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Anne Schink, Program Officer at the Maine Commission for Community Service is The Resource Center’s featured expert for February 2008. The profile highlights Anne’s efforts to develop a community of practice to pursue the Certificate in Volunteer Administration through the Association for Volunteer Administration (currently sponsored by the Council for Certification in Volunteer Management or CCVA) and her work developing the commission’s volunteer management competencies.

An initiative of the Corporation for National and Community Service, The Resource Center is an online repository of tools and training materials for volunteer and service programs.

Guest Post by Carla Ganiel

Think your organization’s size impacts volunteer management capacity? According to a 2004 Urban Institute report, “Balancing Act: The Challenges and Benefits of Volunteers,” the size of an organization has little influence on the level of benefit gained from volunteers. Drawing on a survey of nearly 3,000 nonprofit organizations, Mark A. Hager and Jeffrey L. Budney conclude that implementing a high number of volunteer management “best practices” and giving volunteers meaningful roles and responsibilities are critical strategies for maximizing the benefits of volunteers in organizations of any size.

The report is one of four in a series on volunteer management capacity in community and faith-based organizations.

What do you think? Does size matter in volunteer management?

Carla Ganiel is a nonprofit management consultant from Tremont, Maine.

Guest Post by Carla Ganiel

In my last post I mentioned that I subscribe to over a hundred blogs. How do I manage all that information without getting overwhelmed? And how do you “subscribe” to a blog, anyway?

When I first started reading blogs, I used to bookmark them the way you would any other website you wanted to return to, but eventually that got to be too much. I found myself checking my favorite blogs several times a day to see if any new content had been posted, while some blogs I forgot to check for weeks at a time. Clearly, the more blogs I tried to keep track of, the less efficient my bookmark approach became.

Then I discovered RSS, short for “Really Simple Syndication,” a tool that lets you know whenever a blog or other website has been updated. Once again, Darren Rowse at Problogger provides an extremely clear and thorough explanation of how this works. To put it simply, blogs publish a feed, to which you can subscribe. Darren writes, “It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.”

Darren recommends two free RSS readers for beginners, Google Reader and Bloglines. I use Google Reader and have found it very user friendly. I have it set up as my homepage so that whenever I turn on my computer the first thing I see is a list of new blog posts that have been published by all the blogs to which I subscribe. I don’t read every single post from every single blog subscription. Instead, with Google Reader, I can scan through them quickly, reading the headlines and deciding how to manage the content.

If the headline doesn’t grab my attention, I might just delete the post. If I’m interested in the topic, I might skim it and then delete it. Or I might read the whole thing and visit the blog to leave a comment. If I want to share the post with my friends, I can email it to them right from Google Reader. And if I want to bookmark a particular post for future reference, I can use another great tool, del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site that lets me organize all my links online, access them from any computer in the world, and share them with my friends.

To subscribe to this blog’s feed, click on the orange RSS icon in the right-hand column. You can also subscribe to receive updates whenever comments are made by clicking on the RSS 2.0 link when you leave a comment.

This may seem like overkill if you’re new to blogging. Maybe this is the only blog you read. But blogging has a funny way of snowballing, and you may be surprised at how quickly you find yourself keeping track of more and more blogs. If that’s the case, you may be ready to try out RSS sooner than you think.

In the meantime, there’s another option to help you keep track of updates to this blog. Simply enter your email address in the box in the right-hand column and click “sign up,” and we’ll send you email updates to let you know when we’ve posted something new.

Carla Ganiel is a nonprofit management consultant from Tremont, Maine.

by Bob Moore

Well, here goes nothing – first time blogging for me!

When Anne Schink of the Maine Commission for Community Service contacted me last November to see if I would be interested in becoming a “Guest Blogger” for VolunteerMaine.org, my first question was, “What do I have to do?” Anne was pretty persuasive – a valuable skill in volunteer recruitment – plus I feel a certain indebtedness to the MCCS and AmeriCorps. Our organization wouldn’t be close to where we are today without them. Another important factor – January 28, 2008 (my first post date) seemed sooooo far off!

My experience with blogging is minimal – reading (never responding) to Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s blog. Then I decided to google the “world’s oldest blogger” and came across 107 year-old Olive Riley of Australia, who started a blog of her own in February 2007. Though she refers to it as her “blob”, I figured that if Olive could blog, I might stand a chance after all.

Many of you may be aware of the AmeriCorps-State positions that are coordinated in Maine through the MCCS. But did you know that AmeriCorps has another arm – the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC)?

In 2003 when I was hired as our first employee – no staff, no volunteers, no office – we looked to staff a team of local high school youth to work on shoreline protection projects. When our efforts to obtain sufficient funding hit a wall, one of our Board members mentioned that his daughter-in-law had been a member of a program called AmeriCorps in the early 1990’s – even met with President Clinton during the first year that the program was started. I contacted her the next day, she told me about her incredible experience as a first year member of the NCCC, and put me in touch with a former teammate of hers who was now Project Coordinator for the Perry Point, MD region. The rest, as they say, is history.

