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Chapter 3

Preparing the Organization for Volunteers

Jeffrey L. Brudney, PhD

Cleveland State University

Volunteers play a vital role in the activities and services of hundreds of thousands of nonprofit and governmental agencies. As demands on these organizations have increased and the financial resources available to them have declined, the use of volunteers has become even more critical. National surveys commissioned by the Independent Sector, a nonprofit coalition of some 600 organizational members concerned with documenting, recognizing, and promoting philanthropy and voluntary action, bear out the scope of this remarkable phenomenon. According to the results of a national survey conducted in 2001, 44 percent of adults over the age of 21, about 83.9 million people, volunteered with a formal organization in 2000 for an average of 3.6 hours per week. In all, they contributed over 15.5 billion hours to recipient organizations, the equivalent of over 9,000 full-time employees. If these institutions had to pay for the donated labor, the price tag would have reached a staggering $239.2 billion (Independent Sector, 2001).

The Independent Sector no longer commissions national surveys of volunteering; fortunately, annual surveys of volunteering in the United States have become available thanks to the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). CNCS sponsors an annual supplement to the September 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS), consisting of about 60,000 households, that obtains information on the volunteer behavior of the nation's civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and over. Volunteers are defined as persons who are not paid for work done (except for expenses) through or for an organization. By this definition, the results of the latest (2009) survey show that about 63.4 million people, or 26.8 percent of the population, volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2008 and September 2009 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010). Discrepancies in the methodology and findings of the Independent Sector Surveys and the Current Population Surveys cannot be resolved directly. Regardless, both surveys document tremendous levels of volunteering in the United States.

The key to tapping the vast pool of energy, talent, and goodwill captured in these statistics lies in preparing the host organization for volunteer activity. The leaders of many nonprofit and public agencies have taken the appropriate steps to institute a sound volunteer program, and their organization, clients, and volunteers all benefit as a result. Other programs, however, founder on the lack of knowledge or effort necessary to provide the essential groundwork for the participation of nonpaid workers. Problems such as uncertain volunteer recruitment, ineffectual assignment, paid staff resentment, or, worse, a disbanded program, often stem from initial failures to plan for and accommodate an unconventional workforce. This chapter shows that with a modicum of forethought and commitment to volunteer involvement, these maladies are preventable.

The chapter discusses strategies that organizations can use to lay the foundation for an effective volunteer effort. The focus is on service volunteers, people who donate their time to assist other people, or the operations of the host organizations, directly, rather than on policy volunteers, citizens who assume the equally vital role of sitting on boards of directors or advisory boards of nonprofit organizations. (Other chapters in this book deal with policy volunteers.) The strategies presented in this chapter counsel agency leadership to:

Set reasonable expectations concerning volunteers.

Establish an explicit rationale and goals for the volunteer program.

Involve paid staff in designing the program.

Implement a structural arrangement for housing the volunteer program and integrating it into the organization.

Create positions of leadership for the program.

Develop job descriptions for the tasks to be performed by volunteers.

Design systems and supports to facilitate citizen participation and volunteer program management.

Setting Reasonable Expectations for Volunteers: Weighing the Benefits and Costs of Volunteer Participation

The leadership of any organization that enlists volunteers or contemplates their introduction needs to have realistic expectations concerning just what nonpaid workers can achieve as well as the difficulties they may occasion. Volunteers cannot “save” an organization that may suffer from other problems, and they can even make matters worse if organizations fail to plan for their involvement and management. Although well intended, an agency that puts out a call for citizen volunteers without due consideration of the additional demands thus created for orientation, training, management, and evaluation quickly learns that it has increased rather than lessened its burdens. Without sufficient preparation prior to volunteer involvement, organizational leadership courts disaster.

The first step in placing the volunteer program on a firm footing is to set and communicate reasonable expectations. The appraisal should be candid in evaluating both the accomplishments and the challenges envisioned from the program. Organizational members must realize that, like any other resource, this one entails a mix of disadvantages and advantages.

Potential Disadvantages of Volunteer Involvement

Potential drawbacks to a successful volunteer program fall into three general categories: inadequate funding for the program, possible liabilities of volunteers as workers, and political or labor issues that might arise with volunteers.

Funding the Volunteer Program

The first potential problem is that of funding an ongoing volunteer effort. Although the labor donated by citizens to nonprofit and governmental agencies is not compensated monetarily—one of the strengths of the approach—the support structure essential to making productive use of this labor does require resources and expenditures. Given popular but misleading conceptions of volunteers as a free resource, agency leadership may not be prepared financially or psychologically to underwrite necessary program investments. For example, reimbursing volunteers’ work-related expenses, purchasing liability insurance protection, providing orientation and training, and initiating a recruitment campaign all entail costs for the organization. Another hidden cost is paid staff time, nearly always at a premium, that must be devoted to the administration and management of volunteers. A member of the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, reports that the average cost of recruiting and training a new volunteer at the 2000 Olympic games was AUD $700 (Hollway, 2001–2002).

Volunteers as Workers

A second set of possible difficulties concerns the perceived shortcomings of volunteers as workers. Familiar criticisms accuse volunteers of poor work, high levels of absenteeism and turnover, and unreliability in meeting work commitments. The decision to seek volunteers presupposes that a sufficient supply of willing citizens exists to meet the demands of organizations that desire productive labor. With the growing dependence of the public and nonprofit sectors on volunteers, however, recruitment, rather than any putative liabilities of volunteers as workers, may well pose the most serious obstacle to the approach (Brudney, 1990a). In some service domains, volunteers have proven so difficult to locate and recruit that hiring paid personnel can turn out to be a more attractive option (Brudney & Duncombe, 1992).

Political and Labor Issues

Volunteer programs may precipitate political and labor tensions that threaten to undermine the benefits of the approach. For example, if top organizational officials or department heads and supervisors lend only weak or nominal support to the program, they send the wrong message to both paid staff and volunteers about the legitimate role and value of the citizen participants. Lack of support can exacerbate apprehensions of paid staff, jeopardize working relationships crucial to program success, and trigger objections from unionized personnel. Employees may also fear that organizational use of volunteers may inadvertently fuel popular misconceptions regarding the number of paid staff needed simply to meet work obligations, let alone to perform with full effectiveness.

