May 13, 2012
Management, or Leadership of Volunteers?
Are you a manager, or a leader of volunteers? How would you answer such a question?
Yes, and no.
Both-and.
What’s the diff?
I guess most of us will skip over such a conundrum to keep focused on the important issues of recruiting and training a new bunch of volunteers. Spirited debate on management of volunteers disappears over the horizon when you are time-poor and multi-tasking and trying to prioritise today’s to-do list.
Please keep reading, because you might just find a germ to keep you motivated as a leader of volunteers.
I know, we have struggled for years to get our management skills recognised, and now we are inserting leadership in the way we talk about running volunteer programmes.
I use ‘management’ for convenience and brevity, instead of a long-hand mouthful of manager / leader / coordinator, and having to explain the differences. I use the word as a collective noun, including the notion of a ‘volunteer’ volunteer manager/coordinator.
That’s because I am a Both-And kinda person. A fence-sitter, if you must. I prefer the metaphor of a boundary-rider up on the range, being able to see both ways.
A manager needs to attend to systems and processes, to get the job done in a timely fashion by the best person, according to the organisation’s strategic plan and operational policies.
A leader needs to stimulate, encourage, inspire, facilitate and enable other people to fulfil a mission, to promote a cause, as in the organisation’s strategic plan and operational policies, as I encouraged last week.
As a both-and person I see virtue in both approaches. Management is practical and task-focused; leadership is people-centred and focused on relationships. Surely management and leadership are both important and relevant in managing volunteers? Well – Peter Drucker, the 20th century management guru, had the answer:
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Notice how value-laden “the right things” could be, and how you have to think carefully about what you might include in such a category, and how ‘the right thing’ could be different for every organisation.
There is a huge literature on leadership. Sociologist Max Weber might have been the starting point in his classification of authority: charismatic (personality and leadership), traditional (patriarchy and feudalism) and rational-legal (bureaucracy). Contemporary theorists talk about transactional and transformational leadership styles. The former is process-driven, as in the description of a manager above. The latter is about values and purpose and meaning – about behaviour, about people and their capacity for change and their desire for development. That sounds to me more like what we do in leading volunteers.
Take Transformational Leadership one step further to Emotional Intelligence (or EQ, as it is often referred to), and this is what the characteristics of an EQ Transformational Leader might look like:
- Self Awareness – understanding your own strengths and weaknesses, and your values
- Social Skills – building rapport and relationships
- Empathy – ability to understand another persons point of view
- Motivation – a drive to succeed, to develop the best ever volunteer programme.
Yes! That’s what we do every day isn’t it? Or where you would like to be? And where peer support groups or a leadership training programme could support you into being the best leader you want to be, understanding and using the language of leadership and a whole lot more.
Confession
I have done a lot of study in my time. It included only a brief introduction to formal business management and social service administration, and that was a long time ago. Leadership never entered the frame back then. But I did learn about, and to practice, a philosophy of ‘helping people to help themselves’. It was, I thought, “leading from behind”. If you think that sounds like pushing, as I was firmly told by a colleague, think about what you have to do every day to stir and encourage volunteers, to get paid staff to give a bit of appreciation for volunteer contributions. Your praise reinforces and shapes behaviour that leads to great things for your organisation and for volunteers.
Here is the platitude you could pin on your wall:
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his 0wn. (Benjamin Disraeli)
November 27, 2011
What’s in a Word? Do we Engage Volunteers or do we Recruit Them?
I did not intend a follow-on from last weeks’ post, but there has been a flurry of exchanges on the electronic networks in recent days. We are back into navel-gazing on language and the way we use words.
Yes, it is important to understand meanings and why we use particular words more than others. But what are the subtle differences between engaging volunteers and recruiting them? Aren’t we being a bit specious here?
Let’s start with the original statement:
“….. volunteers are ‘engaged’ rather than recruited. This terminology distinguishes between employing people in paid and unpaid activities.”
