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by Michele Ober

A year ago, a volunteer inquiry came across my desk with name, contact information, and interest in three different areas in the organization. I proceeded to contact the volunteer leaders of each area asking that they send welcome emails and invitations to join their committees/projects. Within four months, the volunteer had experiences in each of those three areas and he proceeded to get involved in a couple more as he felt his professional skills and talents could be beneficial. At that four-month mark, a volunteer survey was completed at which time he commented on the lack of knowledge of his capabilities provided to the volunteer leaders, the lack of work in one area, and the overall lack of communication and appreciation. In one area, he stated that he “took the initiative to get things moving.”

After seven months, the volunteer had resigned from the original three areas in which he expressed his initial interests and was becoming active in three other areas. He was able to complete short-term projects in two areas but, in the third area, he felt progress in ongoing projects was not forthcoming. This past week, after little/no communication between the volunteer leaders and the volunteer, an email came to me which stated his grievances and his final goodbye.

After contemplating this volunteer’s experience over this past year, I became so much more aware of the need to truly engage volunteers, not just manage them. I referred to “Boomer Volunteer Engagement: Collaborate Today, Thrive Tomorrow“, by Jill Friedman Fixler and Sandie Eichberg, with Gail Lorenz, CVA. I concentrated on the chapter entitled “Nurturing the Relationship” and especially Friedman Fixler’s tool, the Individual Volunteer Plan (IVP). While she states this tool is not for everyone, I think it would have been appropriate for this volunteer. “For the Boomer who wants meaningful work with definable impact, an IVP can be written to promise increasing impact over the volunteer’s career… an IVP may offer a future of professional development and increased responsibility.” For this volunteer, the most important opportunity that the IVP could create is “new possibilities for those who have a terrific volunteer history but seem to be losing interest, decreasing commitment, or verging on problematic behavior.”

The basic structure of an IVP is that a supervisor or support liaison and the volunteer meet. Together they discuss current competencies (which may include communication, team building, collaboration, and technology), goals and benchmarks to improve skills, competencies, or experiences as well as project planning (which may include vision, resources, training, and additional needs), and updates to review progress and to revise the plan as needed. Lastly, it is advised to keep lines of communication open especially to check in on progress.

As I transition from a volunteer coordinator to a volunteer engagement professional, I will continue to look at strategies to support the volunteer’s “desire for autonomy, authority, impact, and opportunities to be creative and innovative.” Had a proper plan for engagement been in practice, this volunteer certainly could have added value to the organization and could have felt successful and appreciated.

Michele Ober is the Volunteer Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity / 7 Rivers Maine. She is a guest blogger.

by Michael A. Aiguier

Sometimes a volunteer manager will find themselves with the fortunate situation of having an over abundance of people willing to help out in their organization. In this situation, it can be tempting to throw one’s hands up and just send people home with no clear reason as to why, or, if they have not arrived for an opportunity, not giving them a call. Both of these situations can lead to hurt feelings and the high likelihood that when you do need them, they will not be there.

So, how does one avoid these situations? Finding other organizations that have similar ends and are much needier than you is a good start. If you can build a standing relationship with one or a few other groups that also need volunteers on short notice, you can build good will by sending overflow to them and allowing your volunteers to participate in organizations with similar goals as they have.

Always having a back-up project is another way to help ensure satisfaction with your volunteer program. Have staff add ideas to a “project bank” that volunteers can withdraw from when they come in. You should also encourage your volunteers to suggest ideas for projects that they or others with the right skill set can do. Sometimes it is easier for some one doing volunteer work to see where a program can be improved with just a little more people power.

Designing projects in such a way as to have them easily broken down into teams, and to have those teams broken easily into further groups is another effective way of managing overflow. You automatically have created new volunteer positions (team leaders), and found a way to distribute new volunteers (as they come in you can assign them to one of the current teams).

So, when you have advertised your event or position so well that you have an overwhelming response, do not despair. Be thankful, and reward the interest in your organization with new and on-going opportunities.

Michael Aiguier is an AmeriCorps VISTA with the VolunteerMaine Project serving at the United Way of Eastern Maine. He is a featured blogger.

by Michele Ober

While I was a middle school math teacher for only a few years, two principles have recently proven useful – develop your own “If I Get Hit by a Bus” book and “don’t reinvent the wheel.”

As a teacher I’d hear horror stories of new teachers reporting to school, being handed keys to the classroom and an attendance sheet, and struggling to get through their first weeks of school. During one of my many professional development days, I heard about the “If I Get Hit by a Bus” book, the guide to running your classroom from school policies and procedures to lesson plans to grading to classroom management. Regardless of any certification earned, a new teacher would indeed find a book like this helpful to get through the basics of the first few years of teaching while developing their own personal style.