Potential Advantages of Volunteer Involvement

Despite potential problems, the introduction of volunteers can offer substantial compensating benefits to public and nonprofit organizations in four primary areas: achievement of cost savings or cost effectiveness, expansion of organizational capability, improvements in community relations, and enhancement of service quality.

Achievement of Cost Savings or Cost Effectiveness

Most notably in the public sector, the advantages of volunteer involvement that have stimulated greatest attention focus on possible budgetary savings and gains in cost effectiveness. In this domain especially, organizational leaders should take care not to overstate expectations. Because a volunteer program necessitates expenditures of its own, as discussed, popular claims that the approach can remedy budget deficits appear highly exaggerated. In fact, unless cuts are identified and exacted elsewhere in the agency budget, the addition of volunteers to an organization can marginally increase monetary outlays.

Nevertheless, a well-designed—and managed—volunteer program offers definite economic advantages to public and nonprofit organizations. The total cost to an organization of introducing volunteers, including program support, is relatively modest, especially when compared to the cost of paid employees (including wages and benefits, etc.). Although displacing paid personnel with volunteers is not an ethical or recommended strategy, by adding volunteers to its existing workforce an organization can boost the amount or quality of the services it delivers for a fixed level of expenditure or limit the expenses necessary to achieve a given quantity of services (Karn, 1982–1983, 1983). Although practitioners often refer to this advantage as cost savings, a more apt term is cost effectiveness.

Expansion of Organizational Capability

A second advantage of volunteer involvement is the potential to augment agency capacity. Applied creatively, the labor, skills, and energy donated by citizens can enable organizations to provide services that would otherwise not be possible, increase the level or types of services or programs offered, maintain normal agency operations in emergency and peak-load periods, and test new initiatives or innovations. A well-designed volunteer program also facilitates more productive use of paid staff time: Volunteers can relieve highly trained service providers of routine duties, freeing them to concentrate on the tasks and responsibilities for which their professional background and expertise best qualify them. In this way, volunteers increase organizational capability to do more with the resources available.

Improvements in Community Relations

A volunteer program can also yield substantial benefits to the community. Citizen participation within an agency can build the job skills and work experience of volunteers, promote greater awareness of the pressures and constraints faced by service organizations, and generally improve relations with the community. In the public sector, volunteers have often proven to be gifted advocates of agency interests who help to further organizational missions and win increased appropriations (e.g., Brudney, 1990b; Marando, 1986; Walter, 1987). A study of literacy programs in California found that library administrators who enlisted volunteers were successful in their strategy to extend their base of activities, develop and consolidate political support among elected officials and the larger community, and enhance the credibility and attractiveness of library programs (Walter, 1993). Volunteer involvement presents additional avenues to strengthen ties with the community through such activities as soliciting advice and guidance from citizen participants. As one volunteer states, “Frontline volunteers. . . know what's going on and are more willing to tell you what is as distinguished from what you might prefer to hear” (Williams, 1993, p. 11). With the bright light of publicity they bring, catastrophes, disasters, and emergencies (“C, D, and Es”) can attract volunteers from long distance. More commonly, though, volunteers live reasonably close to where they donate their time; as a result, they typically possess some familiarity with local resources and formal and informal helping networks, which facilitates organizational outreach and case finding in the community.

Enhancement of Service Quality

Finally, the involvement of volunteers holds the potential to raise the quality of services offered by nonprofit and public agencies. Targeted volunteer recruitment may identify citizens with specialized skills not possessed by employees (e.g., legal, computer, accounting, and engineering) who can improve agency services and programs (McCurley, 2005). In addition, many volunteers find personal contact with service recipients rewarding; in national surveys, the motivation expressed most frequently for volunteering is to do something useful to help other people (e.g., Hodgkinson, Weitzman, Toppe, & Noga, 1992; Independent Sector, 2001). By devoting detailed attention to agency clients—time that employed personnel frequently lack given their other responsibilities—volunteers help personalize and enhance the delivery of services. Several scholars argue that volunteers help to humanize organizational services, lending them a more individual and informal quality conducive to maintaining client self-esteem and confidence (e.g., Clary, 1987; Naylor, 1985; Wineburg & Wineburg, 1987).

Realistic Expectations for Volunteer Involvement

Ideally, research would long ago have settled the issue of just how frequently each of these advantages and disadvantages is achieved by organizations that incorporate volunteers. Armed with that information, organizational leadership could readily anticipate the likely pitfalls and benefits of the approach and plan accordingly. Unfortunately, scant research has attempted to answer this question. A few studies have systematically evaluated the effects of volunteer involvement across large, representative samples of organizations. In 2003, Gazley and Brudney (2005) undertook a survey of city and county governments in Georgia regarding their volunteer management practices. In 2004, the Urban Institute conducted a survey on this same topic administered to a representative sample of 1753 charities nationwide (Hager & Brudney, 2004). The surveys thus encompass both public and nonprofit organizations. We present and examine the results of these two surveys in Exhibits 3.1 and 3.2. (In the first edition of this Handbook, I analyzed data from a national sample of local governments in the mid-1980s [Duncombe, 1985] and Georgia local governments in the early 1990s [Brudney, 1993]. Those results are less current but offer much more detailed information on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of volunteer involvement across large, well-defined samples.)

Exhibit 3.1 Perceived Disadvantages of Volunteer Involvement in the Delivery of Services

Disadvantages Realized

Comparison of these data is limited by the fact that the items included in the two surveys do not overlap as much as one might like, and the response scales differ. Nevertheless, the findings across the surveys seem comparable with respect to the perceived costs and benefits emanating from the participation of volunteers in the delivery of services. As Exhibit 3.1 shows, in both samples the most common drawback reported by officials is lack of funding for the volunteer program: 49% of the Georgia government respondents report lack of funding as a “disadvantage,” and 28% in the national nonprofit sample consider funding a “big problem.” In addition, nearly the same percentages in the respective samples, 43% of the Georgia sample (“disadvantage”) and 23% of the national nonprofit survey (“big problem”), point to another resource issue, lack of staff to train and supervise volunteers.