The on-line responses went in different directions, covering the following ground:
- ‘Engaging’ is a more nurturing term, and it also gives a message to paid staff about the ‘engagement’ of volunteers.
- Getting the wording right helps ensures structured support and guidelines to those who co-ordinate or manage volunteer services.
- It’s both/and, isn’t it? There is a formal process to follow in ‘recruiting’ volunteers, and ‘engaging’ volunteers is ongoing, a two-way relationship.
- Well really, ‘engaging’ is a more attractive word than ‘recruiting’, more enticing for volunteers.
- ‘Engagement’ can mean different things to different people: something done up front in the process in the process of ‘recruiting’; or it might be the formal act of making an appointment.
- Come on, get real – the words can be used interchangeably.
My initial response:
Hmmm…. So volunteers really need to be distinguished from paid staff. Therefore they are to be treated differently, implying they are a lesser breed of workers. I thought we had dealt to this misconception. We need structured support and guidelines, do we? Which go as far as telling us what words to use?
My rational takes:
I am not sure there would be whole-hearted support for ‘engagement’ in terms of ‘nurturing’. Managers and leaders of volunteers need to do more than be kind and caring, and their organisations would certainly expect more.
But I do like the idea of engagement as a mutually supportive relationship, building on work tasks, respect for and recognition of skills, and appreciation for each contribution to the organisation. That’s the whole “spirit and culture” of volunteering, isn’t it?
My reflective conclusion:
Yes there is a degree of inter-changeability between ‘recruiting’ and ‘engaging’ volunteers. A disciple of Human Resource Management will apply ‘recruitment’, and ultimately a volunteer (or paid staff) may be ‘engaged’ in working for the organisation. If steeped in a community development approach of collective purpose and common interests, attracting volunteers will be an ‘engagement’ process, though I might have to organise a ‘recruitment’ policy and programme. And if I am hiring paid staff I would like to think this could be a process of ‘engagement’ too – in the best interests of the organisation.
The argumentation on this topic might seem like splitting hairs, yet it is always good to figure out what we mean, and to mean what we say.
September 4, 2011
Another Word for ‘Managing’ Volunteers
To invigorate the great unpaid workforce of volunteers … it takes more than snappy motivational speeches, persistence and stunning organisational skills. You need to be a people person. You need to have the ability to quickly read people’s wants, needs and desires. If you don’t have this you are liable to lose them.
“Power to the People” in Forest & Bird, Issue 341, August 2011, p31.
There is nothing new in this opening paragraph for people who manage volunteers, though it gives me a glow to see acknowledgement for our management skills in print. The article goes on to make a tribute to the retiring manager / coordinator of a huge forest restoration and conservation project in the Waitakere Ranges of north-west Auckland.
The achievements of the project are pretty amazing, in scope and scale and specially in the numbers of volunteers engaged. What interests me are the words “volunteer wrangling”. This is what (according to the writer of the article) the leader of the volunteers started doing, to redeem the project from ‘organised chaos’.
Now, I know that ‘wrangling’ is something a cowboy does when herding horses or cattle. You have to ride your horse, whistle your dogs, get in amongst a mass of unpredictable animals, show who is boss, make sure the herd gets going down the right trail.
I know also that wrangling can be an angry disputation, an occasion for haggling and bargaining. Or you might say ‘wangling’, to win an argument. The origin of the word is said to come from 14th Century Old German, meaning ‘to struggle’, which injects a new word for what some managers of volunteers experience.
But a ‘wrangler’ of volunteers?
Astute readers will recognise that ‘wrangling’ is not beyond the role of managing volunteers. There are times in ‘negotiating’ with senior management on volunteer policy or programme details which might become ‘disputatious’. Running a major event project involving hundreds of volunteers can certainly involve ‘herding’ volunteers into the right place at the right time.