When I came upon the volunteer management scene, I was certainly a novice. I had no professional training but had worked with the previous volunteer coordinator as a volunteer and knew of a few of her responsibilities. Some were written down, others not; none of which was in one central location. Over the past two years, I have learned, on my own, the various functions of volunteer management and have been trained in many others.

In 2009, I attended a 4-day Volunteer Management for the 21st Century course which incorporated the Competencies for Managers of Volunteers (Anne Schink and Larry Ullian, instructors). In this class session, I realized how important it is to organize a toolkit with best examples for the recruitment, training, retention, scheduling, evaluation, and recognition of volunteers.

While I now have a working binder which holds those examples I like best and I have a CD filled with best practices thanks to Anne and Larry, writing my “If I Get Hit by a Truss” book is still in the works. And I know I don’t have to reinvent the wheel!

While serving in AmeriCorps, I received a workbook “Developing and Managing Volunteers”, February 2006, one in FEMA’s professional development series. VolunteerMaine.org boasts a healthy resource center including the “Need to Know Basics” and the Competencies. At a recent VAMM conference, I was introduced to Jill Friedman Fixler and Sandie Eichberg’s philosophy and practice of collaborative volunteer engagement, redefining any organization’s relationship with volunteers. I also have affiliate examples available through Habitat International’s support center.

With so many resources, I feel confident by the end of the year my book will be complete or at least in working order. I look forward to increased productivity and comfort in my profession. I will also feel better knowing that the next volunteer coordinator will be better prepared when s/he is given keys to this office.

Michele Ober is the Volunteer Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity / 7 Rivers Maine. She is a guest blogger.

by Charlie Baldwin

This spring, the Portland Trails Volunteer Program has focused on planting the new Bayside Trail that connects the Eastern Promenade to the Bayside neighborhood via an abandoned rail corridor. This former industrial site was a clutter of old tracks, invasive knotweed and contaminated soils. After the contractors cleared the site, capped the contaminated soils and added tons of new clean soils it was time to bring in the volunteers to plant and beautify the new trail.

Our plan was to plant several rain gardens in the catchment basins that are located along the corridor. These rain gardens help trap and absorb run-off before it enters the storm water system. They reduce the load on the sewer infrastructure and help filter and reuse rainwater before it is lost into Casco Bay. Because of the functional nature of the gardens, we had to carefully plan the planting and how best to utilize volunteers, most of whom are novice gardeners and unfamiliar with handling the soils and plants used in these rain gardens.

We began by laying out the gardens with the help of Landscape Architect Tom Farmer, taking care to measure sun exposure and taking into account the sheltering effect of nearby buildings. Tom devised a layout that would provide the sun and temperature requirements for each species. In order to assure that the plants ended up in the right places we marked each spot with a flag labeled with the correct plant for each spot.

On planting day, we explained the lay out and had volunteers work each plant group separately so all the red twig dog woods were planted before we moved on to the sheep laurel etc. After each plant group was in the ground I did a quick inspection to make sure they were seated properly. When all the plants were in the ground I demonstrated proper mulching technique then had the volunteers finish mulching the beds.

Our prior planning really helped make the planting a success. By laying out the beds and planting in stages we were able to take a hands-off approach to the actual planting, allowing volunteers to do the work themselves. Working in stages allowed me to double-check and correct mistakes with out leaning over anyone’s shoulder.

Our first planting worked so well we were able to duplicate the process with few changes over the next three rain garden plantings. Our major concern was adapting the process to fit the number of participants. We made a few changes, including providing a plant name key so that each participant could check to make sure each plant was placed at the appropriate flag with out having to get my attention.

I consider our plantings to be a success not only because the gardens look healthy and orderly but because it provided Portland Trails with a terrific opportunity to educate a whole bunch of people, from a wide range of backgrounds, about the problems of urban run off, soil contamination and the importance of water conservation and human scale urban infrastructure.

Charlie Baldwin is the Volunteer Manager for Trail Projects at Portland Trails. He is a guest blogger.

By Ann Swain

Not all non-profit organizations utilizing volunteers recognize the importance or significance of identifying ‘volunteer leaders’ and often don’t view volunteers as leaders. However, many volunteers have actually come from years of the corporate world and can offer a wealth of information and expertise that we might otherwise not have access to without paying out large sums of money.

