Energize Book Blog

The third and fully revised edition of From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement has just been sent to the printer! It’ll be available for sale in March. Until then, here’s another excerpt to whet your interest. It introduces an idea new to the 3rd edition: for your volunteer program to sail smoothly, you need to get middle managers on board.

Middle Managers Are Key

Every decision must be implemented across and down the organizational ladder, relying along the way on the buy-in of middle managers: branch or affiliate directors, department heads, unit supervisors, and others for whom volunteers become a factor in their teams’ effectiveness. These key people convey overt and subtle messages about expectations and can become an obstacle to effective volunteer involvement by not encouraging their team members’ attention to volunteers. In the worst cases, this can amount to sabotage.

Are your middle managers supportive of or resistant to volunteer involvement? Do they understand their “once removed” volunteer support role? Do they have the skills necessary to help their direct reports develop volunteers for the greatest impact?

Middle managers may feel that volunteers drain staff time from priority work. Because these supervisors evaluate employee performance, they have substantial influence over how staff  in their units approach all their responsibilities… They can be great allies or real obstacles to success. Here’s why:

• Middle managers set the tone for how things are done in their corner of the organization. Their personal beliefs and attitudes about volunteers will shape the way staff and volunteer teamwork is supported (or undercut).
• Because middle managers train new employees to do their jobs properly and evaluate employee work performance throughout the year, they substantially affect how their staff members approach any area of responsibility, including volunteers. Do they have the vision and expertise to establish expectations and standards for working with community members?
• They have the authority to approve work assignments created for volunteers by the staff. So, if a middle manager’s image of volunteers is that they are mainly nice but not very skilled, staff in that unit will design volunteer positions with low expectations (and self-fulfilling prophecy will produce volunteers who don’t care to be challenged). Conversely, middle managers who raise the bar on what volunteers are asked to do will help an organization to attract more highly qualified people.
• Middle managers set the agenda for staff meetings and individual supervision sessions. Do they regularly make time to focus on volunteer involvement in their department, unit, or branch? The inclusion or absence of volunteer-related issues on the agenda sends a message—is it that volunteers matter or don’t?

Employees can infer from their supervisors that spending time with volunteers is a diversion from their “real” job, to be done (if they wish) only after other, more important work is completed. Or supervisors can visibly recognize and reward staff who help volunteers to do well…

The point, as always, is not to assume that middle managers are on board with what it takes to support those who are expected to supervise volunteers. Take time to discover what this layer of management really thinks and win their enthusiasm for volunteer involvement. Otherwise, frontline staff will be caught in the middle, expected by top executives to put effort into partnering with volunteers, but undercut at the unit or branch level by the person most influential to that employee’s job assessment.

Include middle managers in planning sessions, training, and evaluation of the volunteer program so that they feel ownership of volunteer participation in their unit or department. Make sure that they, too, receive personal recognition for their efforts. They need to see that volunteers help their department to “shine” and are contributing to, not diverting from, accomplishing goals.

Paul Revere earned his living as a silversmith. But what do we remember him for? His volunteer work. All activism is volunteering in that it’s done above and beyond earning a living and deals with what people really care passionately about. Remember, no one gets paid to rebel. All revolutions start with volunteers.
- Susan J. Ellis

To me, it seems that most people think of words like “advocacy,” and “activism” as being quite different from words like “volunteering” and “service.” I like the quote above because it shows that this is a false dichotomy. Activists are “volunteers in the vanguard,” helping to change public opinion and pave the way for needed reforms.  One important element of even the most traditional service opportunities is that they can open volunteers’ eyes to broader social problems and create articulate advocates for your organization’s cause.

Below is an excerpt from Susan J. Ellis and Katherine H. Campbell’s By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers that illustrates this concept.  Since February is Black History Month in the United States, this part of the volunteer story seemed especially relevant:

Typifying the intensity and commitment of all those engaged in the civil rights struggle was the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs in August 1963.Sponsored by more than four hundred national organizations, it brought over two hundred thousand black and white Americans to the capital in a reaffirmation of the nation’s democratic principles.

An effort that brought together all the major civil rights organizations, plus many church groups, the March was a climax and beginning. It served notice that Black Americans were no longer willing to wait generation after generation for rights that other citizens took for granted. And it brought America face to face with her full responsibilities as a nation. *

From that point on, events moved rapidly. Legislative gains, King’s march from Selma to Montgomery, the abolition of literacy tests for voter registration, the formation of black student unions and heritage-awareness groups such as the American Society of African Culture—all contributed to a growing sense of black power and black pride.

Self-help projects became more numerous, harnessing the creativity and energy of black volunteers. Operation Bootstrap in Los Angeles, Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) in Philadelphia, and the National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Organization (NEGRO) focused on employment and business development. Black churches sponsored commercial enterprises, ran daycare centers, and opened job placement centers… Public education about the nature and effects of all types of prejudice was the concern of several volunteer organizations, notably the National Conference of Christians and Jews. NCCJ inaugurated National Brotherhood Week in an attempt to draw attention to the need for racial and ethnic understanding.

