Why do we need volunteers in a nonprofit?
The whole nonprofit field was built on volunteerism. Almost every nonprofit began with a group of volunteers sitting around a table trying to find ways to solve a community problem. As our agencies have grown and become more complicated, we needed to hire staff, and we have professionalized our operations to the point where we have forgotten how to utilize volunteers.
If our agencies are going to survive and grow we must rethink how we can make better use of volunteers. If we choose and train our volunteers properly, they will greatly expand our ability to serve more people. We should view volunteers as a goldmine of skills and wisdom, and create systems that will ensure that they can contribute these resources in a way that seamlessly enhances the services provided by staff.
Why don’t we utilize more volunteers?
These are some of the reasons I hear from staff:
1. They let us down
Some staff has had unpleasant experiences with volunteers. Volunteers have made commitments that they have not fulfilled, leaving it up to the staff to pick up the pieces. This needs to happen only once or twice for staff to say, “It would have been easier to do it myself”
2. We can’t afford the start up investment
Volunteers often need a lot of training before they can bring their skills to the unique culture of a nonprofit. With everything else staff has to do, they don’t have the time for training volunteers. Why invest all the effort at the front end when they are going to just let us down anyway?
3. Only professionals can do it
The services we provide are often so specialized that volunteers can never do them the way we do. Besides, there are accreditation and confidentiality issues to deal with. There is no way a volunteer can provide the highly specialized and skilled services that staff provides, for they have been highly trained and do this on a full time basis.
4. Some staff are intimated by volunteers
When we bring experienced and skilled volunteers to work along side with staff, we open up the possibility that they can threaten or intimidate staff. Who is working for whom? What if the volunteers start telling staff what to do? They may be critical of the job staff is doing, and staff may feel their job is in jeopardy. These are legitimate fears, unless volunteers clearly understand their role and responsibilities. It’s even worse when the volunteers are also board members. They’ll be in a position informally to evaluate staff, going outside the normal supervisory chain.
5. They don’t understand how we work
They may bring in a corporate or business perspective that doesn’t work in a nonprofit culture. Staff may fear that volunteers may try to run the agency like they run their business, and try to create systems or procedures that are inappropriate to the agency. Staff may feel reluctant to confront or criticize volunteers. How do you correct or fire a volunteer?
These are just some of the reasons I hear that staff are resistant to involving volunteers. It’s just not worth it. As one staff recently told me, “I have enough to do without babysitting volunteers!”
I must admit that having been a staff for over thirty years, I’ve had all these feelings myself. But I now know that many of these problems were created by the agency, not the volunteers. I also know that I never could have accomplished all that I wanted without the thousands of volunteers who I worked with.
In the next blog, I’ll look at some ways we can utilize volunteers and minimize these concerns.
Tags: Barrie, nonprofit, Volunteers