Perhaps it is not a stretch too far to acknowledge we ‘herd’ volunteers to fit specific job descriptions, or to draft them into new positions to fit their skills and interests. But there are such a whole lot of other things managers of volunteers do to ensure their programmes work well for volunteers and the organisation. Read the opening paragraph again.
I do not see any banners lobbying for adoption of the style and meaning of ‘wrangling’ into the language of managing volunteers. But I do like the reminder for minding our language.
May 15, 2011
The Marketing of Volunteerism
You: How dare you put ‘marketing’ and ‘volunteerism’ alongside each other!
Me: Well – volunteering is a product, isn’t it? Like shampoo and shaving cream or the contents of a cereal box?
You: No way! Volunteering is a different order altogether. It’s a service industry covering a wide range of community and social interests.
Me: Ah, a service industry – like those that keep my telephone going, maintain my electricity supply, collect my rubbish and so on. Or maybe you are thinking of Child Care services, Drop in Centres, Home Care services for the elderly, and a whole lot of other stuff where most of the people involved are being paid for what they do. Volunteering is also a service industry – and it comes for free.
You: So if services are for free, why would you need to promote volunteering?
Me: Glad you asked! Let me tell you about a marketing programme for volunteering and how it plays out around the world. The major promo is Volunteer Awareness Week. In the US they’ve been and done their National Volunteer Week in mid-April, and already you can get some marketing tools and resources for 2012. (You see – the US knows about the power of marketing!) Right now, Australia is winding up its week of events; UK is gearing up for their efforts in the first week of June; New Zealand will do its thing from June 19. I have yet to see an evaluation of such promotions that indicates real gains for the industry.
I hope you have noticed 2011 is also IYV+10. Yes, that’s right, volunteering got its own special recognition from United Nations, in 2001, wanting “to enhance the recognition, facilitation, networking and promoting of volunteer service”. Ten years on, and the General Assembly wants “to consolidate successes attained and to build on the momentum created by IYV”.
A nice plea. Back in 2001 the slogan was ‘Ordinary people doing the Extraordinary’. This year the slogan is Inspiring the Volunteer in You, also adopted by Australia for its Volunteer Week. The UN Vision Statement concludes with the notion that volunteer action will inspire millions of others.
I’m sorry folks – good intentions and high-flown aspirations never made great profits in world markets. It’s not enough to extol the achievements of volunteers, nor to play the ‘feel-good’ card. The UN call to Governments, volunteer involving organizations, civil society, private sector, non-governmental organizations to engage in marking IYV+10 has brought only a minor blip to my radar screen.
I have never studied marketing, though I think I have figured the various ploys used by advertising agencies to sell a product. Audio-visual assault through various media, billboards, slogans, jingles, logos – you’ll know them all. The underlying message is all about the benefits of the product, whether the gain might be on price, health, quality, advanced technology, social status or whatever.
There could be some great multi-dimensional promos on the benefits of volunteering. Volunteering deserves more than the inspiration tag – that’s no more inspiring than breathing in and out.
Forget the abstract virtues. Let’s focus on the advantages volunteering brings to NGOs, to the substantive gains accrued by volunteers to large and small organisations in our communities. Let’s see what volunteering adds to the private sector and to Government. Let’s get real about the real meaning of volunteering, that dynamic force that binds our societal structures.
April 24, 2011
Volunteering and Culture
“Volunteering is culturally-driven.”
Well – there’s a statement of the bleeding obvious! It’s a nice piece of jargon, possibly including some PC elements. We can nod our heads and agree with the profound sentiments, and then move on to the next item on the agenda.
We all know what the statement means, don’t we?
And that is where I pause for reflection. When I unpack the meaning of the words I discover how jargon is not always what it seems.
At face-value the statement says volunteering is an important part of our culture. We participate in volunteering activities because ‘it’s what you do’ as a member of your community and to participate in a wider society. In Aotearoa/New Zealand there are many cultures, so volunteering can be driven by different cultural elements.