The problem encountered next most frequently in these data is “getting enough people to volunteer,” that is, recruitment, reported by one-fifth of the Georgia sample (20%) and one-fourth of the national nonprofit survey (24%). These results represent a significant departure from other surveys of organizations regarding volunteer involvement, which generally show recruitment as the greatest obstacle to a viable volunteer program.

If the organizations in these samples offer any guide, the shortcomings sometimes attributed to volunteers as workers seem to occur less often. Only 8% of the governments in the Georgia sample pointed to the “unreliability” of volunteers as workers and 3% to “poor-quality work” as disadvantages in their organizations. In the national sample, just 6% of the respondents cited “absenteeism, unreliability, or poor work habits by volunteers” as a “big problem,” although a much larger group (43%) called it a “small problem.”

Among local governments in Georgia, one of the political and labor difficulties sometimes associated with volunteer involvement occurred with some frequency: One-quarter of the sample (25%) cited as a “disadvantage” that “public employees resist volunteers.” Just 4% felt that “volunteers take away paid jobs,” and 2% opined that “volunteers are more trouble than they are worth.” By contrast to the Georgia sample, only 3% of the national nonprofit sample labeled “resistance on the part of paid staff or board members” as a “disadvantage” of having volunteers.

Advantages Realized

Exhibit 3.2 presents the results of the two surveys relating to the advantages of volunteer involvement. With respect to the percentages of respondents, the perceived benefits show much less deviation or spread than the perceived disadvantages or problems displayed in Exhibit 3.1 (with the exception of a single item administered to the national nonprofit sample, “specialized skills possessed by volunteers,” which ranks well below the other responses with respect to frequency of occurrence). The most common benefit perceived from volunteer involvement is “cost savings,” reported by 89% of the officials in Georgia as an advantage and by two-thirds (67%) of the national nonprofit sample who said that it had been realized to a “great extent” (another 26% said it had been realized to a “moderate extent”).

Large percentages of the respondents also cited advantages of volunteers in expanding the capability of their organizations: 88% of the Georgia local governments reported that volunteers had enabled them to provide services that they otherwise could not provide; 6 in 10 of the national nonprofit sample (60%) said that this advantage had been realized to a “great extent” (31% to a “moderate extent”). Three-fourths of the Georgia sample (75%) found that volunteers allowed their organizations to expand staff in emergencies (no comparable item in the national survey).

The participation of volunteers in these organizations appears to have a positive effect on relations with the community. Eighty-five percent of the Georgia local officials stated that volunteer involvement had led to increased public support for their programs; 63% of the national nonprofit sample said that this advantage had been realized to a “great extent.” In the Georgia sample, 72% of the local governments said that they had benefited from program advice from volunteers. In addition, 81% of the Georgia local governments indicated that volunteer involvement had produced stronger relationships with nonprofit organizations.

According to the respondents, volunteers also contributed to advantages with respect to perceived enhancements in the quality of services. Large percentages of both the Georgia sample (84%) and the national nonprofit sample (68%) cited the benefit of “improved quality of services and programs.” Fifty-nine percent of the national nonprofit sample reported that volunteers allowed the charity to devote more detailed attention to agency clients. Finally, more than a third of the national nonprofit sample (35%) identified specialized skills that volunteers bring to the agency.

Mix of Advantages over Disadvantages

Given the findings from these two large surveys, one based on a sample of government-based volunteer programs and the other a national sample of charities, what can organizational leadership reasonably expect their organization to achieve from volunteer involvement? Although particular results may vary from one organization to the next, the findings support four conclusions.

Leaders might anticipate the greatest difficulty in securing necessary resources for the volunteer program, including both monetary support and paid staff time. (Results presented in the earlier version of this chapter showed that obtaining liability insurance can also present a problem. Before introducing volunteers, organizations are well advised to undertake a risk management process to determine the extent of exposure to injury or legal action, and possible remedies).

At least in the sample of Georgia local governments, employees may resist volunteers, an observation registered by fully one-quarter of the respondents (25%). Other possible political/labor issues noted in Exhibit 3.1 do not seem to be a problem, however.

The perceived benefits accruing from volunteer involvement show much less variation within the Georgia government and the national charity samples than the disadvantages. The percentages of respondents reporting these benefits are relatively high—upward of 70% in the Georgia sample and 60% in the charities sample (with the exception of “specialized skills possessed by volunteers,” reported by 35%). These results suggest that organizations are likely to reap the benefits of volunteer involvement in the areas of: cost savings or cost effectiveness, expansion of organizational capability; improvement in community relations; and enhancement of service quality. Although more research would be needed to confirm a conclusion, the consistency in the advantages reported versus the variability in the disadvantages may suggest that the benefits to be expected from volunteer involvement are relatively reliable and that the disadvantages are moreidiosyncratic—meaning that organizations can take positive action to avert or alleviate them.

The benefits of volunteer involvement appear to outweigh the costs, as intimated by these findings and demonstrated more convincingly in Exhibits 3.1 and 3.2. Citizen participation in the delivery of services certainly has its limitations (and detractors), but these drawbacks seem to be encountered with much lower frequency than the anticipated benefits. The great similarity in results from two distinct surveys, with different samples (public and nonprofit), items and time points, reinforces this interpretation. Nevertheless, because the potential benefits of volunteer involvement are not realized universally and disadvantages sometimes occur, organizational leaders must work toward an optimal mix. To begin, they should establish a persuasive rationale for the volunteer program.

Establishing the Rationale and Goals for the Volunteer Program: Making Volunteer Involvement Matter

A nonprofit organization may be eager for fresh input and innovation and enthusiastic about the potential contribution of citizens. No matter how overburdened it may be or how constrained in its human and financial resources, however, its efforts to incorporate volunteers should not begin with recruitment. In fact, Susan J. Ellis (1994) titles the opening chapter of her book on this subject “Recruitment Is the Third Step.” The first step, treated in this section, is to determine why the organization wants volunteers; the second, discussed in a later section, is to design valuable work assignments for them (Ellis, 1994, pp. 5-6). Before it is ready to begin recruiting volunteers, an agency must lay the groundwork for their sustained participation.