Volunteer leaders give credibility to our non-profit programs in a number of ways.
 They are great recruiters
 They are usually very good at fundraising
 They often have terrific ideas about what volunteers want in a program
 They make good liaisons
 They are good community outreach for your non-profit
 They often can alleviate volunteer manager stress

The question is, ‘how do you attract a good volunteer leader and how do you keep them interested?’

I’m not sure you really ‘attract’ a good volunteer leader but you will usually find one within your own program’s pool of volunteers. They are usually the one with good ideas on more than one occasion, they are thoughtful about offering ideas and they seem to be the one person, other than the manager, that other volunteers will go to with questions or concerns.

The next step is to nurture the leadership skills within that volunteer you may have identified as a ‘leader’. Ask them if they are interested in becoming a ‘volunteer leader’. If the answer is yes and your program does not yet have a formal ‘volunteer leader’ program, enlist the skills of the newly identified ‘volunteer leader’ to help establish a ‘volunteer leader program’ within your non-profit. Be sure to formally identify your new ‘volunteer leader’ in their new capacity so that other volunteers have a clear understanding of this volunteer’s position in the organization. Once a set of guidelines has been established for your ‘volunteer leader program’, your organization is well on its way to offering skills to its volunteers that enhance the volunteer experience. And you, as a manager of volunteers, are on your way to enjoying the full potential of your volunteers. It’s a wonderful experience as a manager of volunteers to play a part in opening doors for volunteers to meet their fullest potential as a volunteer.

A word of caution: not every volunteer you identify as a leader has interest in becoming a ‘volunteer leader’. They may choose to volunteer their time and leave it at that. Happy volunteers, happy manager of volunteers.

Ann Swain is the Director of the Senior Companion Program at the University of Maine Cooperative Ext.

by Margaret Petrarca

National Volunteer Week was established in 1974 by President Richard Nixon to establish an annual celebration of volunteering. What a terrific idea! It is all too often that we forget to celebrate the hours upon hours of hard work non-profits, volunteer administrators, and volunteers put forward. As volunteer administrators, we spend most of our time planning programs, recruiting volunteers and engaging our current volunteers. We may be withdrawn from the direct service that volunteers participate in daily and it becomes so easy to lose track of our accomplishments. Each day we are making it possible for volunteers to serve over 300 individuals in soup kitchens, teach refugees the magic of winter, care for children in need and support families across Maine and more. Now that is a reason to throw a wild rumpus of celebration at least once a year if not more! So why don’t we?

The dilemma is that on our already overflowing plates we now have to give even more to celebrate the art of volunteering and the individuals that make it possible. As I sat with my supervisor at our monthly celebratory coffee break we discussed the very same point. National Volunteer Week is here, what are we going to do? We thumbed through ideas and years worth of saved resources and past activities and came across the most magnificent project, a Tree of Volunteerism! Each leaf would represent a volunteer and their beliefs about volunteering. We spread out our notebooks and started brainstorming. Where does it go? Wouldn’t it look beautiful in the United Way lobby?!! How are we going to get the materials?…How are going to build a tree?…How are we going to cut out all of those leaves? The idea quickly became overwhelming for our packed tight schedule.

I then decided to use my, “Power of Ask” and the amazing tool of collaboration! I turned to my local peer-to-peer network of volunteer administrators, PAVA (Portland Area Volunteer Administrators) and combed through my contacts to find the best person to start with. Immediately I thought of Jamie Andrews from the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine, she not only has a passion for exciting projects but also has the materials and artistic ability that I am in great need of! I didn’t stop there because I realized that if everyone in PAVA participated we could create a tree that not only recognizes the work of United Way and Children’s Museum and Theatre volunteers but volunteers from almost 30 organizations across Greater Portland. What an enormous tree and a beautiful display of appreciation!

Now the heavy load of my project is lessened significantly because it is now OUR project and the tasks can be divided up. Currently a three-dimension tree is being constructed out of PVC pipe at the Children’s Museum and PAVA volunteer administrators are seeking and submitting statements to me from their volunteers. Are you interested in helping with the tree too? Ask your volunteers to write a sentence or one word reflection on volunteering and the organization they volunteer with. They can choose to include their name and age or remain anonymous.

Submit the statements to me by Wednesday, March 14 at 5:00pm. Stop by and see our Tree of Volunteerism anytime during National Volunteer Week (April 19-24) at the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine in Portland!

