How To: Welcome, Manage and Mentor Your Volunteers
Volunteers are the backbone of almost every organization and are frequently the ones that plan, carry out and run the immense fundraising events that provide organizations with their annual funding. But volunteers management can be a difficult task and when done incorrectly can cause organizations to crumble.
Recruiting volunteers is stressful, hard work, but it is necessary. Even if you are recruiting volunteers for an event in the distance future, you have to start creating a circle of volunteers to rely on. You DO NOT want to be making desperate phone calls to your friends and neighbors the night before a fundraiser!
A three-pronged approach on recruiting volunteers
Now that you have volunteers, the next step is to look at your volunteer program. Are volunteers coming back? Do they enjoy working for your organization? Are they having a valuable experience? It is so important to remember that volunteer are NOT paid. They are helping you on their own time, on their own dollar. And the majority of volunteers are helping out for a reason. These are not selfish reasons; sometimes they are to fulfill volunteer hours before graduation, build a resume/reference, acquire a new skill, attend your event for free, or even just get some plain old good karma. Your job is to make sure those needs are fulfilled. Make sure your volunteer is working in an area they wanted to gain skills in, or make sure they get your contact information for a reference.
What Do Your Volunteers Want? is a great blog about how to keep your volunteers happy and coming back. It’s very honest and stresses that the key is to be prepared and organized for your volunteer, so you are not only welcoming but also providing a great ment
oring relationship.
Lastly, make sure you have the right supervisor in place. A supervisor is there to act like a mentor for you volunteers, and this job should not be taken lightly. A supervisor must make sure volunteers are comfortable and getting what they need from the experience too. Remember volunteers are NOT free – think of hidden costs beforehand – ie you can’t have volunteers working hard at a 7 hour event and not offer them lunch/dinner – A Down to Earth Guide to Supervising Volunteers
Tags: management, mentor, support, volunteering, volunteers
Volunteers are really the salt of the earth. Thank you for linking to my posts and articles about working with volunteers. Wonderful post!
Well thank you for the fantastic blogs Joanne! You’ve written some honest and seriously useful advice!