For example, Maori concepts of mahi aroha describe volunteering as “work performed out of love, sympathy or caring and through a sense of duty”. It is a way to fulfil cultural obligations to the wider collective, to enhance individual sense of identity, and to maintain culture and traditions. In the Maori world view, “personal wellbeing depends, both immediately and ultimately on the wellbeing of the community as a whole”. (Read more here)
My pakeha experience in decades of volunteering indicates some affinity with this cultural approach. In later years I learned more about volunteer motivation. The basic response to ‘why?’ was ‘I want to help’, and people were not always clear on where this helping interest came from or why it was important to offer help. Sometimes I would hear about a sense of duty or obligation to the local community, or sympathy and caring for the services offered, or maybe simply giving back to an organisation that had been personally supportive. You could say these drivers were more ‘social’ than ‘cultural’. Yet somewhere along the line social behaviours derive from cultural beliefs and values. Our individual sense of identity, regardless of cultural origins, seems to rest on belonging to a social group in communities.
The evidence is there in the volunteer response to Queensland floods and Christchurch earthquakes. When the chips are down we are looking out for our friends and neighbours, putting up our hands to help out, wanting to be ‘useful’ and to find that sense of belonging. That’s the ‘community spirit’ that has been widely extolled, along with the frequent use of the word ‘resilience’. And you don’t get resilience by going it alone.
I hope you have seen the big But coming. You and I might be fully aware of volunteering as a culturally-driven enterprise. Government and business sectors appear to see volunteering as an industry to be exploited.
Think social service contracts where community organisations deliver services on the cheap, constrained by health and safety regulations, financial obligations, risk management, regular auditing – which turn organisations into mini-government agencies. (And some not-so-mini.) We have lost the opportunity for creative enterprise that built so many of our volunteer organisations. Some would say we have forsaken our origins.
Think corporate sponsorship and volunteering which could be more about corporate self-promotion than real commitment to the cause of your organisation.
In this post-modern / anything-goes world my cultural beliefs and principles are ignored and abandoned in favour of what best suits politics and economics. Please – I do not want to be counted as an also-ran in the ‘Third Sector’, and I would really like to get away from the ‘Non-’ labels of non-profit, non-government institutions – as though we are non-existent.
Volunteers (and their managers) could do so much more for our organisations, our communities and our social well-being if they had half the chance of Team NZ. The syndicate has just secured $36m of government funding to make a bid for the yachting prize of the America’s Cup in 2013. International kudos wins over empty Foodbank shelves, over the issues of child abuse and domestic violence, and what a network of organisations could do to keep our communities hanging together.
Statistics NZ can tell us a lot about who volunteers and what for and how often, and what volunteers are worth to the national economy. The figures are impressive, but I will be taking a lot more notice when the analysis starts referring to outcomes of volunteer contributions to cultural and social well-being.
The moral of this story is, if you have not got it already, is:
Volunteering is culturally-driven. Volunteering is also a taonga that needs greater respect and resourcing.
December 12, 2010
What is Volunteering (3)?
Volunteering. Volunteerism. What’s in a word? Linguistic philosophers would have plenty to say. In this post I try to unpack the meaning of ‘volunteerism’, a word I have said previously I do not much care for.
The English language is renowned for its adaptability and for adopting new words from other languages. English speakers are also good at creating new words, and new shades of meanings for old words. ‘Volunteerism’ is not so bad in itself. But in the words of a slogan currently promoted in New Zealand: it’s not what we are doing with the word, it’s how we are using it. That is what I am grizzling about.
What’s in a word?
- Marxism / capitalism / socialism / liberalism / fascism = political ideologies expressed in the practices of various political parties or groups
- Racism / ethnocentrism = negative judgement of others on the basis of colour, culture, creed
- Buddhism / Hinduism / Taoism = religious/spiritual ideologies, beliefs and practices
- Feminism = an ideal translated into a social movement to gain equal rights for women
- Volunteerism ?
