Involving More

I helped my professional society raise money today by cooking hot dogs at the air show.  Not glamorous, and pretty noisy, since we were right next to the flight line.  And then a rumor of weather called off the event (the thunderstorm that dropped an inch 30 miles south never showed up here).  But getting to the job proved problematic.

During the week, there was an email telling us where stuff was, but only dots, but not a note about where to check in.  I expected some note of where to show up, but was out of town and never heard.  When I got to the show, I got to sit in traffic an hour with the rest of the show-goers while the security ushered us past empty lots and forced us into neat little rows “only” a half mile from the event.  Then they set up a check point and said we couldn’t take backpacks in.  (I didn’t comply with the warning, and got through the checkpoint without incident.)

At the checkpoint, no one knew where volunteers were supposed to check in.  There were lots of golf carts whizzing by, and I stopped a few to ask them, but no one knew were volunteers checked in.  I went to the food tent, but they, too, were clueless about where to check in.  Show central didn’t know either, and I finally found the checkin point an hour late, outside one of the other checkpoints (yes, I did have to get searched again).

Training for the job?  Are you kidding?  (”Here’s  the tongs, this side is for cooking, the other side is for warming, Buns are slit on top. good luck.”)  Money people got even less training.  Health inspector wanted us to sign in on a log book at the stand  - had to look around to find it, and I let someone else sign me in rather than changing gloves.

Do I feel special?  Not at all.  The show organizers did their best to treat me like day labor.  I guess today I was.  At least one of my organization’s officers took a snapshot, and I got the exposure I was hoping for.

Over at Wikipedia, there’s an article on the early days of CPR training. Seems a Red Cross volunteer in Kalamazoo, Michigan built a “rescue breathing” manequin in his home workshop to help demonstrate and practice the technique.

Mehalek called his dummy “Miss Sweet Breath 1959.” She was made out of plaster and plastic. Using a rubber bag to simulate the lung, Miss Sweet Breath gave the student a mouth to breathe into, and the open chest cavity gave the instructor visibility of how much air the student was breathing in.

This training device was part of an effort by volunteers to improve the quality of emergency medical training across the US which began under Mehalek’s leadership.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_respiration

I used to think it was an Okie thing.  After the Murrah federal building was blown up, glass was scattered for blocks.  My mom said that the news reporter asked people not to bring any more sandwiches to the rescue workers - they had too many.  The paper said a homeless guy picked up a broom and started sweeping debris from the streets.  I had seen the same when a furnace blew up at an elementry school in the early 80s.  Folks left work and stood in line for hours to give much-needed blood.

But now that I live elsewhere, I see it’s in the American character.  Even in the so-called “cold-hearted Boston” I saw people dig deep in their pockets to support a tragedy.  Here in Virginia, folks sent tractor-trailer loads of goods south to Katrina. 

Disaster relief workers talk about the problem of SUVs - Spontaneous Unaffiliated Volunteers - folks who come out of the woodwork to help in a tragedy.  At the Suffolk tornado last week, there were so many volunteers, the local inprocessing station was overwhelmed.

Don’t tell me you can’t find volunteers.  If you have problems getting help, it;;s because you haven’t described the need well enough.  Tell people what they will do and that what they do is important, and you’ll have to turn them away.

I’m percolating on the concept of the statistical average.  You know, 20% do 80% of the work, 20% cause most of the problems, and the middle 60% just goes along with the pack.

Only with some fields, like WikiPedia, less than 5% do all the work.  In fact, I’m coming to understand that’s the case with most volunteer organizations.  Less than 10% of the organization’s contacts do almost all of the work.

Part of that is the managerial mindset of finding a busy person and asking them to do more, because those people seem always to find a way to get it done.  But it means working some of these people to the breaking point, and if they do break - or become dissatisfied with the manager - they leave and there’s no one to take over.  Often, it takes half a dozen to do those jobs half as well.

In reality, most of the volunteer organization wants to do more, but is never asked.  They don’t know what they can do, or they’ve tried before and were slapped down for doing it.  I was at a private school where there was virtually no advertisement.  The parents association created some of those popular oval 3-letter stickers for cars (like the European country stickers) and sold them for a little more than cost.  The officials - the school board - became unglued, not because it was a bad design (it wasn’t) or because it would have cast a bad light on the school (it was positive advertisement), but because THEY hadn’t thought of it first.  So willing workers were told to stop trying to help, to sit quiet until asked.

And often the task is a meaningless triffle that insults the volunteer’s capabilities.  Who would think of asking a CEO to sweep the floors and hand out programs to the incoming hordes at open house?  I’ve seen it done, and more than once.  And often without a thank you.

Which brings us back to the statistical bell curve.  Small numbers doing nothing.  Small numbers at the other end doing everything.  Big bubble in the middle.  Your task is to move the mid-point, the vast middle of semi-invested volunteers, further to the right.

Adding one percent more work to the 10% that’s already doing 90% of the work is hard to do.  But adding 1% to each of the 60% or 80% in the middle not only produces more action (because it’s done by more people), but it’s additional effort that helps the vast middle feel even more a part of the organization.

I’ve been working in and for charity organizations most of my adult life. Most seems never to have enough volunteers. But on occasion, you run into a situation where there are not only enough, but at times too many – even a waiting list? So how do you find good people – and keep them working at no pay for months and years? Here’s the rough cut of what I’ve learned so far. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s the message that Pat Morgan, MBA and Professional Coach, sent to my inbox this morning.  And so I read.