The foundation for a successful volunteer program rests on a serious consideration by the agency of the rationale for citizen involvement and the development of a philosophy or policy to guide this effort. The organization should determine the purposes for introducing new participants into the organization. The basic motivations can be separated into two major categories: economic and noneconomic.

Economic Motivations

As Exhibit 3.2 demonstrates, volunteers assist organizations in achieving a variety of objectives. Especially during periods of fiscal stringency, top organizational officials may fix too narrowly on cost savings as the rationale for volunteer involvement. As mentioned, this aspiration is misleading for two reasons. First, although the labor of volunteers may be donated, a volunteer program requires expenditures for recruitment, orientation, training, insurance, reimbursement, materials, and other items. Second, for volunteers to create cost savings, cutbacks must be made in the agency's budget. If the cutbacks come at the expense of paid staff, the results are lamentable and predictable in the form of resentments and antagonisms that have subverted volunteer initiatives in the past.

From an economic perspective, what volunteers offer an organization is the capacity to realize more productive application of existing funds and person-power. With a relatively small investment of resources, volunteers have the potential to increase the type, level, and quality of services that an agency can deliver to clients and to facilitate the work of paid staff members. Although costs are not spared in this situation, to the degree that volunteers improve the return on agency expenditures, they extend the resources available to the organization to meet pressing needs for assistance and services.

Noneconomic Motivations

Noneconomic motivations may also drive a volunteer program. The leadership of a nonprofit organization may enlist volunteers to interject a more vibrant dimension of commitment and caring into its relationships with clients; or the goal may be to learn more about the community, nurture closer ties to the citizenry, stimulate useful feedback and advice, and strengthen public awareness and support. An agency may seek volunteers to identify and reach clients inaccessible through normal organizational channels. Volunteers may be needed to provide professional skills, such as computer programming, legal counsel, or accounting expertise, not possessed by paid employees. The purpose may be to staff a pilot program otherwise doomed to fiscal austerity, expand services to a broader clientele, or upgrade programs or provide other assistance. Enhancing responsiveness to client groups and the larger community may offer still another rationale.

Volunteers also enjoy a well-earned reputation for success in soliciting donations to causes and organizations. Because the pubic regards them as neutral if dedicated participants who will not directly benefit from monetary or in-kind contributions, agencies very frequently enlist citizens for this purpose. In a 1989 national survey, about one-half (48%) of all volunteers reported assignments in fundraising (Hodgkinson et al., 1992, p. 46). More recent survey research on volunteers shows that fundraising ranked first by frequency of mention as a volunteer assignment in surveys conducted in 1996 and 1994 (tied in 1994 with assisting the elderly, handicapped, social service recipients, or homeless not as part of an organization or group), although the percentages are much more modest (7.3% and 4.8%, respectively), likely due to differences in question wording (Hodgkinson & Weitzman, 1996, p. 34).

Rationale for Volunteer Involvement

That the list of possible purposes for establishing and maintaining a volunteer program is lengthy attests to the vitality of the approach. Each agency will have somewhat different reasons that should be formalized in a general statement of policy or philosophy to guide volunteer involvement. Although no single rationale can apply to all organizations, some useful examples of these statements can be found in Exhibit 3.3. Organizations typically combine several such statements in their policy or philosophy for volunteer involvement.

Exhibit 3.3 Examples of Statements of Organizational Philosophy Guiding the Involvement of Volunteers

This agency welcomes volunteers to provide a human touch and individual dignity in all dealings with clients.

Volunteers extend agency resources to serve a broader clientele.

This agency seeks volunteers not only to further our mission but also to make the work of paid staff more productive.

Volunteers represent this organization in the community.

This agency values volunteers for the work they perform as well as the advice and guidance they offer.

Volunteers bring distinctive skills to this organization that would otherwise lie beyond its means.

Volunteers help this organization to do its job with greater efficiency, quality, and compassion.

An explicit statement of goals advances three important components of program design and functioning.

It begins to define the types of volunteer positions that will be needed and the number of people required to fill these roles. Such information is at the core of eventual recruitment and training of volunteers.

It aids in delineating concrete objectives against which the program might be evaluated, once in operation. Evaluation results provide essential data to strengthen and improve the program.

A statement of the philosophy underlying volunteer involvement and the specific ends sought through this form of participation can help to alleviate possible apprehensions by paid staff that the new participants may intrude on professional prerogatives or threaten job security. Perhaps the only thing as destructive to the mission of a volunteer program as paid staff questioning the “real” reasons for volunteer involvement is the citizens themselves harboring similar doubts regarding their “true” purpose to the organization. Clarifying the goals for voluntary assistance can dampen idle, typically negative speculation and begin to build a sense of program ownership on the part of employees (and volunteers), especially if paid staff are included in planning for the volunteer program.

Involving Paid Staff in Designing the Volunteer Program: Smoothing the Way toward Effectiveness

In most organizations, designing and implementing a volunteer program entails changes in standard practices and routines. For example, funds must be found and committed to the effort, linkages formed to integrate the program into the organization (see the section on “Housing the Volunteer Program: Integrating the Volunteer Program into the Organization” later in this chapter), job positions and working relationships modified, and policies devised and approved to accommodate the citizen participants. Because these changes are ambitious and require authorization by those at higher levels of the organizational hierarchy, the involvement and support of top officials is crucial to the creation and vitality of the volunteer program (e.g., Ellis, 1996).

This group of top officials is not the only one that should play an active role in defining the mission, philosophy, and procedures governing the volunteer effort. Paid staff members and, if they are already known to the agency or can be identified, volunteers should also be included in program planning and implementation (Brudney, 1990).