Twelve young adults from all across America landed on our shores during that summer of 2003 to staff our first Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) – and we haven’t looked back since. After NCCC teams were also awarded to us in 2004 and 2005, we added our own local YCC in 2005; 2008 will be our fourth year employing twelve area students as YCC members. With funding obtained from member donations, local business sponsorships and private and public grants, we used that first AmeriCorps experience to help create an annual, sustainable effort.

It gets better. In 2004, we were introduced to the AmeriCorps*State program through the MCCS and the Training Resource Center in Portland. Through the TRC, we were awarded seasonal AmeriCorps positions to oversee our growing program needs. I can honestly say that we would not have been able to afford this type of skilled service on the open market, and the quality of personnel we have had every year has been outstanding. We are now transitioning these positions as well to seasonal, full-time staff as our funding sources allow. I’d like to think that we have provided these Corps members with a valuable experience as well as we have integrated them not only into our organization, but into our community as well.

Five years ago, I had never heard of AmeriCorps – now you can’t stop me from singing their virtues. Let me know if you have any similar stories or need further information on how we worked through the process. You’ll be glad you did.

Bob Moore is Executive Director of the Friends of the Cobbossee Watershed in Augusta, Maine.

by Christy Monroe

My hectic morning raced into early afternoon and I sat at my desk looking at the piles of work that lay before me. The post-lunch-energy-drain was settling in when a colleague of mine called to say, “Thanks for all of your hard work on this project. We couldn’t have done it without your help.” It wasn’t just the words, but the inflection behind them that made me feel appreciated. That little bit of recognition went a long way- my energy levels began to rise, my brain cleared a bit, and my motivation for tackling the rest of the afternoon reemerged.

There’s no denying that recognition is a key component in motivating people, but volunteers often live for it. In fact, apart from the warm, fuzzy feeling of helping their community it may be their only payment for services.

Here are 3 simple ways to recognize volunteers without spending a dime:

1. Say “thank you” and mean it. A simple, tried and true method that somehow is overlooked all too often. There’s a reason why these two little words are taught to adorable little tots by their loving parents. Not only is it good manners to say “thank you,” but conveying appreciation tends to work magic the next time that you need someone’s help.

2. Show respect and trust in their ability. This falls under the same category as “don’t micromanage” and tends to give people confidence in their capabilities. Confidence is a good feeling and a significant motivator in getting a job done efficiently and effectively. Give volunteers positive feedback on a job well done, remember their name, and give them meaningful tasks. More importantly, show them that you have faith in them by giving them projects with decision making power, utilizing their skills, and letting them spread their wings over time.

3. Connect the dots-show the value of their work. Make it a regular practice to remind your volunteers how their work fits into the overall mission of your organization. Paint the whole picture of how their efforts are propelling that mission forward. Answer the unspoken questions, “Is this worth my time? Am I really making a difference?”

There are thousands of ways to recognize volunteers every day. What are your favorite ways to show your appreciation to volunteers? Leave a comment and let us know.

Here are more resources on volunteer motivation and recognition.

Christy Monroe is the Training VISTA at the Maine Commission for Community Service.

Guest Post by Carla Ganiel

I currently subscribe to over a hundred blogs on topics such as nonprofit management, education, business, entertainment, the environment, literature, and politics. I even subscribe to blogs about blogging! But three years ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was.

I know that many of you are new to the concept of blogging, just like I was, and if you’re anything like me, you have an inbox full of email, a desk piled high with books and articles for professional development, not to mention very demanding jobs and personal lives that require time and energy. Do you really have time to read one more thing?

Today I want to tell you why blogging is worth your time as a volunteer manager, but first, let’s cover a few of the basics.

What is a blog? Darren Rowse has answered this question more completely than I could hope to on his own blog, Problogger. According to Darren, “a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.” Archives, like the ones that appear on the right-hand column of this blog, arranged both by subject and date, are a common feature of blogs. But the thing that most distinguishes a blog from an ordinary web page is the capacity to create a truly interactive environment through comments. A blog is not a newsletter, a press release, or some other species of one-way communication tool. Blogs are about dialogue.

Why blog? Blogs allow you to build community and share ideas around a common area of interest. Have you ever gone to a conference and felt that you gained more talking to your peers over coffee between the sessions than you did in the workshops themselves? That’s what blogging is like—those short, incisive little conversations about the things that matter most to you.

I also believe that blogging is a critical piece of professional development, whatever your field. One of my favorite bloggers, Penelope Trunk, has written a post about why blogging is essential for a good career.

If you’re new to the world of blogging and other social media, Michele Martin’s “Social Media Spiral” is a very useful tool that helps delineate the connections between new media and the older technologies that we are already comfortable with, such as email. Where are you on the spiral?