There are a thousand other –ism words I could add, but I think you have got the picture by now. ‘–ism’ is a suffix absorbed into English from ancient Greek to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine. For linguistic scholars the suffix ‘-ism’ indicates a principle, a belief or movement.
So ‘volunteerism’ refers to an abstraction. It is not something we can touch and feel and grab hold of. We cannot see ‘volunteerism’ in action, though we might observe its denotations and attributes in a million different ways. ‘Volunteerism’ is an idea, an ideal, a social movement that reverberates around the world. Last week I referred to ‘the common good’ and ‘Civil Society’. ‘Volunteerism’ is right up there with these concepts.
But that’s not how I find ‘volunteerism’ being used in everyday parlance. Volunteerism is translated as a term to describe a major industry. Well yes, volunteerism is an economic force to be reckoned with, as government statistics will illustrate. And when you start running an accountant’s fingers over volunteer goodwill and what you think ‘good society’ might mean you are going to get the figures that say Big Business.
Trouble is, we want to define our product, to put it into a marketable package. As with any industry we want to attract our customers (prospective volunteers, the investors), to establish our niche within communities and especially volunteerism’s contribution to service delivery. We also need to court our donors, and do the hard yards of negotiation for service contracts with governments. We have to demonstrate in concrete terms what we are about. So we have to keep searching for the one true definition of ‘volunteer’, of ‘volunteering’ and ‘volunteerism’, and we keep following false trails, down garden paths that end up in the tangled bush.
‘Volunteerism’ is often used interchangeably with ‘volunteering’. ‘Volunteering’ is a doing word, describing all that stuff you can do as a volunteer. It’s a kind of carpet-bag word, because there are so many ways of doing ‘volunteering’. Which puts the word up there alongside abstract notions of ‘volunteerism’, despite a claim by SWVR (UN’s State of the World’s Volunteerism Report) that “the act of volunteering [is] the expression of volunteerism”. For SWVR, ‘volunteerism’ is a referent: “social behaviour undertaken by people … useful as ‘service’ or ‘productive work’”. And ‘volunteering’, in my book, is also an action-based referent.
In untangling these words there is a risk of creating a cat’s cradle too complex to follow. Lewis Carroll knew all about this:
When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’
Like I said last week, there is no last word, no one definition. That is the nature of language – we can make words mean different things, and meanings will change over time or as we choose to adapt the usage of the word. The really important thing to remember is to know what we mean when we use words like ‘volunteering’ and ‘volunteerism’ and to be able to communicate what we mean.
Endnote: Please, if you are still reading, go see Susan Ellis’ Hot Topic for December 2010 – http://www.energizeinc.com/hot/2010/10dec.html – The Word ‘Volunteer’ can Reveal, Conceal, or Confuse. Read the responses too. Then figure what ‘volunteering’ or ‘volunteerism’ means for you. Discovering meaning is the really important bit.
December 5, 2010
What is Volunteering (2)
Back in 2001 we celebrated the first International Year of Volunteers. Ten years on and we are gearing up to have another great shindig, kicked off by the IAVE conference in Singapore, January 2011. And I hope you have not forgotten that today (December 5) is the UN International Day for Volunteers.
Back in 2001 the slogan for IYV was Ordinary People doing the Extraordinary. I was a pretty new manager of volunteers at the time, and in my organisation I could not help but see how the volunteers were Extraordinary People doing the Ordinary. They came from high-flying corporate jobs; they were professional people with all sorts of academic letters after their name. Many others were those whose name will never be in lights, yet can be known as ‘salt-of-the-earth’ people. Their commonality was a heap of beliefs and principles in tune with the organisation’s expressed values, and a commitment to their community. Because in serving cups of tea, in dishing out meals, in meeting with people as people not patients, these volunteers were going out of their way to enhance the quality of life for a person who did not have much life left.
Can volunteering get much better than that? That’s not for me to say. But I want to hear the cheers for volunteers, loud and clear, on today of all days.