Participation by Paid Staff Members

A touchstone in the field of organizational development is to include individuals or groups who will be affected by a new policy or program (stakeholders) in its design and achievement. Participation adds to the knowledge base for crafting policy and inculcates a sense of ownership and commitment instrumental to gaining acceptance for innovation.

Because incorporation of volunteers into an agency can impose dramatic changes in the jobs and working relationships of employees, the involvement of paid staff is especially important. The sharing of needs, perspectives, and information among agency leadership, employees, and prospective volunteers that takes place is pivotal. In the joint planning process, the parties work to overcome differences and reach agreement on how the volunteer program can be most effectively designed, organized, and managed to pursue its mission and goals. Participation by paid staff members helps to alleviate any concerns they might have concerning a volunteer initiative and its implications for agency clients or the workplace.

If employees have a bargaining agent or union, their representatives should be included in these discussions. Union involvement may complicate the process, but it is indispensable nonetheless. It may turn out that rather than flatly opposing volunteer involvement, unions simply may want demarcations of paid versus nonpaid work. In one of the few studies that asked specifically about the role of unions, none (0%) of a sample of 250 managers of volunteer programs in city and county governments in Georgia cited “union objections to volunteer involvement” as a perceived disadvantage to volunteer involvement (Brudney, 1993). Georgia is a low unionization state, but the finding is still arresting.

A central purpose of the joint planning meetings and discussions is to develop policies and procedures governing volunteer involvement that are endorsed by all parties. These guidelines should address the major aspects of the volunteer program and work-related behaviors; the following is a list of these areas. This information should be readily available in a booklet or manual distributed to all volunteers and employees.

Aspects of the Volunteer Program that Should be Addressed in Agency Policy

Application procedures

Provision of orientation and training

Probationary acceptance period and active status

Rights and general standards of conduct

Task assignment and reassignment

Attendance and absenteeism

Performance review

Benefits

Grievance procedures

Requirements for record keeping, including requirements for confidentiality

Reimbursement of work-related expenses

Use of agency equipment and facilities, including conditions of access to the organizational intranet

Supervision and retention

Note: A more detailed review of agency policy, and the need to include it in the organization's volunteer manual, can be found in Chapter 12, Communicating with Volunteers and Staff.

Although some observers may question the need for published standards of organizational conduct as somehow inimical to the spirit of help freely given, this step is a positive one for the agency as well as for the volunteers. In one study, organizations that distributed notebooks with all written policies, formal job descriptions, and training manuals to citizen participants had the lowest rates of volunteer turnover; by contrast, the organization that failed to provide any of this information witnessed the highest turnover (Pearce, 1978, pp. 276–277). Explicit policies show that the agency takes seriously the participation of volunteers, values their contribution to the organizational mission and goals, and wants to maintain collaborative working relationships. Equally important, formal guidelines greatly assist in removing arbitrariness from directing volunteers, defusing potential conflicts, handling problem situations on the job, protecting volunteer rights, and managing for consistent results.

Empowerment of Volunteers

Because volunteers may not be known to an agency prior to inception of a program, they may miss the initial discussions concerning program planning, design, and implementation. Once the volunteer program is launched and in operation, however, they should have input into decisions affecting it. Just as with paid staff, citizens are more likely to accept and endorse organizational policies and programs, and to generate useful input regarding them if they enjoy ready access to the decision-making process. Participation is key to empowerment of volunteers. The term connotes a genuine sharing of responsibility for the volunteer program with citizen participants; more attentive listening to volunteer ideas and preferences; and greater recognition of the time, skills, and value provided to organizations through this approach. Empowerment is thought to result in increased feelings of personal commitment and loyalty to the volunteer program by participants and hence greater retention and effectiveness (Naylor, 1985; Scheier, 1988–1989).

Housing the Volunteer Program: Integrating Volunteer Participation into the Organization

For the benefits of volunteer involvement to be fully appreciated and achieved by an organization, the volunteer program must be linked to the structure of the agency. A nonprofit organization may be able to accommodate a few volunteers informally or episodically on a case-by-case basis as the demand for them or interest in them arises. Integrating larger numbers of volunteers in an ongoing working relationship, however, requires adaptations in organizational structure. Nonprofit agencies can select from among several alternative structural configurations for this purpose according to their needs. In order of increasing comprehensiveness, these arrangements encompass ad hoc volunteer efforts, volunteer recruitment by an outside organization with the agency otherwise responsible for management, decentralization of the program to operating departments, or a centralized approach. Each option presents a distinct menu of advantages and disadvantages.

Ad Hoc Volunteer Efforts

Volunteer efforts may arise spontaneously in an ad hoc fashion to meet exigencies confronting an organization, especially on a short-term basis. Normally, citizens motivated to share their background, training, skills, and interests with organizations that could make good use of them are the catalyst. Fiscal stress, leaving an agency few options, may quicken the helping impulse. The Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), an association of primarily retired business people who donate their time and skills to assist clients of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), began in this manner in the early 1960s. Retired business executives approached the SBA to offer assistance in meeting the demands of a huge constituency (Brudney, 1986). The responsiveness and alacrity with which an ad hoc effort can be launched and operating are inspiring: Within six months of its inception, SCORE supplied 2,000 volunteers to the SBA. Crisis and emergency situations can provoke an even more spectacular response, mobilizing huge numbers of volunteers in a remarkably short time.

Spontaneous help from citizens can infuse vitality (and labor) into an agency, alerting officials to the possibilities of volunteerism. Offsetting these advantages, however, is the fact that only selected parts or members of the organization may be aware of an ad hoc citizen effort and thus be able to avail themselves of it. In addition, because energy levels and zeal wane as emergencies are tamed or fade from the limelight of publicity or attention, the ad hoc model of volunteer involvement is very sensitive to the passage of time. A volunteer program requires a sustained rather than a sporadic commitment from citizens. The organization must develop a support structure to nurture the contributions of citizens and to make them accessible to all employees. Unless the agency takes steps to institutionalize participation, it risks squandering the long-term benefits of the approach. Almost from the start, the SBA and the SCORE volunteers worked to develop an appropriate structure. The partnership has served the agency well, generating a continuous stream of volunteers to the SBA (12,400 in 2010). Since the inception of the SCORE program in 1964, SCORE volunteers have conducted more than 322,000 counseling sessions and provided counseling to more than 8.5 million business owners (Service Corps of Retired Executives, 2010).

