Mind the Gap: Identifying and Addressing Risks to Effective Volunteer Management
If you’ve ever used public transit — the subway, light rail, regional commuter trains — you may be familiar with the phrase “mind the gap.” This cautionary warning reminds commuters to look for and avoid the gaps between the platform and the train when stepping on or off. If not navigated carefully, injury and even disaster can result.
The same advice can be applied to membership and volunteer engagement. If you’re not mindful about looking for and addressing the gaps — a.k.a. the risks — that hinder effective volunteer engagement, you could experience adverse impacts to the long-term success of your program, including volunteer dissatisfaction, membership attrition, and lower-quality outcomes.
Here are a few of the biggest risks volunteer managers need to be aware of and some tips to mitigate or avoid them.
Risk #1: Stagnant volunteer pool
As your programs expand and evolve, so must your talent pool — otherwise your organization could struggle to provide relevance and value to members. Stagnancy is just as bad as attrition, and in some cases it’s worse — especially when less favorable contributors occupy the space that could be better filled by more active and qualified individuals.
With 78% of association staff reporting that volunteerism is holding steady if not increasing, according to recent ASAE research, the issue is less about a shortage of interest as it is about uncovering the interested talent that can make a positive impact on your organization. It doesn’t mean that every few years your entire volunteer pool needs to churn. But without the ability to identify new volunteers on an ongoing basis who have a diverse set of attributes that can support your organization’s evolution, necessary churn may not happen at all.
How to avoid or mitigate stagnancy:
Prioritize ways to enhance the size, scope, and quality of your volunteer pool:
Form a detailed understanding of the individual backgrounds and demographics of your current talent pool using criteria that’s important to your organization, such as corporate experience, educational background, geographic region, gender and ethnicity, and others.
Create clear, motivating messaging about the opportunities for service and volunteerism — both on a transactional level and as part of leadership development for your organization.
Identify how to meet members where they are — such as the best places to communicate with your targeted communities and the easiest ways for individuals to express their interest — and then use those moments to engage them.
Risk #2: Misalignment of volunteer skills, experience, and interests
Expectations around volunteerism run the gamut — from simply needing someone with a warm smile and positive attitude to relying heavily on experienced professionals with sought-after skill sets. Professional membership organizations in particular need qualified members to serve on governance committees, perform audit and accreditation reviews, represent the organization in advocacy initiatives, write and edit journal articles, mentor others, and much more. In those cases, not just anyone will do.
The risk to your organization comes in when you don’t align the skills, experiences, qualifications, and interests of individual contributors with the needs of each project team. Failing to intentionally engage contributors means they could land in ill-fitting roles that neither support their growth and satisfaction nor the organization’s mission.
How to avoid or mitigate misalignment:
Make sure to define and execute a distinct process for evaluating volunteers and contributors:
Define the data you need, at minimum, to adequately assess a volunteer’s fit per use case. For example, what’s required for journal publication (research writing) may be different than what’s required for effective advocacy (public speaking and persuasive writing).
Include self-reported, objective information — such as area of practice, certifications, degrees held — and subjective evidence of performance — such as post-project evaluations from team members, staff, and/or board chairs.
Establish and apply a straightforward evaluation process to reduce the risk of subjectivity that could lead to underperformance on projects and substandard outcomes, as well as complicate communication with interested contributors.
Use effective tools to capture evaluation inputs, candidate rankings, and meeting notes. An accurate record ensures all stakeholders are on the same page while also supplying the necessary evidence of engagement and contribution for those who are being considered for leadership roles or increased leadership responsibilities.
Risk #3: Volunteer overuse or under-use
Paying attention to how much and how often you engage volunteers is important to avoid burnout from overuse or disenchantment from under-use. This is difficult if different people are in charge of recruiting different members to address different departmental needs — but lack critical transparency into which members or volunteers are engaged on which projects.
The result is that individuals who are perceived as high-quality contributors tend to be invited to contribute even more of their time, energy, and focus than they expected, while other interested members get consistently overlooked for assignments. Both situations can reduce volunteer effectiveness and cause member dissatisfaction, which can create financial and reputational problems for your organization.
How to avoid or mitigate overuse or under-use:
Implement tools and processes that ensure greater organizational visibility into member engagement:
Select and leverage a system that centralizes data on individual member or volunteer contribution as well as team project assignments across your organization.
Ensure all key individuals are set up as administrative users in the system with appropriate roles and permissions so they can easily access and utilize the information they need.
Create a process so that each project takes into account how a specific individual is being used by the broader organization, and include a way to resolve potential conflicts before outreach is made to the individual.
A better way to mitigate risk
The right volunteer management system makes it that much easier to mitigate and even avoid these risks in the first place by enabling you to:
Understand the make-up of your entire talent pool — in broad scope and in detail
Identify the areas in your organization where fresh perspectives and new expertise are needed
Match the right contributor to the right role
Engage your members and volunteers with thoughtfulness and intention
And much more
To learn how Lineup can help your organization manage volunteers effectively, contact us today to schedule a demo.
