Best Practices in Volunteer Management

[Pages:126]Best Practices in Volunteer Management :

An Action Planning Guide For Small and Rural Nonprofit Organizations

Acknowledgments

Author: Jennifer Ellis

*Much of the material in the section entitled Best Practice 2: Defining Rules and Expectations has been adapted from By Definition: Policies For Volunteer Programs by Linda L. Graff (1992) with permission from the author. Copies of this book are available from (); hardcopies of the book are available from the author Linda L. Graff ().

Participants in the Project: Heather Dundas (Innovators in the School) Sue Edelman (Canada Senior Games - Yukon) Barb Evans-Ehricht (Hospice Yukon) Moira Lassen (Sport Yukon) Lisa Mainer (Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society - Yukon Chapter) Jennifer Moorlag (Girl Guides of Canada - Yukon Council)

Reviewers: Christine Cleghorn April Lies (Second Opinion Society) Sierra van der Meer (Yukon Learn)

? Volunteer Canada, 2005 ?galement disponible en fran?ais

ISBN 1-897135-20-3

For further information on this subject or others relating to volunteering and volunteer management, please visit volunteer.ca/resource.

Copyright for Volunteer Canada material is waived for charitable and voluntary organizations for non-commercial use. All charitable and voluntary organizations are encouraged to copy and distribute this material.

Best Practices in Volunteer Management

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Ten Best Practices in Volunteer Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Purpose of the Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 How to Use this Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Before You Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Best Practice 1: Valuing the Role of Volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Best Practice 2: Defining Rules and Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Best Practice 3: Developing Volunteer Management Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Best Practice 4: Reducing Client and Group risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Best Practice 5: Creating Clear Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Best Practice 6: Reaching Beyond the Circle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Best Practice 7: Orienting and Training Volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Best Practice 8: Providing Supervision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Best Practice 9: Making Volunteers Feel They Belong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Best Practice 10: Recognizing Volunteer Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

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Best Practices in Volunteer Management

Introduction

The Canadian Code for Volunteer Involvement

The "Code" was released in 2001, the International Year of the Volunteer. It is written for boards of nonprofit groups to prompt discussion about the role volunteers play in their organizations, how they are engaged, and how they are supported.

The ten best practices outlined in this guide are based on the Organization Standards found in the Code.

The full text of the Code can be found at volunteer.ca Nonprofit organizations everywhere rely on volunteers to keep their organizations going. People contribute huge amounts of time, energy, and skills to a wide range of groups. They bring new ideas, skills, and approaches to the groups they work with. They get involved in a variety of volunteer activities for a wide variety of reasons.

So how does a group find the right volunteers for the work it needs to get done? How does a group manage to get volunteers to stay on and keep contributing their time and skills? How does a group deal with potential risks to its volunteers and clients?

If you are involved with a nonprofit organization, the first thing to do is design the jobs you want volunteers to do. Then take the steps to recruit, select, supervise, reward, and evaluate how well the volunteers perform in their positions. These different activities are some of the core volunteer management practices covered in this guide.

Large nonprofit organizations usually have someone paid to be a manager of volunteers. In small and rural groups, those responsible for managing volunteers are usually doing it off the side of their desks or part-time (paid or unpaid!). In groups with limited resources and people, paying attention to volunteer needs can often get buried in the tumble of other priorities.

If this sounds like your group, then this guide is for you! This action planning guide has been developed to help people in small and rural nonprofit organiztions take practical steps to strengthen their group's volunteer management

The Code includes three parts related to volunteer involvement: ? Values ? Guiding Principles ? Organization Standards

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practices. It focuses on helping groups put the necessary structures in place for an effective and consistent volunteer program.

This guide was developed as part of a project for the Community Support Centre of the Canada Volunteerism Initiative. The purpose of the project was to determine how the Canadian Code for Volunteer Involvement could be adopted for use in the north and in other rural regions.

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Best Practices in Volunteer Management

Ten Best Practices in Volunteer Management

Development of the ten best practices

The ten best practices discussed in this guide were adapted from the ten organizational standards set out in the Canadian Code for Volunteer Involvement, with some modifications. The modifications were made so that the best practices would be user-friendly, accessible, and relevant to small rural nonprofit organizations with few, or no, staff. Modifications to the organizational standards in the Canadian Code for Volunteer Involvement were based on the experience of the Yukon Volunteer Bureau and the six Yukon volunteer groups involved in the project. Modifications were also based on expertise in writing plain and accessible public information materials.

The ten best practices

There are ten volunteer management practices described in this guide. These ten best practices focus on essential volunteer management elements relevant to groups of all sizes.

These ten best practices follow a natural progression. The first three focus on laying the foundation for an effective program. The next three deal with developing safe and appropriate volunteer jobs and getting the right people for the positions. The final four centre on creating an environment that provides successfully recruited volunteers with the skills, support, and desire to stay involved.

Best Practices

Laying the Foundation 1. Valuing the role of volunteers 2. Defining rules and expectations 3. Developing volunteer management skills

Developing the jobs and getting the right people 4. Reducing client and group risk 5. Creating clear assignments 6. Reaching beyond the circle

Creating an environment where volunteers feel they belong and want to stay 7. Orienting and training volunteers 8. Providing supervision 9. Making volunteers feel they belong 10. Recognizing volunteer contributions

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TIP

As you go through the action plan steps in this guide, some of them may start feeling like work and more work.

When you find yourself feeling that way, stop and think about how you might lighten the load. Should you extend the deadline? Find more help? Move to a more rewarding task in your action plan? Celebrate what you've done so far?

Be sure to keep up both your momentum and your spirits.

Purpose of the Guide

The purpose of this guide is to help you set up a framework for your ongoing work with volunteers.

It is not intended to help you deal with immediate issues such as finding a new board member, training a new recruit or thanking a long-term volunteer who is leaving the group. Instead, it is designed to help you set up a framework that will help you be more proactive and avoid crisis volunteer management.

The guide is based on the following assumptions:

? The suggested steps and actions should be simple, clear, and doable. Small and busy groups often have few resources to improve their volunteer program. This guide divides the work into manageable chunks.

? Most groups have some volunteer management practices in place. This guide is designed to help groups assess how well they are doing and identify which practices they might want to work on most.

? The best people to determine which steps should be taken to change volunteer practices are the people within the group. Each group is different. This guide provides draft action plans to get people started on changing their volunteer management practices, but each group should modify these to suit its own needs and realities.

? Establishing a basic framework will provide a base to build on over time. The guide is designed to help groups put basic volunteer management structures into place. It is intended primarily as a starting point for groups that have few volunteer management practices in place or those that would like to improve in specific areas.

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