Reliance on Other Organizations

A second option sometimes open to nonprofit and public agencies is to rely on the expertise and reputation of an established organization, such as the United Way and its affiliates, or a volunteer center or clearinghouse, to assist in recruiting volunteers. The agency retains internally other managerial responsibilities for the program. Since recruitment is the most fundamental function and one of the most difficult (see Exhibit 3.1), regular, professional assistance with this task can be very useful, particularly for an agency just starting a volunteer program. Some private business firms seeking to develop volunteer programs for their employees have extended this model: They have contracted with local volunteer centers for help not only with recruitment but also with other central program functions, such as volunteer placement and evaluation.

When an agency contracts out for the provision of a function, maintaining quality control presents a necessary caution. Relying on other organizations to assist with the volunteer program is no exception. Agencies responsible for recruiting must be familiar with the needs of the organization for voluntary assistance, lest volunteers be referred who do not meet the desired profile of backgrounds, skills, and interests. A recruiter may also deal with a number of client organizations, so that the priority attached to the requests of any one of them is unknown. More importantly, trusting recruitment exclusively to outsiders is a deterrent to developing the necessary capacity in-house, which itself is a central element of a successful volunteer program. By all means, organizations should nurture positive relationships with agencies in the community to attract volunteers and for other purposes (Brudney & Lee, 2008); however, they must avoid total dependence on external sources and endeavor to build managerial competencies internally.

Decentralized Approach

Volunteer involvement can also be decentralized to individual departments within a larger organization, each bearing primary responsibility for its own volunteer effort. The main advantage offered by this approach is the flexibility to tailor the program to the needs of participating organizational units and to introduce volunteers where support for them is greatest. Yet, duplication of effort across several departments, difficulties in locating sufficient expertise and resources to afford multiple volunteer programs, and problems in coordination—particularly restrictions on the ability to shift volunteers to more suitable positions or to offer them opportunities for job rotation and enrichment across the organization—are significant liabilities.

In the public sector, lamentably, the decentralized approach can unwittingly generate disincentives for managers to introduce volunteers. Top agency officials may mistakenly equate nonpaid work with “unimportant” activities to the detriment of a department's (and a manager's) standing in the organization, or they may seize on the willingness to enlist volunteers as an excuse to deny a unit essential increases in budget and paid personnel. As mentioned, one purpose of involving top management, employees, and volunteers in designing and implementing the volunteer program is to avoid such misunderstandings.

Despite these limitations, the decentralized approach may serve an agency quite well in starting a pilot or trial program, the results of which might guide the organization in moving toward more extensive volunteer involvement. Alternatively, a lack of tasks appropriate for volunteers in some parts of the agency or, perhaps, strong opposition from various quarters may confine volunteer assistance to selecteCentralized Approach

The final structural arrangement is a centralized volunteer program serving the entire agency. With this approach, a single office or department is responsible for management and coordination of the program, while volunteers actually are deployed and supervised in line departments of the organization. The office provides guidelines, technical assistance, screening, training, and all other administration for volunteer activity throughout the agency. The advantages of centralization for averting duplication of effort, assigning and transferring volunteers so as to meet their needs as well as those of the organization, and producing efficient and effective volunteer services are considerable. The program demands broad support across the organization, especially at the top, to overcome any concerns that may be raised by departmental staff and possible limitations in resources. When such backing is not forthcoming, the other structural arrangements may serve an agency quite well.

Creating Positions of Program Leadership: Providing Responsibility and Direction for the Volunteer Effort

Manager of Volunteer Resources

Irrespective of the structural arrangement by which the volunteer program is integrated into agency operations (ad hoc method, reliance on other organizations, decentralized model, or centralized approach), the program requires a visible, recognized leader. All program functions, those discussed both in this chapter and in the rest of this Handbook, benefit from the establishment and staffing of a position bearing overall responsibility for leadership, management, and representation of the volunteers. The position goes by a variety of names, such as volunteer administrator or volunteer coordinator, but these titles can leave the mistaken impression that the position is not paid. To avoid misunderstanding and, more important, to indicate the significance of the role, here it is called the manager of volunteer resources (MVR). In this chapter we focus primarily on the programmatic responsibilities of the MVR, even though this official—and volunteers—can contribute to the organization and the fulfillment of its mission in other ways.

Staffing the Position of Manager of Volunteer Resources

The manner by which the MVR position is staffed sends a forceful message to volunteers and employees alike regarding the significance of the program to the agency and its leadership. Organizations have experimented with an assortment of staffing options for the office, including appointment of: volunteers, employees from the human resources department or section, personnel with other duties, and combinations of these officials. (Lamentably, some organizations apparently do not make a formal appointment, as discussed later in this chapter). No other staffing method so manifestly demonstrates a sense of organizational commitment to the program and its priorities as does a paid MVR position. A paid position lodges accountability for the program squarely with the MVR, presents a focal point for contact with the volunteer operation for those inside as well as outside the organization, implements a core structure for program administration, and rewards the officeholder in relation to the success of the volunteers.

Findings from the Urban Institute's national study of charities (Hager, 2004) indicate that staff time devoted to volunteer management is typically low, however. Only three out of five charities reported having a paid staff person who worked on volunteer coordination. Even among these paid MVRs, one in three had not received any training in volunteer management, and half spent less than 30% of their time on volunteer coordination.

Positioning the MVR in the Organizational Hierarchy

Establishing the office of the MVR as close as possible to the apex of the agency's formal hierarchy conveys a similar message of resolve, importance, and purposefulness. The MVR should enjoy prerogatives commensurate with other positions in the organizational hierarchy with similar scope and depth of responsibility, including participation in relevant decision and policy making and access to superiors. In this manner the incumbent can represent the volunteers before the relevant department(s) as well as the organization as a whole, promote their interests, and help to ensure that officials appreciate their value and contributions to the organization.

