Volunteer Management 101

As AmeriCorps members serving at NPower Northwest, we will be experiencing both sides of volunteer management work this year. While we currently work in volunteer positions, volunteer management will be an important part of our year of service. We'll be working with skill-based volunteers to help provide technology assessments and training to local nonprofits next spring. This month, we were granted the opportunity to attend a two-day workshop facilitated by Nikki Russell from the United Way of King County, “Essentials of Effective Volunteer Management.”

Most nonprofits know the value a successful volunteer program can provide by deepening your nonprofit's connection to the community, turning friends into donors, and putting valuable skills to work within an organization. However, this training showed us that effective management of a volunteer program isn’t always easy and can require many different skill sets.

The first day of the training focused on the mission, purpose, and philosophy of a volunteer management program. We drew funny pictures to illustrate the role of the 21st century volunteer program manager (hint: most of them included multiple hats and juggling lots of balls in the air). Volunteer managers need to be able to connect well with potential volunteers, act as a liaison between staff and volunteers, delegate well, advocate for volunteers, manage complex schedules, provide volunteer recognition, and many other tasks. Despite the many challenges, all of the nonprofits present at our training agreed that even if our organizations had unlimited financial resources, we would still want to engage volunteers.

The second day of training covered more specific volunteer management tasks such as screening, orientation, training, and evaluation. We were reminded to “screen people in” for volunteer positions rather than screen out and also got into tricky issues surrounding volunteer supervision - for example, how do you fire a volunteer?  A spirited role play highlighted the dos and don'ts when approaching a difficult volunteer. The day concluded with information about the importance of volunteer appreciation. Everyone needs and deserves recognition for their contributions, and organizational staff who work with volunteers should not be overlooked, either.

We want to thank United Way and Nikki Russell for this great opportunity and we look forward to applying what we have learned in 2012!

- Elissa Thomas, Abby Nafziger and Stephen Eggers