Chasing rainbows or shifting perspective? The long-term volunteer ideal.
Is it safe to say we are finally coming to terms with re-defining what we mean by 'long-term' volunteer-involvement? In some organisations, this is a resounding "yes". In others - I'm not so sure. The reason why I ask is because we've been talking about this one way or another for the last few years, and its notable that much of the recent volunteering research points to a need for us to think differently about what we mean by 'long term'.
Indeed, in many volunteering settings - organisations are genuinely concerned about where their future pool of volunteers will come from; having depended for many years - and I'm talking decades in some cases, on the same groups, attracting and retaining smiliar demographics in terms of individuals.
Last year, VC Warrington featured a webinar broadcast - Bridging the Gap with guest speaker @robjackson74 The content focused on research from Canada and provided some really interesting points for reflection about the changes we are experiencing in how volunteers want to interact and contribute with our organisations. Two clear points emerged which relate specifically to this theme:
- We generally have clearly defined volunteering roles within our organisations - after all, that's what Good Practice tells us we need!
- People are usually seeking shorter term, flexible ways to engage which don't always fit with the traditional roles we have set out.
So, on the surface there appears to be a mismatch, but is this really the case? Are we possibly making more of this than is necessary? As part of the EYV11 project, VC Warrington also linked up with two organisations to try and capture some of the 'Good Practice' around developing shorter term opportunities. We asked whether their approach to this type of involvement was different and if so, how? What we found was that Good Practice principles automatically underpinned these activities; enabling them to be organised, consider how volunteers would access information, provide a point of contact, match them to the most approriate task etc. What they felt they didn't do so much of was to spend time building the relationship aspect.
And I think this is possibly where the real gap lies. Perhaps we're not doing enough to convert these initial experiences that a volunteer has when they engage in a short term activity into something more involved? That's not to say that every single volunteer will want to do this - but maybe we need to provide them with the opportunity to discover the potential for further involvement? I think Rob Jackson and Martin J Cowling expressed this brilliantly on their recent 'Magnet' tour when discussing volunteer retention as: "an outcome of the volunteer experience and relationship you build with volunteers". (Rather than it being some sort of secret formula you learn about on Volunteer Management training).
We need to ensure that we are:
- Offering short term opportunities that are meaningful.
- Building those relationships with individual volunteers, however they happen to engage with us.
- Not remaning so fixed on 'what volunteers do' in a traditional sense and being open to new ideas and suggestions from volunteers themselves.
- Making the most of Good Practice principles so they support and enable us, rather than allowing them to create barriers and get in the way of developing stuff.
Afterall, if we're organised - then surely we're in a stronger position to offer more flexibility?
This is a huge topic and I'm aware of only scratching the surface here, however this post has gone on long enough - well done if you've read this far!!
To focus more on the short and sweet - we're interested to hear your thoughts via our weekly tweet chat Thoughtful Thursdays. Please do join us on twitter by using the hashtag #ttvolmgrs and if you'd prefer to expand more widely, you can add your comments here.
Let us know how you are providing more flexibilty in your opportunities and perhaps responding to the skills and offer brought to you by volunteers. Tell us how you are making the most of the initial involvement through short term volunteering to build a longer lasting relationship. And, help us to explore those differences between the traditional long-term roles and the short term/adaptable approach.
Together we could create a really valuable resource for learning and gain some insightful inspiration, so what are you waiting for?!
Fantastic as always - love to see valuable comment and discussion here and via twitter. Well done to those who took time to get involved this week.
And, here's a summary of the tweetchat for those of you who like your musings bite-sized http://bit.ly/A7GK7a
To the above comment - fully agree - blogs and the comments are great learning adventures.
@uncollectiveconsciousness - yes, but reading your blog is far more interesting and informative than Twitter! :-)
Scotchmist:
Ok, ok, I could have used three words rather than five hundred, now you know why I dont do Twitter!. ;)
@uncollectiveconsciousness - as I'm short of time, I'm relying on an idiomatic response. "Horses for courses". :-)
Whilst micro volunteering is in someway the flavour of the month, (as ESV volunteering was a couple of years ago), as we all know, it is still only one way in which people may volunteer, and which ranges from the more traditional, to other relatively new kids on the block; such as home based volunteering, made more accessible, by the advent of new technology and social media, i.e. in helping a home based parent in writing organisational volunteering policy, planning etc.
However, despite new methods and mediums coming into play, it will I feel always remain a fact, and a reality that some volunteering opportunities will need far more training then others, and rightly so; after all, some volunteers may well literally have your life in their hands, i.e. Life boat crews, First responders, Mountain rescue team members; and all of whom I am sure will have had extensive training, to enable them to undertake the tasks at hand, and save lives, maybe yours.