Responsibilities of the MVR

In their performance-based certification process for administrators of volunteer programs, the Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA) recognized four functional areas in which this official should demonstrate competence. Although the AVA no longer exists, the competencies identified still have merit. Much like any other manager in the nonprofit or governmental sectors, this official should be skilled: in program planning and organization; staffing and directing; controlling; and agency, community, and professional relations. James C. Fisher and Kathleen M. Cole (1993, pp. 22–24) add a fifth area: budgeting and fundraising.

The breadth and significance of these functions substantiate the need for a dedicated MVR position. Among the chief job components, this official is responsible for promoting the program and recruiting volunteers—critical tasks demanding active outreach in the community and highly flexible working hours. The incumbent must communicate with department and organization officials to ascertain workloads and requirements for volunteer assistance. Assessing agency needs for volunteers, enlarging areas for their involvement, and educating staff to the approach should be seen not as a one-time exercise but as ongoing activities of the MVR. The MVR interviews and screens applicants for volunteer positions, maintains appropriate records, places volunteers in job assignments, supports employees in supervising volunteers, and monitors performance. The office coordinates the bewildering array of schedules, backgrounds, and interests brought by volunteers to the agency and matches participants with the particular areas in which their labor, skill, and energy can be used to the mutual advantage of citizens and the organization.

The MVR is the in-house source of expertise on all facets of volunteer involvement and management. The position bears overall responsibility for orientation and training, as well as evaluation and recognition, of volunteers. Because employees frequently lack previous experience with volunteers, training may be necessary for them as well to make citizen involvement most effective. Finally, as the chief advocate of the program, the MVR endeavors not only to express the volunteer perspective but also to allay any apprehensions and facilitate collaboration between paid and nonpaid staff.

Fisher and Cole (1993, pp. 15–18) find that the responsibilities of the MVR vary depending on whether the organization adopts a “personnel management” or a “program management” approach to volunteer involvement. In the personnel management approach, the organization deploys volunteers across many functions and d departments.

and their principal accountability is to the paid staff member to whom they have been assigned. Hospitals, museums, zoos, social service agencies, theater companies, schools, and other organizations where volunteers have many different responsibilities often use this approach. Here the MVR does not supervise or evaluate the volunteers but supports the efforts of the paid staff members who work directly with them. The MVR assists staff in developing volunteer training and in learning and applying appropriate techniques for supervision, record keeping, performance review, and problem solving.

In the program management approach, volunteers are concentrated in one function or department of the organization, usually central to the agency mission. For example, many institutions create volunteer auxiliaries for fund-raising and other purposes, or deploy volunteers in a single organizational unit, such as community relations, client counseling, or intake services. The U.S. Small Business Administration uses the program management approach with regard to its Service Corps of Retired Executives volunteer program; SCORE members are deployed only for management counseling/assistance in the agency and for no other function. In this approach, the MVR performs all of the volunteer management tasks, including training, supervision, record keeping, and evaluation. Regardless of whether an organization uses the personnel management or the program management approach to volunteer participation, the MVR is responsible for job design, recruitment, interviewing, screening, placement, orientation, and recognition.

Other Positions of Program Leadership

Given the scope and importance of the job responsibilities discussed, as a volunteer program increases in size, the burden on one official to provide all aspects of management and leadership can become onerous. Thus, organizational officials should consider creating and establishing other positions to assist the MVR.

One option is to employ paid staff for this purpose. Another fruitful option is to design career ladders for volunteers, a succession of positions for citizens leading to increased opportunities for personal growth and development in the volunteer program (Fisher & Cole, 1993, pp. 65–66, 74–76). As one prominent example, highly committed and experienced volunteers might assume greater responsibility for major facets of the program, such as orientation, training, mentoring, and resource raising. This method not only facilitates program leadership but also carries motivational benefits for volunteers interested in expanding their personal and leadership skills.

Developing Job Descriptions for Volunteer Positions: Sharing the Workplace

The essential building block of a successful volunteer program is the job description. It is the primary vehicle for recruiting volunteers, reassuring employees, and meeting organizational and client needs. “The importance of a volunteer job description cannot be overstated. The job description is the agency's planning tool to help volunteers understand the results to be accomplished, what tasks are involved, what skills are required, and other important details about the job” (McCurley, 1994, pp. 515–516). The essential volunteer management processes—recruiting, interviewing, placing, supervising, training, and evaluating—are based on the information contained in the job description.

Despite the importance of this program element, no intrinsic basis exists to create a position, or classify an existing one, as paid or volunteer. Even among agencies that have the same purpose or mission or that work in the same substantive or policy domain (e.g., child welfare, culture and the arts, adult recreation, etc.), a given position can be categorized differently. For example, while one social service agency may have all client counseling done by peers (unpaid citizens), in a second agency paid employees handle this function. An environmental advocacy organization may hire a paid computer programmer; another nonprofit organization in the same policy field may use a well-qualified volunteer for this task instead. Similarly, some nonprofit organizations employ receptionists or secretarial personnel, while others have willing volunteers to staff these positions. Even the position of MVR can be paid or unpaid.

Because no firm basis exists to classify a position as paid or volunteer, agencies sometimes use both categories of personnel in a given job. For instance, community-supported day-care centers often have on staff a mixture of paid and unpaid attendants for the children; local fire departments, too, commonly use both paid and volunteer firefighters. Without access to organizational records, it may not be possible for clients to determine who is paid and who is not. Within an agency, moreover, job definitions can change over time, so that volunteers give way to paid employees for some positions and gain responsibility from them in others. In sum, whether a position is paid or unpaid at a given time depends on organizational needs and history, not on an inherent distinction or rule regarding compensation (or noncompensation).

Job Design Process

Because no inherent basis exists to classify a task or position as paid or nonpaid, the process by which work responsibilities are allocated in an agency is the crucial element in job design. As elaborated earlier, the most enduring foundation for an effective volunteer program is for top agency officials and employees (and, if possible, volunteers) to work out in advance of program implementation explicit understandings regarding the rationale for the involvement of volunteers, the nature of the jobs they are to perform, and the boundaries of their work (Brudney, 2010; Ellis, 1996; Wilson, 1976). The result should be a general agreement that designates (or provides the foundation for distinguishing) the jobs assigned to volunteers and those held by paid staff.

