Energize Book Blog

Can you believe it – volunteer management now has its own Idiot’s Guide book! Working with the standard template, author John L. Lipp  crammed a lot of very useful information into 304 pages, all in bite-sized chunks.  Read on for our interview with John and a taste of the great information you’ll get from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Recruiting and Managing Volunteers.

Energize,Inc. (EI): What makes this book different from previous books on volunteer management?

John Lipp (JL): As a profession, we’ve been very fortunate to have some great books on volunteer management. Many of those books gave me a lot of guidance over the years and the feeling that I wasn’t alone. I’m hoping this book will do the same for a whole new generation of leaders in the field, especially those who might not even think of volunteer management as a profession.

I wrote this book from the perspective of a practitioner. I’ve worked in the field for 22 years and spent many of those years directly leading volunteer programs in a variety of settings. I’ve made lots of mistakes along the way, and want to share what I’ve learned and hopefully prevent others from repeating some of those mistakes. I’ve also had my share of battles, usually with people who only think of volunteers as free labor or in very condescending terms. In that spirit, I hope the book will not only be valuable for people whose main job is volunteer management in an organization – whether or not they are paid or volunteers themselves – but a valuable resource for all people who find themselves supervising volunteers in some capacity. In other words, I hope this book gets shared among several people in an organization and that it just doesn’t sit on the volunteer manager’s bookshelf.

It’s also nice being part of the “Idiot’s Guide” series, with their familiar orange covers and format. Hopefully, this will make the book – and the information inside – very accessible to lots of people. I’m also hoping more bookstores, major chains as well as the independents, will carry it with their other titles in the “Idiot’s” series. It will probably end up in the business section, with other management books. I actually feel the “for profit” sector can learn a lot from those of us who work in the independent sector, so maybe the book will even have some crossover appeal? That would be great!

EI: In the chapter on volunteer training, you introduce the “Goldilocks Rule .” What’s that?

JL: The “Goldilocks Rule” comes from personal experience, when I served as Director of Volunteer Services at an organization that provided emotional and practical support volunteers for persons living with HIV/AIDS. At the time, the organization was requiring all volunteers – whether or not they intend to provide direct services to clients – to attend a two weekend training program that was Friday night and all day on both Saturdays and Sundays; approximately 35 hours. It was a phenomenal experience, but at the same time, it was way too much for people who wanted to provide other volunteer services for the organization; services that we really needed.

Although I initially got some resistance, we ended requiring a much shorter training for those volunteers who wanted to work behind the scenes.  I learned that the key to preparing volunteers was to give them just the right amount of training they needed to be successful in their positions. If your organization requires too much, you can lose valuable people who might have a lot to offer. Require too little, and you may be putting your organization’s clients, and the volunteers themselves, at risk. It’s a balancing act. Goldilocks understood when things were “just right,” and most volunteers will too.

EI: The book goes through each step of the process of effective volunteer involvement – from position design, to recruitment, to recognition.  In your opinion, what’s the one step in this process that’s most often neglected?  How does that neglect affect volunteer engagement?

JL: I teach a lot of classes on volunteer management and leadership and, from talking with participants over the years, I’ve come to realize that many organizations want to focus on quantity – “how many volunteers and how many hours” – and not on quality, “what is the impact those volunteers are making?”  As such, a lot of organizations don’t spend enough time planning for volunteers and instead put all of their efforts into recruiting.  As we all know, bringing in volunteers without a clear sense of what role they will play and how they will be supported can lead to a lot of frustration and finger pointing down the road.  In short, never underestimate the importance of a good position description; the process of crafting them helps answers a lot of these questions ahead of time.

EI: We tend to put lots of time and effort into big, fancy recognition events, but your book contends that creating an overall “culture of thanks” is just as important to making volunteers feel appreciated.  What is a “culture of thanks” and how is it cultivated?

JL: A “culture of thanks” is a fancy way of saying that recognition of an organization’s people – volunteer or paid – should happen every day. People should feel welcomed, appreciated, and receive some acknowledgment of how they’re contributing to the cause.  Big, fancy recognition events can be a lot of fun, but they don’t replace the most simple gestures – smiling, greeting people when they come in, and saying “thank you” as they leave.

EI: Any closing thoughts?

JL: It is such an exciting time to be in our field! There are all these international, national and local movements to engage volunteers.  At the end of the day, it will be up to our field to make sure all these new recruits have a meaningful experience and can truly make a difference.  It’s going to come down to capacity building; helping the leadership in our various organizations understand what kind of systems need to be put in place to maximize the impact of all these new volunteers. I say it a lot in my book – volunteers are free, but volunteer programs are not!  I’m hoping my book will help spread that message. I have no doubt that everyone reading this blog “gets it” – now we just need to make sure that our bosses “get it” too!

The book is available at Amazon.com – they even have a kindle version, which I think is very cool! I feel a little embarrassed saying this, but if anyone wants a signed copy, they can order it directly from my organization Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS) in San Francisco. If they do it that way, all the proceeds from the book will go back to directly support our programs to keep low-income seniors and people with disabilities, including HIV/AIDS, living independently with their beloved pets. Just go to the Shopping Link at www.pawssf.org.

Finally, if anybody has any questions or feedback about the book – I’m especially open to suggestions about what should be included or changed for a future edition! – please e-mail me at John@voluncheer.com.

A million thanks for this opportunity to be part of the book blog and for everything Energize, Inc. has done for our profession!

Here’s the third  in a series of questions submitted by our readers and answered by volunteerism and risk management expert Linda Graff (read previous posts, on Risk Management and the Swine Flu and policies on reference checks).

The Question: I presently have a volunteer driver who has just come back from leave for medical conditions (stroke).  She still has her license and is eager to drive for us again.

My supervisor received an irate call from her son stating that his call was confidential and he did not want his mother driving due to her health condition.  He also implied that her health condition had deteriorated due to her busy schedule with us.  He made it VERY clear we are not to tell her he called.

The volunteer’s husband has passed and she enjoys her volunteer work.  The volunteer called wondering why she is not getting drives.

The son should speak directly with the mother, but won’t. The volunteer is getting frustrated, as we haven’t given her a clear answer as to why we are “holding off”. In the end if I can’t reveal the son’s call, what do I say to my volunteer?

Linda’s Answer:  Since the volunteer was off work for medical reasons and since the work she is wanting to return to is responsible, demanding, and risky, it would not be unreasonable to request that she provide a physician’s note verifying her ability to resume her volunteer driving responsibilities.  This way you can be more certain that she actually is well enough to drive for you and you transfer the responsibility for determining so to the expert.

You might consider (though this is tricky) notifying the son that this is what you plan to do and let the son make his case to the physician if he chooses.

I might add that the question of driving ability arises often in my workshops on risk management.  As you observe, the possession of a driver’s licence does not guarantee good driving ability, particularly for some of the demanding driving roles we ask volunteers to fulfil, such as night driving, driving long distances – sometimes will an ill person in the car – driving in demanding weather conditions, and so on.  It is also common for managers to worry about a decline in driving capacity among elderly volunteers or volunteers, who, as in your example, have experienced a related health issue.

My recommendation is that the organization recruit a volunteer expert assessor of driving capacity – a driving instructor – who will either routinely (every year or two) take volunteer drivers for a test drive to ensure they are still driving with the degree of skill required, or as the need arises, such as in the case of recent illness.  This technique ensures a more accurate assessment by someone who has the qualifications to do so.