Margaret Petrarca is a VolunteerMaine AmeriCorps VISTA at the United Way of Greater Portland and is a guest blogger.

by Marc A. Pitman

I was recently asked if I knew the best way for a website to come up on search results when people type in key words. I’m not an SEO expert, and I’ve never played one on TV. But here are some tips I’ve learned along the way. They’ll help raise your nonprofit website’s visibility with search engines so that people will find your site much more easily.

1. Figure out what search terms people are currently using to find your site.
You could use Google keyword search or sites like SpyFu.com to see what similar sites to yours are using for keywords, how often people are using those terms, and how high they rank in search results. Once you know what people are searching on, you can determine if the words you thought were the best keywords are really the best or if you can tweak them a bit.

2. Use those likely search terms in the “keywords” meta-tags.
This is an HTML thing so you might want to check with someone a bit more technical in your office. If you’re using Word Press like I do, check out the very handy All In One SEO Pack plug in. This lets you easily modify your site’s meta tags. More importantly, it helps you easily create meta titles and descriptions for each blog post or page you put up. (The meta description is the part that shows up in a Google search. It’s also what is grabbed when you post a link to Facebook.)

3. Strategically use those key in the verbiage on your site.
I’m not advising creating garbage content. You’re not trying to “trick” search engines. You are trying to help them find your site when people search on terms related to your cause.
When I looked at the pages on FundraisingCoach.com in light of search terms I was interested in, I was shocked to see that I talked a lot about seminars and trainings but never used the terms “fundraising seminars” and “nonprofit trainings.” People searching on “seminars” could be looking for just about anything. Obviously people that searched on the “fundraising seminars” were a better fit to my site than people just searching on the generic “seminars.” So I tweaked my pages to say “fundraising seminars”!

4. Write articles on your site, and post them on a regular basis.
When it comes to search engine optimization, content is king. If you have interesting content, people will link to you and search engines will crawl your site. Apparently you have some ability to “train” the “spiders” that roam the web for search engines. They’ll learn to check your site more frequently if it’s updated more frequently. That’s why it’s a good idea to have a blog that you post to on a regular basis. Blogs are an easy way to keep your website fresh. Once you’re written an article, you can re-purpose it by posting it to sitelike EzineArticles.com. These sites let you link back to your site, which helps build credibility with search engines too.

5. Google Analytics
I HIGHLY recommend you sign up for Google Analytics. It’s free and offers a very robust set of tools to help you understand how people find and use your site. After signing up, you simply insert a piece of code on each page you want tracked and you get to see who’s visiting, what browser’s they’re using, where in the world they are, what search terms they’re using to find you, how long they’re on your site, what pages are most viewed. It’s amazing.

Marc A. Pitman is the founder of FundraisingCoach.com and is a guest blogger.

by Sarah Rhyan

Last semester, one of my students brought me an all-too-familiar problem. As a leader of her son’s P.T.A. she was frustrated with the low parental turnout at meetings and P.T.A.-sponsored events. She asked what she should do.

I offered the following advice:

When I ran a debate program in the South Bronx, getting parents to visit was the toughest part of my job. One year, I offered $100 worth of office supplies to the debate team that brought the most parents to the program’s annual open house. The winning school enticed two parents to attend. They were the only two that showed up. Over time I learned why parents don’t participate and how nonprofit leaders and volunteers can cope.

Why don’t parents participate?

Over the years, I discovered that well-intentioned parents still miss P.T.A. meetings, open houses, and the like for two reasons. First, parents opt out because they can’t find the time, not because they don’t care. Even non-working parents are balancing doctor visits, house-cleaning, shopping, etc. The particular date or time selected for a meeting might coincide with soccer practice, a visiting aunt, and the like. Today’s parents are busier than ever and they simply cannot attend every event. Second, parents are asked to attend all sorts of meetings, and most of them are a waste of time. Moms, dads, grandparents, and other legal guardians meet with doctors, social workers, pastors, nutritionists, teachers, etc. They show up to these meetings to demonstrate that they care about their kids. Many of these meetings are disorganized, irrelevant, unpleasant, and offer parents little in the way of help. Well-meaning administrators across the public sector organize face-to-face meetings when they’re not really necessary. Parents cannot tell the difference between a legitimate meeting and a waste of time from the flyers brought home by their children.

What can nonprofit leaders and volunteers do in the face of parental absence?

Nonprofit staffers – especially volunteers and unpaid community leaders like my student – can approach the situation using some or all of the following five strategies:

Strategy 1 - Only convene meetings when there is a true need for face-to-face decision-making, etc. For everything else, use e-mail, paper (e.g., take-home handouts), etc.