What does blogging have to do with volunteer management? The stated purpose of this particular blog is to serve as a communications tool for volunteer managers, but beyond that how might volunteer managers use blogs—and other social media for that matter—to advance their work and their professional development?

First, blogging is a way to expand your base of support, whether that is volunteer support or financial support. Second, blogging provides an easy way to communicate quickly and frequently with volunteers, donors and other stakeholders. Third, blogging is a way to build your brand. Ryan Healy used his blog Employee Evolution (another of my personal favorites) to establish himself as an expert on millenials in the workplace. Blogging can do the same for your organization and give you an edge as you seek to recruit volunteers and donors interested in your cause. Finally, as volunteer managers, we often work in isolation and lack an accessible peer network. The Volunteer Maine Blog is a place to establish a network of peers to support you in your work.

Ready to join the conversation? The interactive nature of blogging can be a mixed blessing. In many ways, a blog is only as good as its readers. I hope you’ll join the conversation on this blog by making comments. Try it now. Go to the bottom of this post, click on the comment link and write something. Introduce yourself, share your ideas about how else you think blogging might be a useful tool for volunteer managers. Ask a question. Tell me if you disagree with me, and why.

Ready to go a step further? Check out our submission guidelines and send us a guest post.

Carla Ganiel is a nonprofit management consultant from Tremont, Maine.

by Paula Gagnon

Maine has one of the highest volunteer rates in our region and in fact our rate is well above the national average (33% compared to 26.9%). However Maine is a huge state and being able to communicate across this state is a challenge. As Chair of the Maine Commission for Community Service I understand how distance, time and weather contribute to our challenge in communicating and getting together. Each year we cancel at least one meeting of the Commission due to weather and some months making a quorum is a challenge. There are some wonderful things going on in the different regions of our state with managing volunteers and yet until now volunteer managers and non-profits have had no easy way to share best practices or to problem solve as a group. Technology to the rescue!! Now we have this blog!

The purpose of this blog is to create an online community for Maine’s volunteer managers. You can participate by reading, leaving comments, and writing guest posts. The easiest way to keep track of new postings is by subscribing. To do so, simply type your email in the box in the right hand column and click “sign up.” Or, if you are already using an RSS aggregator to subscribe to other blogs, you can subscribe to our feed as well. To leave comments, click on the link at the bottom of this post. See our submission guidelines to submit a guest post of your own.

The practices I have used for volunteer management and the managing of un-paid student interns at the college level have been very similar to the practices I use in managing or supervising a paid staff. In my day job I am a college administrator and work closely with administrators, staff, faculty, adjunct faculty, temporary employees, student employees, and student interns. As Chair of the Maine Commission, I work closely with paid staff and with volunteers. I have a list of requirements that work in both of my worlds.

1. Everyone should have a job description (written) that clearly articulates outcomes and they must be measurable. There is nothing more frustrating for a volunteer than to show up and have to wait while someone finds you something to do!

2. Everyone needs to receive the training or obtain the skills to enable them to be successful. We all see the value in investing in our employees. It’s the same for our volunteer force. The better they are trained the more likely they are to not only be successful but to stay in our organizations and continue volunteering.

3. Everyone needs high quality supervision. We would not think of spending funds to conduct a search for a new employee, invest in training them and then leave them alone to either sink or swim. And yet this happens to volunteers all the time. In some of our organizations the supervision of our volunteer force is assigned to the receptionists or even another volunteer. Volunteers represent a sizable resource in our non-profit sector. In Maine, in 2006 our citizens logged over 42 million hours of volunteering. If we do the math that is a value of approximately 400 million dollars….now that’s a natural resource!

4. Everyone deserves and needs feedback. Supervision of volunteers has to be more than just a work schedule. They need the same kind of performance reviews that our employees do. Volunteers want to know how they are doing and they want to know how to improve. The managers of our volunteer force must have the time allotted in their jobs to conduct these very important feedback sessions if we are to retain our volunteer work force.

5. Everyone needs recognition. The employee of the month philosophy applies to volunteers too. In our own state the Governors Service Awards and the volunteer honor roll give us an opportunity once a year to recognize outstanding service by our volunteers. It’s even better if it is integrated into the culture of your organization.

6. Everyone needs to be informed when they are not doing a good job and volunteers are no different. It is better to professionally “fire” a volunteer with respect and dignity than to let them continue to perform below your organization’s standards. Both the liability of the organization and the future of the volunteer culture are at risk if we do not address poor performance.

Finally, those of us in management positions need training and education so we can manage our workforces effectively. In Maine right now over 60% of those individuals who manage volunteers learn either by self-study or on the job training. It is my hope that this blog, the various partnerships that have developed across our state among non-profits and the work being done to offer volunteer management education will change that statistic.

Paula Gagnon is Vice President and Academic Dean at York County Community College and Chair of the Maine Commission for Community Service.