within your organization.

  • Volunteer Orientation. Orienting new volunteers properly is critical to their success. Thorough volunteer orientation includes giving ample time for volunteers to describe their interests and passions, providing background on the history of the group, and providing a clear description of the responsibilities for the volunteer and introductions to the key staff and volunteers they will be working with. In addition, help the volunteer see how their job relates to the larger mission of the organization.

  • Volunteer Training, Support and Development. A wonderful perk for volunteers is to offer them access to training opportunities. This expands the personal professional skills of your volunteer, strengthens the allegiance of the volunteer to your group, and provides your group with a higher capacity volunteer. It is usually better to send two or more volunteers and/or staff from your group to a class or training so that they can support one another to put into practice what they have learned.

  • Volunteer Recognition- Volunteer recognition can happen in a number of ways, from thank-you cards to awards at meetings, articles in your neighborhood paper, and special offers such as free tickets to local events.

  • Use a simple database to maximize your group’s “people power.” The might of neighborhood groups comes from their active volunteer base. The names, addresses, phones, e-mails and interests of residents who attend neighborhood meetings should be kept in an active database for targeting neighborhood mailings and future volunteer recruitment. Each neighbor record should include information on when the record was created and updated, and at least one mailing a year should be sent first class with “return address correction” to aid in keeping your database current. Some groups are also developing more advanced databases to track the skills, assets & donor history of residents.

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    Annotated WebLinks

  • Building Results Driven Organizations
    Learning Labs   03/31/03
    The Learning Labs are a strategic, systems approach to preventing and solving complex social problems. It is the only project of its kind that brings together leaders (positional and non-positional) from all areas of the human services delivery system- nonprofits, funders, and government organizations- to engage and share in learning and capacity-building. Website includes good links.

  • Managing Volunteeer Programs
    MAP for Nonprofits Free Management Library   03/31/03
    The "Volunteer" section provides a variety of information on managing volunteers

  • Minneapolis block club training resources
    Minneapolis Police Department/ CCP SAFE   03/31/03
    Offers regular trainings for Minneapolis residents who want to become block club leaders.

  • St. Paul block club training resources.
    St. Paul Police Department FORCE Unit   03/31/03
    The FORCE Unit works closely with St. Paul’s 17 district councils to strengthen block clubs.

  • Volunteer Resource Center
    United Way of Mpls and St. Paul   03/31/03
    List your volunteer opportunities on this web database.

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    Library

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    Vendors by Sub-Topic

    Block Leader Training  
        Community Crime Prevention / SAFE
        Minneapolis Training Program for Neighborhood Organizers
        St. Paul Police Department, FORCE Unit (Focusing Our Resources on Community


    Peer Mentoring Opportunities  
        Change Architects
        Community Leader Development Program- Family & Children's Service
        Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program
        Minneapolis Training Program for Neighborhood Organizers
        St. Thomas Center for Non-Profit Management
        The Voice in Phillips


    Training in Volunteer Management  
        Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program
        Minneapolis Training Program for Neighborhood Organizers
        Volunteer Center of Minneapolis & St. Paul


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