Because the art of managing volunteers is entwined with the meaning of ‘volunteering’. Our understanding of the term, how we interpret it, will impact on what we do and how we act as managers. So I have looked around, done the web-searches, to see what other people say about ‘volunteering’.
European Volunteer Centre (http://www.cev.be/56-why_volunteering_matters!-EN.html) acknowledges a vast array of notions, definitions and traditions concerning volunteering. The bottom line in understanding ‘volunteering’ is the mutual benefit to society as a whole and to the individual volunteers. Volunteering is about strengthening social cohesion.
Volunteering England’s Information Sheet on Definitions of Volunteering claims volunteering is an important expression of citizenship and fundamental to democracy. It is freely undertaken and not for financial gain; it can be formal or informal; and there are many different reasons for volunteering. (See http://www.volunteering.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/2EE949AA-64B4-465F-A6A9-283C3C5A96DB/0/ISDefinitionsofVolunteeringVE09.pdf)
So ‘volunteering’ is linked with concepts of Civil Society, that stuff of associations, the public space for debate, and for community development. As Volunteering Auckland puts it: volunteering is an activity “for the common good” (http://volunteeringauckland.org.nz/).
And yet…… Volunteering Auckland has got some great descriptors of what volunteering is all about and the benefits of volunteering, but they too are stuck on the ‘free will’ and ‘unpaid’ concepts associated with volunteering. There has to be a way of expanding our understanding to include people who come from different directions – court orders, welfare directed job seekers and the corporate sensibilities for social responsibility. Because the roles they undertake, the tasks they accomplish are all for ‘the common good’. Aren’t they?
A long time ago I read a statement that proclaimed “defining the nature of a concept shows only the narrowness of the definer”. Perhaps Andy Fryar was reading the same page, because his Hot Topic of July 2005 (http://ozvpm.com/pasthottopics/july05.php) argued against “hard and fast definitions, which then become ‘gospel’ for the next decade or more”. Given contemporary trends – the demographics, the technology impacting on volunteering, changing patterns in volunteer commitment – it does not make sense to put ‘volunteering’ into a straitjacket. It’s worth repeating the quote from Mary Merrill in my blog of September 19: Volunteerism is like a living organism. It grows, declines and changes in response to the stimuli surrounding it.
I guess this could be the challenge for IYV+10. And for managers of volunteers around the world, and for the leaders of organisations involving volunteers. To adapt, to change our thinking, to discover new meanings – which could be as simple as going back to basics.
So now I am going to hoist the best description of volunteering on to the flagpole of December 5’s International Day for Volunteers:
Volunteering is an expression of active citizenship, giving, and value to community wellbeing
Note it is a description, not a definition. The high-level concepts in this statement can by-pass my objections to ‘free will’ and ‘unpaid’. It is broad enough to be inclusive of different cultural practices. It is simple, straightforward, an ideology that resonates with its origins without constraining future developments. And it comes from Volunteering New Zealand (http://www.volunteeringnz.org.nz/files/VNZ_Strategy_Compatibility_Mode.pdf).
Of course there is no last word. I have added a number of other references to the Resource Page for those keen to explore further. And stay tuned for next week’s look at the word ‘volunteerism’.
November 28, 2010
What is Volunteering (1)?
I have been puzzling over this question in recent weeks. It would be easy enough to ask who volunteers: there’ll be lots of demographic statistics to describe the person or population groups, the numbers who volunteer, the hours they put in, and possibly something about the sectors that engage with volunteers. Describing ‘volunteering’ is another matter.
This week we have a good opportunity to give some thought to the definition of volunteering. December 5 is International Volunteer Day, designated by United Nations in 1985. I raise huge cheers for volunteers in New Zealand and around the world, yet continue to worry about the real meaning of volunteering and the way it is interpreted.
I start looking for answers to my questions with the UN Volunteers working definition on ‘Volunteerism’, a so-called ‘big tent’ approach taken by the UN General Assembly in 2001:
- It is useful as “service” or “productive work,” not purely enjoyment for its own sake.
