May 20, 2012
There’s a New One Every Day
In all the gloom and doom of national and international economics the volunteer industry keeps on keeping on. Numbers of volunteers continue to increase, now spread across a wider age range than in generations past, and across different sectors. The range of volunteer activities broadens as organisations raise their expectations and the standards of volunteer programmes, as the manager of volunteers becomes recognised as a leader holding a pivotal role in developing and maintaining volunteer services.
There could be quite a number of people wanting to tell me “it ain’t necessarily so”. Somebody is bound to point out how volunteer recruitment and retention is so often the most wanted topic on Volunteer Centre training schedules. There are lots of reasons for this: turnover in people working with volunteers, a lack of specific training on management of volunteers, getting behind the times in new ways to attract volunteers, and the different expectations of volunteers – you know, using social media, getting upbeat in advertising, creating new roles for volunteers.
There will always be room for improvement. And there are always people out there thinking about volunteering who need a bit of encouragement.
Like a conversation I had last week that went like this:
- I am asked: Are you working, or retired?
- I talk a bit about being involved in the Management of Volunteers Project, and why. Of course it’s a great opportunity to do a bit of a sell, on volunteering and on the importance of good management for volunteers.
- Oh, she says a little wistfully, I’ve thought about volunteering, and I could ‘cos I work part-time. I do like shopping, she adds, eyes lighting up at the thought of being a volunteer that got to browse the malls and shopping meccas.
- Well, I advise, it’s really important that you get a job that you like, and managers try to match your interests.
So then I went on about how to connect, how to find out what volunteer positions were available. Easy as, I said – you can do it all on the computer. Or you could go to Facebook – there are regular inserts on volunteer opportunities. Or go visit a Volunteer Centre. That’s where you can get registered and get referred to places that could meet your interests and expectations.
I don’t know if I have enabled one more person to join the ranks of volunteers, but at least I have taken the opportunity to offer some good leads and some encouragement to give it a go.
In just four weeks’ time New Zealand will be alive with exhibitions and events to promote and to celebrate volunteering. Volunteer Awareness Week will have something for everyone. This annual programme serves to illustrate the breadth and depth of volunteering and all the organisations that go to make our Civil Society.
Volunteers are everywhere. When I go to catch a bus I walk past the Community Centre which is always alive with people meeting for community purposes. Around the corner I can find the local Community Garden, and further on is the Citizens Advice Bureau staffed by warm and welcoming volunteers. When I go walking on one of the many trails around Wellington I see the work of volunteers who have been landscaping a desolate environment, restoring native plants and trees, recovering a waterway to re-introduce native fish. During the weekend I’ll be watching some kids run around a cold and muddy sports field, and I will be admiring the volunteers who are team coaches, managers and referees, and the ones who organise the rota for half-time oranges and the jersey washing. My weekly community newspapers tell me more, about op-shops run by volunteers, about food collections for Food Banks, or a meal delivery service for new mums. Volunteers knock at my door, doing their stuff as collectors for a fund-raising appeal. Email newsletters turn up in my in-box, crafted by volunteers.
That’s the way of my community, just a small part of it. This year’s slogan for Volunteer awareness week is Building Communities through Volunteering. That’s what we do, and you can read more here.
December 11, 2011
International Volunteers’ Day – a last blast for the year
On Monday December 5 I was wandering around the Firth of Thames, surveying shell banks created and shifted by tides for thousands of years. I was also getting acquainted with the birds that inhabit these tidal flats, the shore birds like oystercatchers, the heron waders, and the migrating birds collecting here to take off in March. Here is a meeting point for the godwits that will fly non-stop for more than 10,000 kilometres, every year, until their feeding grounds in northeast Asia are usurped for concrete developments.
So I missed out on functions celebrating International Volunteers’ Day where I might have dressed up to enjoy a mayoral reception and more. What I got instead was the enthusiasm of a couple of volunteers at the Bird Hide willing to talk and to get me better informed about the environment and bird behaviour, and which bird was which. They did well, balancing the wisdom of age with the enthusiasm of youth. Well really, they were both enthusiastic.
We did not talk about volunteering, the importance of good management, nor the politics of the community sector and NGOs. And I forgot to remind them to sit up with pride for the occasion of the day.
There were of course plenty of celebratory functions for the day, held for public and organisational recognition of volunteering and the contributions made to community well-being, societal infrastructure, and services to individuals and involvement in all sectors of the community. And there were lots of public proclamations on Facebook and via press releases declaring appreciation of volunteers. The one that caught my eye was a tribute to the volunteers who made up the governance of an organisation – that does not happen very often.
This year IV Day is also significant for being the wrap for IYV+10, and for the United Nations publication of State of the World’s Volunteerism Report 2011.
