Nonprofit Challenges: Volunteers
Volunteers are an extension of your workforce for nonprofits. As such, they deserve to have the same planning, preparation, clarity, and training for their roles as any job in your organization. Though volunteers do not have a direct employment cost, they shouldn’t be viewed as merely free labor for all the jobs your employees don’t like doing. The reason people volunteer is not to stuff envelopes mindlessly for hours or file endless stacks of paper. Rather, people volunteer because they want to be a part of something that makes a difference. The way to keep them coming back is to work with them, understand their strengths and talents, and put them to direct use in your organization through careful stewardship that lets them know they are an integral part of the good being done. Because they are.
According to the Independent Sector and the Do Good Institute, published in July of 2020, volunteers contributed $187.7 billion in the US with their time and talents in 2019, bringing the current average value of volunteer time to $27.20 an hour.
This doesn’t mean they can’t answer a few phones or spend some time on the file wall from time to time, but drudgery isn’t why people sign up to volunteer, nor is it the best and smartest use of their $27.20 equivalent hourly wage. A banker willing to donate work hours would be sorely underutilized if they spent all their time in a financial counseling organization stuffing envelopes. A wedding organizer would be infinitely more helpful in leading the fundraising campaign committee instead of scrubbing the toilets. Putting young volunteers on your PR and Social Media outreach teams to freshen and liven up your streams is a much better use of their influencer resources in reaching potential followers than hours cleaning the supply closet.
Putting thought and intention behind the work you are asking of your volunteers will also naturally lead to preparing for them in the first place. Hours spent sitting in an office waiting for you to find them something to do is a waste of both your time and resources. This is why many organizations have a volunteer coordinator to help organize, plan, train, and guide their volunteer teams appropriately. Respecting the expertise of volunteers means they need the same opportunity to onboard with the organization as any of the employees do. Understanding the messaging, the services, the appropriate channels of contact, the department heads, where to go if they need a resource, and what their service expectations include helps to make the investment you are both making in one another succeed.
Having a plan and purpose for your volunteers as a group and as individuals, understanding how they fit in the zeitgeist of the work the organization does, and properly thanking them for the use of their time and talents are all important parts of hosting volunteers in your organization. While mistreatment and mismanagement will lead to high turnover, with proper investment in your relationships, you will continue to access a wider expanse of talents at your disposal for decades to come.