- It is directed to other people outside the immediate family/household. If it takes place inside the family/household, the action is considered “informal care, “family care,” or “household care,” not volunteering.
- Volunteerism must be non-compulsory, thus not coerced or forced externally by law, contract, or other powerful social influences.
- While the act of volunteering, the expression of volunteerism, may receive some expense-reimbursement or other financial payments, it is not done primarily for monetary gain, and the payments in monetary terms are usually less than the economic value of the volunteer work done.
Yes, I will accept the first clause. And acknowledge the UN is seeking to extend the parameters of this definition, in tune with contemporary trends, though not yet refining the wording of these clauses.
I object to clause 2 on the grounds that it excludes cultural obligations of extended kinship networks. Attending and participating in Maori hui or tangi, kapa haka events, or a hapu meeting is just as formal as any national or regional meeting convened by other organisations. In my pakeha culture I object to calling my support of friends and neighbours as ‘informal care’. I volunteer because these people are part of my community as much as all those other organisations providing services and productive work. This clause kinda contradicts the spirit of volunteering that has been around for 10,000 years, as the UN summary tells us.
Clause 3 rules out all those people dependent on welfare payments when they need to demonstrate their willingness to look for work. And it wipes out those sentenced in the justice system to community service. I object to this clause, because however you come to volunteering, whatever your motivation – the external directive or the spirit of altruism – you are getting involved in an organisation and in a community. You are exposed to the kind of ‘service’ and ‘productive work’ that might just get you hooked into volunteering and belonging in communities for a long time to come.
Clauses 3 and 4 are problematic, given contemporary trends in ‘volunteering’. Think corporate volunteering where the goodwill of service can be corrupted because a business wants to do some team-building or to show-case their ‘social responsibility’. If I am paid for the time I go and do some good work, is this real volunteering?
There are many hearts and minds that have addressed this question before me. I shall review some of these resources in Part 2 next week. And in Part 3 I will consider the adulterated usage of ‘volunteerism’.
In the meantime have a look at how many events for IV Day are happening on Friday or Monday, and how few are scheduled for the due day, December 5. It’s a Sunday by my calendar. I hope you know how volunteering goes on 24/7, throughout the year. I hope you are going to start asking why we cannot do something on a Sunday. Are we really celebrating volunteering, or are organisations and managers of volunteers giving greater weight to the convenience of normal business hours?
Explanatory note: This post was generated by a couple of UN papers: Meaning of the term ‘Volunteerism’ for the SWVR, a working definition, and Paradigm Shifts in the Volunteerism Debate, a Background Paper.
May 31, 2010
Mind Your Language (3)
There’s just one more thing related to language. My colleague Alison was brave enough to tell a story against herself. Read about it here, and I hope I do not need to spell out the moral of the tale. It was first published by Volunteer Wellington in their April newsletter, and is reproduced here by permission.
Alison’s story
I thought I was a pretty good manager of volunteers. I could report regularly on how many volunteers I had, how many new ones I had recruited, any issues my team had and updates on vacancies. I was proud of my volunteers and their performance, which of course was due to the training and support I provided for my team. I was also a passionate advocate for my volunteers with other staff.
Until the day I got gutted by a new boss. I was reporting with my usual enthusiasm on the progress of my volunteers, and he stops me in mid-flight. Excuse me Alison, he says, very politely, they are not your volunteers – they are part of the organization. You will not, he says, ever again, looking at me directly, use the word ‘my’ in reference to volunteer services.
Well, that was a pretty clear instruction, and I had to do a lot of re-jigging of my self-image, and my perceptions of volunteers, and what my role was really about. And I had to cut that possessive ‘my’ from my vocabulary. What happened next was just amazing.