Strategy 2 - Plan a clear agenda and communicate it with parents well in advance so that they know the topic of the meeting, the goals for the meeting, and why their participation matters.

Strategy 3 - Organize, organize, organize… so that you can run the most efficient meeting possible. A thirty-minute meeting is ideal for busy parents.

Strategy 4 - Schedule the meeting at a time that works for working (and non-working) families (e.g., 4:30pm). If possible, provide an extra benefit such as free dinner. Remember, in the world of busy parenting, a 30-minute meeting accompanied by dinner for the family might actually save time (e.g., no dishes to wash).

Strategy 5 - Be happy with quality, rather than quantity. A dedicated team of 5 parents willing to meet monthly will achieve more for most organizations than a loose grouping of 20 parents willing to meet once a year.

Sarah Rhyan, Ph.D., is from the Department of Communication at The University of Texas at El Paso and is a featured blogger.

By Noble Smith

Having spent nearly fifty years in the business of working with and for volunteers at non-profit organizations does not make me an expert at anything. However, one aspect of serving as a volunteer that I have carried into my professional life has been the trait or characteristic that governs a successful volunteer experience.

I have seen these experiences especially over the last twenty years being a volunteer at a number of organizations and as a member of various commissions, task forces and quasi-governmental agencies - make darn sure that the volunteer has a clear understanding of what is required, that the task is well-structured, well supervised and that it fits into a total integrated framework of the non-profit.

Today’s non-profits now have a plethora of baby boomers who are (or shortly will be) descending by volunteering their professional and personal skills, time and commitment and as the masses increase, non-profits best hone and fine-tune their enlistment, training and management skills. As we are observing, baby boomers are better educated, healthier, have less free time, and high levels of work experience that perhaps the previous generation. Non-profits better be in top-notch shape to handle this growing influx.

Cited below are the most frequently stated observations by both volunteers and those who run the non-profits that I have experienced as a volunteer, a development staffer and as a consultant. (The reader will certainly have many other valued observations and recommendations.)

What are you as a volunteer looking for in volunteer opportunities?

Clear job descriptions of what is expected;
Matching my life experiences with the task assigned;
Responsibility with authority, although all volunteers must recognize that they are working, as in business, for others, others who must possess and execute clearly visible leadership traits;
A genuine pat on the back for a job well done (or a constructive overview where improvement can be made);
Follow-up reports on the effectiveness of the volunteer effort.

What attracts the volunteer in the search for opportunities?

Well-organized volunteer program;
Good volunteer management supervision;
Organizations that dovetail with my personal interest/skills;
Recognition;
Timeliness of task and its functionality;
Impact that volunteers have on reaching the vision, mission and core values of the organization.

What do volunteer managers need to know about working with older volunteers?

Know the volunteer’s life experience and match accordingly;
Know exactly what you want the volunteer to undertake and accomplish;
Provide appropriate and realistic training;
Treat volunteers as though they were your parents;
Listen carefully to the volunteers 4 Cs - comments, concerns, compliants and compliments;
Provide personal follow-up, and visible recognition;
Know how to discharge, relieve a volunteer who is in the wrong place, wrong task and at the wrong time.

We all need to keep firmly in our minds, whether we are the organization or the volunteer, that in equivalent payroll, volunteers are indispensable to our society. They are a commodity that merit’s our highest degree of quality care, a solid business-like approach to their involvement and, most importantly, treat them like your parents - they certainly qualify!

Noble Smith is a former Commissioner, President of Noble Smith Associates (Development and Marketing Consultants) and a featured blogger.

by Ann Swain

In all parts of our world, there are many people with the greatest desire to offer their expertise in a volunteer capacity. In preparing for retirement, I often ask the prospective retiree, ‘do you have a plan?’ If they don’t indicate a plan for their retirement, I will always suggest volunteering. However, there is a population in our world who may not have expertise in any particular area, but they truly have heart. They want to give back, but they don’t even know what to give back or how.

Our expectations of the ‘ideal volunteer’ may need to be rewritten. Our expectations may in fact, not be reality. It all depends on where we are in the world. The day a prospective volunteer walks in your door with the desire to ‘give back’, even if they don’t know what that really means, they may end up being one of the best volunteers you have ever had. They may not be able to read beyond a sixth grade level, or at all for that matter. But they have heart and desire to give to their community. It may have taken all their inner strength to walk through your door and offer themselves beyond what is comfortable. Look beyond your expectations and see.

Expectations and reality don’t always match, and that’s not a bad thing.

Ann Swain is a featured blogger and the Director of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Senior Companion Program.