Civil rights and the rights of poor people were intertwined. The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) was the most visible grassroots effort reflecting this connection. Formed in 1966 by an interracial coalition of middle-class organizers, church workers, and members of CORE, the backbone of NWRO was poor, black women. During the next few years, NWRO organized demonstrations in welfare offices and lobbied legislators in an effort to reshape public policy relating to poor families.

As an assertion of the strength and competence of poor women; as a demonstration of the potential power in the fusion of race, class, and gender; as a channel for helping poor women transform their ideas of welfare into entitlement …NWRO remains a remarkable and significant episode in American social history.*

*Both citations from: Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America, rev. ed. (New York: Collier Books,1969).

Who were the “revolutionaries” that originally championed your organization’s cause? How has their legacy affected your work? How are you assuring that all volunteers in your setting become advocates?

Here’s an idea – why not have a volunteer recruiting event for singles on Valentine’s Day? It’s fun, unique, and – trust me – it’ll be more interesting than what most of us singletons end up doing on February 14^th. Check out this excerpt from A Toolkit for Volunteer Speed Matching to spur your thinking. The Toolkit was developed in England for volunteer centers who want to help a number of organizations showcase their volunteer opportunities; it could work equally well for one organization anywhere with a number of different volunteer roles. I’m sure there’s lots of other great ways to play off this concept to design a fun, memorable, and effective recruitment event. If you’ve done an event like this before, or you’re going to try it this year, leave a comment and let us know!

Excerpt from A Toolkit for Volunteer Speed Matching by Volunteer Centre Dacorum, ©2005.

Why Speed Matching?

• It offers a new way of recruiting volunteers, which is fun & upbeat. Not all volunteering could be described as fun, but there is no reason why the recruitment process has to be too heavy, especially at the first “date” stage.
• It makes a change from Volunteer Fairs, where often the most positive outcome is networking with organisations on other stalls.
• It focuses organisations’ minds on the way they portray their activities to the general public. It’s much easier to talk at length about what they do than to distil it down into 3 or 4 minutes.
• It makes organisations realise the competition they have from other local organisations. Why would a volunteer join them rather than another group?
• It can be used as a PR opportunity for organisations – a chance to describe what they do to a variety of people regardless of any potential volunteering relationship.
• It creates a lot of interest, especially from the media.
• The Speed Matching model can be adapted to various situations.

Adapting the Speed Matching model:

• Volunteer daters need a choice of opportunities. Volunteer Speed Matching can be run with a variety of organisations, or by one large organisation that has a variety of opportunities.
• Themed sessions can be run:
  • organisations with something in common e.g. disability / elderly
  • volunteer “daters” all from one source e.g. hold the event at the premises of a local company as part of an employee volunteering initiative. We currently have Epson interested!
  • hold an event just for potential trustees
  • run an information event using the speed matching model e.g. for personnel &/or politicians from a local authority

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service (MLK Day) is the most widely known and supported single day of service in the US. I’m sure many of your organizations are hosting a group of volunteers today.

“Planning and Executing Successful Large-Scale Days of Service,” training material developed by HandsOn  Network, is featured in the new issue of e-Volunteerism. I wish we could have offered it to you before MLK Day, because it has lots of great information on carrying out a successful day of service – including the important and often-forgotten goal of raising awareness about your issue and providing entry points to ongoing ways to serve.  But since there are many other events like this around the world, it’s not too late for this material to be useful – or plan ahead for next year!

As this issue’s Training Design feature, “Planning and Executing Successful Large-Scale Days of Service” is a complete toolkit including a 28-page guide, a Facilitator Agenda, and a full set of PowerPoint slides.  If you’re an e-Volunteerism subscriber, you can access the complete toolkit here. A brief excerpt on evaluation and reflection is included below, which I hope will help you as you wrap up and assess your event.

Evaluation and reflection are key components to a Day of Service. As the projects end and volunteers celebrate and tools are put away, take time to ask volunteers about the day. What worked? What didn’t work? What did they learn? What will they – and the community – do now?

Evaluation

Following the Day of Service take time to celebrate and reflect. Take a look at what worked and what needed to be improved. Create a “best practices” document to keep on file for next year’s planning and list what could be improved. Compile surveys from the Day of Service and share results with staff, volunteer leaders and project volunteers. Create an additional evaluation to send out to volunteers and leaders to ask them about their experience.

Reflection

As discussed in the Planning Guide section, reflection is on way to educate volunteers about their communities. Reflection provides volunteers with a way to look back at their experiences, evaluate them, and apply what is learned to future experiences. Without reflection, volunteers just report on experiences instead of examining how what they have done impacts themselves and the community. Reflection activities that are designed well and implemented thoughtfully allow volunteers to acquire a deeper understanding of the needs in their community and how they can continue to make positive contributions in the community. Reflection is one of the most productive aspects of volunteering. Project leaders should plan reflection activities for all volunteers on the project; the committee should also participate in an additional reflection led by staff or committee chair once their work is completed. The staff can do an additional activity once all work is complete. This allows everyone to process their varying levels of participation and to capture and improve the process for the next time around.