Other staff started to show how they felt connected to volunteers, to value and respect the volunteer contributions to our services. And they stopped dumping on me every time a volunteer put a foot wrong. They started taking responsibility for guiding and supporting volunteers, especially the newbies. They started engaging with volunteers, getting to know them and learning how to draw on individual volunteer skills and strengths. Just like they always did with their colleagues. Well hello – volunteers are a valuable asset and a valued resource, no less than paid staff.
As for me – once I had got over the humiliation of being told off, which is what it felt like – I discovered there were a whole lot of new things to learn. Like being able to have open discussion about further developments of volunteer services. Like feeling more engaged with the whole organization instead of being a precious sub-set, and a bit on the outer. The most important lesson was finally understanding what my role was all about.
I am not a ‘volunteer’ manager – I get paid for managing volunteers. So I do all that HR stuff of recruiting, training, placement, performance appraisal – but that does not mean I ‘own’ the volunteers, any more than the HR person in your organization ‘owns’ the paid staff. But neither am I a ‘manager of volunteers’. When volunteers are spread across the organization in various roles it is not my job to micro-manage what they do – that’s up to team leaders and other managers, and part of that integration thing that happens when you drop ‘my’ from your vocabulary. What I am really employed to do is manage volunteer services – not the people, not the individuals, but making the services happen. So OK, I might have to turn my hand to event management when there is a Street Appeal, or to rally resources for a particular client need, or to discuss options for a recruitment drive with the manager of our op-shops. I have to be really good at setting up processes and policies for recruitment and screening of volunteer applicants; I have to ensure the best possible orientation and training programmes; I need to have really good communication channels open for the volunteers, by phone, email and even old-fashioned snail-mail; I need to be really smart in maintaining a database; and then I have to show off my marketing skills when it comes to Volunteer Awareness Week and International Volunteers’ Day.
And by heck – I need to keep up with all the stuff out there in cyber-space that tells me what’s happening in the world of volunteer management. That’s what managers do, right?
I do not have to do all this stuff on my own. All round me I can draw on volunteers with amazing skills and willingness to take on assignments. When I let go the ‘my’ of my work I can embrace the ‘our’ and accomplish so much more than ever before.
Mind Your Language (2)
Here is another way to think about language. One of the canon’s we teach volunteers is never to say ‘I’m just a volunteer’. If you catch a volunteer saying that, it means your organisation is not paying attention to volunteer contributions to its vision and values, and to its services. So why would you say, when somebody asks, “I’m just a volunteer manager”?
What you need to know
You are not ‘just’ anything! You are a really important person, doing a great job for your organisation. You are likely to be engaged with heaps more people than your Chief Executive; you have a heap of knowledge at your finger-tips; you manage a database and are expert at communicating in different ways with volunteers. You have got great people skills, enabling volunteers do wonders they never thought of, and in finding the job that is just right for them in your organisation. And all the time you are acknowledging volunteer efforts and the organisation’s appreciation of their contribution.
When you say I’m just a volunteer manager you are giving out a message that says:
- What I do is not really important; I am not important; and the pay packet says I am not worth very much.
- Which says volunteers are not really important either, not really valued.
What do you do, really?
Instead of such harmful thoughts let’s find other ways of answering this question.
- I am a mover and shaker, a wheeler-dealer
- I am an organizer extraordinaire!
- I am an economic entrepreneur, adding value to the raw material of a volunteer applicant and the product of our organisation
If you are really stuck for answers go to Susan Ellis’s website: http://www.energizeinc.com/hot/2008/08jan.html&usg=AFQjCNFQpC_jJ_2UJsV6odoH1Yk_93uZow to find creative and positive examples to describe what you do. The one I like best is “I find buried treasure” – because that is the really exciting thing about managing volunteers, watching people grow and develop, and accomplish things they never thought were in their capacity. And don’t let people say ‘how noble of you’ – such remarks might polish your personal halo but do nothing to promote volunteering and the importance of volunteer management.
When you find the words that fit with your style, put them on a banner, use them as a reminder that you are an agent of change, that you can change your organization (if not the world). And join the networks that will help you get there.