The report was launched by Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and now Administrator for United Nations Development Programme. Her remarks to the UN General Assembly remind us of the universality of volunteering values: the desire to contribute to the common good, out of free will and in a spirit of solidarity, without expectation of material reward. Indeed, the strength of volunteering is a sure sign of people power, the power to make a difference, to change the world.
The overview of SWVR is compelling reading, from the philosophic statement in the first paragraph:
Volunteerism is a basic expression of human relationships. It is about people’s need to participate in their societies and to feel that they matter to others. We strongly believe that the social relationships intrinsic to volunteer work are critical to individual and community well-being. The ethos of volunteerism is infused with values including solidarity, reciprocity, mutual trust, belonging and empowerment, all of which contribute significantly to quality of life.
Then we get a down-to-earth reality check. I am not surprised that Helen Clark notes “the strong links between volunteering and peace and human development are still not adequately recognised”. Turning high-flown ideals into action has always been a challenge. The SWVR claims:
While recognition of volunteerism has been growing in recent times, especially since the United Nations proclaimed 2001 the International Year of Volunteers (IYV), the phenomenon is still misconstrued and undervalued. All too often, the strong links are overlooked between volunteer activity on the one hand and peace and human development on the other. It is time for the contribution of volunteerism to the quality of life, and to wellbeing in a wider sense, to be understood as one of the missing components of a development paradigm that still has economic growth at its core.
Volunteering ‘misconstrued and undervalued’? The SWVR is taking a global perspective, yet even in my small corner of the world there are signs that volunteering is valued more for its economic contribution than as “a renewable resource and vital component of the social capital of every nation”.
Too often the functions for IV Day can turn into a gathering of those who rule and run volunteer organisations. Too often the volunteers get patronised with pats on the head (tapu in many cultures): affirmations of ‘being wonderful’ that might polish a volunteer halo are of much lesser order than evidence that ‘what you did made X amount of difference’.
Volunteering has gained strength in the past ten years through internet communication, corporate volunteering, the self-help responses to environmental disasters and increased opportunities for people who want to ‘help’. Management of volunteers has been developed and enhanced through formal training programmes, establishing national and international associations. There is also a huge increase in published research on volunteering, which means there is no end to learning, especially for managers and leaders of volunteers.
Volunteering will survive, because it is in our nature as social beings, though the future is uncharted territory. As yet there is no ordained IYV+20 to set goals for the next decade. As the godwits fly the world in their annual migrations, so does volunteering go global. And like the godwits we all need to travel a world that gives us due and safe passage.
………
This post is my sign-off for 2011. Mid-January I shall review the wish-list I made at the beginning of the year.
November 6, 2011
Finding the X Factor
In case you missed the celebration of the year (and I don’t mean the anniversary of a long-dead renegade who tried to blow up the English Parliament), here is an account of the event held in Wellington a couple of days ago as a celebration for International Day for Managing Volunteers (IMVDay).
You can read a brief summary of the event, but you really had to be there to get the full flavour, the spot-on comic timing, the bon mots and the audience appreciation in laughter and applause.
This poster introduces the context for interviewing short-listed applicants for a position in the Tree Rehab organisation – a rich source in itself for additional comedy. All applicants are, in other lives, real leaders and managers of volunteer programmes, so they know their roles intimately.
What we get is a parody of management styles. There is a humble ‘just a volunteer manager’ concerned with sharing muffins and warm fuzzies for ‘her’ volunteers. The frenetic Fundraiser and the HR control freak speak in acronyms and refer to volunteers as ‘tools’ and ‘human capital’ like they are so many cogs in the efficiency machine. The Executive Manager (the man in the suit) voices sexist opinions and is seeking a package that includes a car and a key to the executive bathroom as well as a hefty salary.
Like any good comedy there are moments of truth. Teresa Green spoke about empathy, and its relevance to leading a ‘happy band of volunteers’. H R (Hannah) Smith argued for protocols and policies that would protect both volunteers and the organisation. Lottie Cash, when she could take the $$ signs out of her eyes and the wheeling-and-dealing with sponsors and the big-time funders, knew very well that without volunteers involved in fundraising there would be no organisation. And Gary Gecko could climb down from his high horse long enough to point out previous experience as a volunteer could be an asset in his approach to management.
When invited to vote the audience is not really of a mind to make an appointment, though we have been given much food for thought in what does not make a good manager of volunteers.
But there is a clear X factor that emerges from the presentations we have witnessed. We need to add dramatic talent to the list of skills and attributes for managers of volunteers.
That capacity to project ourselves into other personae, to better understand what makes those volunteers (and paid staff) tick, to relate with them in ways that enhance the volunteer performance and the organisation’s real appreciation of volunteer contributions is a vital asset. I do not mean we have to be drama queens – an introduction to models of personal styles or types is all it would take.
I’ll bet most of us already demonstrate that innate ability. Maybe we just need to show it off a bit more often.
That is the educating up I get from Volunteer Wellington’s celebration on IMVDay 2011.