The article says the secret is summarized in 4 quick steps.

1.      Listen – think about what the other person is saying.  Be engaged in the conversation.

2.      Be respectful.  Treat the other person as a person of worth with something important to say.

3.      Respond rather than react – keep your emotions in tact. “Even you disagree, let them have their point of view.”  It’s easier to have a reciprocal conversation if you’re not screaming at the other person.

4.      Improve your communication skills.  Practice. 

 You can read the full article at her website.

We want volunteers to join our cause, to give their time freely and generously.  But too many nonprofit leaders fail to consider the motivation of those volunteers.  Matching motivation with tasking means volunteers will return often.  And the ways to make them happy are often fairly easy to do.

Start by listening to their complaints and find a no-cost solution.

According to training provided by FEMA’s National Incident Management System (NIMS), these are the most common complaints:

§ I’m always told what to do but never asked to participate in planning the work.

§ Salaried staff gets or takes the credit for my good ideas.

§ No one says, “Thank you.”

§ I always seem to get the “grunt work.”

§ I never get feedback on my work.

§ Salaried staff is always given the benefit of the doubt in any dispute.

§ Can’t I have a title other than “Volunteer?”

§ I always have to search for a place to do my work. There is nowhere to store my work from week to week. What’s the common theme among these? Long-term volunteers want to be respected and appreciated. They are giving of their labor, often with the same (or more) intensity than the paid staff. They are not rewarded with money. They are rewarded with respect, with feeling like being a part of the team.

You may even have to get a volunteer to manage volunteers. You have to treat them like valued employees to get full benefit out of their work.

But it’s usually worth it.

Jeannie Bradner over at Innergize, Inc has a great post on the role of the volunteer administrator in keeping volunteers involved in your organization.

She says that the job is demanding because of the human resource management component.  Since the job doesn’t pay money, but pays what she calls a “motivational paycheck” for volunteer time contributed.  That is where the volunteer manager makes their money, using skills with sensitivity, paying with the kind of feedback each individual needs.  That’s what keeps the volunteers excited about continuing with the organization.

She says the job is a balance of several key capabilities. She sums them up in the following model job description:

Good communications skills, oral and written, are required, as well as a thorough knowledge of community needs and services. Applicant must have an understanding of marketing principles to promote exchange of implicit and explicit benefits. Applicant must have an understanding of psychology, participatory planning, motivation and human values. Applicant must possess the ability to lead and inspire others; be able to delegate authority; survive ambiguity; and be innovative and creative. Applicant must strive for the highest standards of human dignity, personal privacy, self determination and social responsibility.

Being conscientious and ethical in the application of these qualities, she says, are what make the difference in how well the organization recruits and retains volunteers.

I met the leaders of a division of a certain volunteer organization.  They do essentially the same as dozens of other community service organizations, but this group requires you be trained by them to do what others have been doing for decades.  Then, if you want to participate in one of their trips, you have to go with one of their chapters, on their schedule.  Many – myself included – would participate more, except my work schedule hasn’t let me match up with the trips sponsored by my local chapter.  I asked if there was a way for me to find a trip to join up with a different local chapter, but they tell me they don’t have the structure or the people to handle non-standard requests, or to let you serve less than their standard one week’s service.

When I went to refresher training, this leader made an odd comment to the group, lamenting that only 20% of the ones they train actually go with them on one of their trips.  When I asked him about his comment privately after the training, he claimed it was an example of the Pareto 80/20 rule, and there was no reason to expect anything different.  He wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him differently.

 I’ve tried talking to this organization’s leaders before, and since.  I’ve tried to volunteer to help coordinate individual volunteers like myself, but the response is to keep my opinions to myself until after I’ve been on a few trips (“paid my dues”).  In other words, they’d rather train a few hundred more to get a dozen additional workers, instead of putting a structure in place to bring participation up to at least 50%.

What I would wish for this particular missions group is that they loosen the stranglehold on involvement.  Pareto doesn’t say that 80% won’t work.  It says that the top 20% will find a way to work no matter what, the bottom 20% will not work no matter what, and the middle 60% will do some given the right conditions.  I’ve got friends who would participate if they could go for only half a week, especially if over a long weekend.  But the team which taught me that “blessed are the flexible, for they will not be broken” continues to be rigid in how they involve people who don’t match their preprogrammed profile.

If you want to attract quality volunteers, you need to become the kind of organization that volunteers want to be part of.

After a lecture by Seth Godin, Kristin Foster wrote about how to become that kind of organization.  She reported that the premise was “if it is not remarkable, no one is going to have anything to remark about.”

Adapting her report to non-profit volunteer management, I learned that the key insights included:

Help them see the gap your organization fills.  If they can’t see it, they won’t be passionate about serving there.

Be a farmer, not a hunter.  Rather than treat volunteers as targets to be acquired, cultivate them for long-term support.
Be a resource, not a commodity.  If you’re not remarkable, they can easily fill their desire to give back somewhere else.

Don’t fall for the “TV trap” - rather than interrupt their life to use their services, be so remarkable they stop what they were doing to  seek you out.

Don’t force word of mouth.  When they get excited about what they are doing to support the organization’s goals, they create their own buzz.

Don’t be wedded to your volunteers.   When their service doesn’t match the needs of the organization, help them find other tasks in the organization, or thank them for their service and release them to volunteer elsewhere.  Help them leave feeling appreciated, and they will tell their friends, or become contributors for life!