As such, I feel it is vital that training is always based on what is needed organisationally, legally, morally, collectively; and individually; in order for a person to be knowledgeable, competent, and safe.
Undoubtedly, this will mean that some people will not be able to undertake volunteering in their chosen role/discipline; I myself have wanted to volunteer in specific fields, and areas, but owing to work commitments, logistics, availability re work life balance etc. I couldn’t…
But you know what…Hey ho, that’s ok.
Because as a volunteer I can’t on one hand expect and demand that I am treated as a professional equal; and yet at the same time; I am not prepared to accept and undergo the same levels of training that would be expected of a paid person doing the same task/role; and again speaking as a volunteer, volunteers need to realise it’s a two way process, and get a grip on this buffet approach to training, need and accept that good quality training is there for a reason.
Personally, I don’t want a poorly trained member of staff of any shape or form, giving me advice/guidance, or crucially, holding my life; or the life of a loved one in their hands, and who has a basic knowledge gleaned from a poor one day workshop, and/or surfing the internet.
As such, as has always been the case, whilst there is mileage in exploring micro volunteering, and other “new” types of volunteering within an ever increasing volunteer dynamic; the fact still remains, there are some roles, that need extensive initial and ongoing training, knowledge gathering, personal and professional development, , and subsequently that will mean by default, they will not be open to everyone, and that’s ok.
@RobWoolley - That's reassuring to hear Rob. I agree with the sentiment about issues being up for grabs. The CAB training programme has changed hugely and for the better in the time I've worked here. Its modular learning routes and blend of self-study, e-learning, formal courses and observation of advice in action turn out highly skilled volunteers. There is room to tailor the learning routes to meet the needs of individual volunteers and new roles have been added which allow volunteers to start participating in service delivery quicker.
BUT...ultimately, the service is the service and advice work is advice work. I will never be able reduce an advice worker's training to a micro-volunteering opportunity...but I will continue to think broadly about different ways of achieving the service aims while providing meaningful, valuable opportunities for our volunteers.
@Scotchmist - I would say that addressing the issue in the way you are is much better than what some organisaitons are doing (i.e. nothing).
It's might not be a quick fix, but I'm of the opinion that nothing is set in stone, and that everything around volunteering is up for grabs. I'd be looking upstream and asking "why do our core volunteer roles need this lengthy training?", and "how can we add to our core service to involve shorter-term volunteering options?". Note shortER term: not every new opportunity has to 'micro'. Maybe four months of training instead of six makes a role more accessible for one volunteer.
I'm sure 30 years ago the core volunteering roles in CAB looked very different to how they do now, and that people were saying "they have to be done this way". For example, are CAB Head Office planning to roll out more online/virtual/email advice programs, potentially reducing the need for such lengthy training?
For short term volunteering opportunities you could always visit West Sussex's approach to this topic, who have designed a website focussing on opportunities that last between 1 - 10 days only.
http://skillshare-westsussex.org.uk/
For even more shorter term opportunities that last upto 4 hours, you could always visit BrightWorks
http://brightworks.me/#/
And then to cut it down to it's bare bone of time, you could always visit Help From Home, for opportunities that can be completed in under 30 minutes.
http://helpfromhome.org/
It's about breaking up the task into more manageable pieces and it's a topic that Help From Home will be providing a free consultancy service on, to nonprofits in the next couple of months. We already have a few big nonprofits interested in this concept already.
Another way of looking at this topic, is why do you need to recruit more longer term volunteers when there is a demand for more short term opportunities. Here, at Help From Home, we feature over 800 micro-action opportunities. We're not looking for long term commitment, just a continual supply of people willing to do short term opps and it seems to be working. So, do you need to look at the question from a different perspective? Do you spend time and effort into recruiting long term volunteers or do you spend the same time creating bite sized tasks to satisfy the perceived demand for such opps? The latter works for us. Perhaps it will work for others!
At Barnsley CAB, we recently recruited a volunteer to evaluate our recruitment and retention policy. The volunteer is a former training consultant, who has worked with many organisations to improve service delivery in the past. She works from home, occasionally contacting us for relevant information. We envisage that the project will be short term and finite, although hopefully the findings will have a lasting impact on the quality of the volunteer experience at our bureau. However, the creation of short term opportunities does not work in relation to our core service delivery. We can't create short term advice opportunities for advisers for example. Their training alone can take several months, dependent on their availability and we cannot recruit volunteers who won't be able to stay long enough to help us deliver the advice service.
So, I would be interested to hear how other organisations embrace the possibility of changing their perspective on longer term volunteering when what they need is volunteers who can stay with the organisation "longer"! I love the notion of flexible, shorter term opportunities, but I admit that I struggle to apply the principle to our core volunteering roles. Someone enlighten me!