The next step in the job design process consists of a survey of employees, or personal interviews with them, to ascertain key factors about their jobs and to make them aware of the potentially helpful contributions of volunteers to their work. Surveys or interviews should seek to identify those aspects of the job that employees most enjoy performing, those for which professional expertise is required (such as an advanced degree or certification), those that they dislike, and those for which they lack sufficient time or qualifications. The survey or interview should also probe for areas in which employees feel the organization should do more, where the needs of clients remain unmet, where staff support (whether paid or unpaid) would be most welcome, and where novel or different organizational projects could be undertaken were greater time and skills available. Since employees often lack background information regarding the assistance that volunteers might lend to them and to the agency, the survey or interview (or, alternatively, in-service training) should provide resource material regarding volunteers, such as a listing of the jobs or functions that nonpaid staff are already performing in their agency or in similar organizations (cf. Ellis, 1994, pp. 11–12; McCurley & Lynch, 1989, pp. 27–28)..

This process should help to dispel popular stereotypes and misconceptions regarding volunteers. For example, volunteer positions are not necessarily in supportive roles to employee endeavors, and paid staff can facilitate and support the activities of volunteers rather than the reverse. Volunteer jobs do not signify menial work: Many organizations rely on donated labor for highly technical, professional tasks such as accounting, economic development, and computer applications. Volunteer jobs yield economic value: Incumbents provide skills that might otherwise be unattainable to an agency.

The delegation of tasks among paid and nonpaid staff members should take into account the unique capabilities that each group might bring toward meeting organizational needs and goals. The allocation of work responsibilities can also change and evolve over time. To allocate work responsibilities at a particular point in time, Ellis (1996, pp. 89–90) recommends that the agency reassess the job descriptions of all employees. Prime candidates for delegation to volunteers are tasks with these characteristics:

Those performed periodically, such as once a week, rather than on a daily or inflexible basis

Those that do not require the specialized training or expertise of paid personnel

Those that might be performed more effectively by someone with special training in that skill

Those for which the position occupant feels uncomfortable or unprepared

Those for which the agency lacks in-house expertise

The culmination of the task analysis should be a new set of job descriptions for employees and a second set for volunteers that are sensitive to prevailing organizational conditions. Paid staff members are primarily assigned important, daily functions, and volunteers handle tasks that can be performed on a part-time basis or that make use of the special talents and skills for which they have been recruited. The goal is to achieve the most efficient deployment of both paid and nonpaid personnel. The respective tasks should be codified in formal job descriptions not only for paid but also for nonpaid workers, with the stipulation that neither group will occupy the positions reserved for the other.

Job Descriptions for Volunteer Positions

The International City/County Management Association advises local governments that “volunteer job descriptions are really no different than job descriptions for paid personnel. A volunteer will need the same information a paid employee would need to determine whether the position is of interest” (Manchester & Bogart, 1988, p. 59). That advice applies equally to nonprofit organizations seeking volunteers. Although a variety of attractive formats are possible, the information contained in the job description is fairly standard. A model that might be used in any organization is presented next.

Model Job Description for Volunteer Positions

Job title

Purpose of the position

Benefits of position to occupant

Qualifications for position

Time requirement (e.g., hours per week)

Job site or location

Proposed starting date (and ending date, if applicable)

Job responsibilities and activities

Authority invested in the position

Reporting relationships and supervision

Note on Volunteer Recruitment

The most persuasive mechanism for the recruitment of prospective volunteers is the availability of nonpaid positions that appeal to their needs and motivations for donating their time. In this context, much of the literature concentrates on the motivational aspects of challenge and accomplishment, personal growth and development, interesting and meaningful work, and career exploration and advancement. Surely, officials might endeavor to design positions for nonpaid—and paid—staff alike with these factors in mind. Such a preoccupation can easily leave the impression, however, that every volunteer job must present close contact with clients, ample opportunity for self-expression, access to program planning and decision making, ready means for acquisition of job skills, and so on. That implication is erroneous. For example, the aversion of many volunteers to positions of greater authority and responsibility is documented with depressing regularity. A more fitting conclusion is that like employees, volunteers are richly diverse in their needs and goals. As a consequence, nonprofit and public organizations will enjoy success in recruiting them to the degree that agencies offer a range of jobs to appeal to a diversity of motivations. An organization should no more allocate exclusively routine, repetitive tasks to volunteers than it should place them solely in highly ambitious work assignments. Volunteer recruitment is discussed more fully elsewhere in this Handbook.

Designing Systems and Supports to Facilitate Citizen Participation and Program Management: Preparing for Volunteer Involvement

Comparable Guidelines for Employees and Volunteers

A pioneer in the development of volunteer administration as a field for professional practice and research, Harriet H. Naylor (1973) counseled, “Most of the universally recognized principles of administration for employed personnel are even more valid for volunteer workers, who give their talents and time” (p. 173, emphasis in original). Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch (2006) agree that the volunteer program will need to develop basic personnel-related systems and operate with essential policies and procedures for intake, management, evaluation, record keeping, and so on. They counsel, “If you have a question about the content of a policy or procedure, refer to the policies and procedures that the agency uses for paid staff. The rules should be a similar as possible: When in doubt, copy” (McCurley & Lynch, 2006, p. 37, emphasis in original).

The job descriptions for volunteer positions already discussed offer a good example. A seasoned volunteer administrator concurs: “One should not have different qualifications for staff than one has for volunteers doing the same work” (Thronburg, 1992, p. 18). By setting standards as high for volunteers as for paid staff, an agency engenders trust and credibility, increases respect and requests for volunteers from employees, a healthy work environment, and perhaps most important, high-quality services (McCurley & Lynch, 1989, 1997; Wilson, 1984). This course helps to prevent treatment of volunteers as second-class citizens, that is, “second place” to paid staff. In addition to job descriptions for volunteer positions, an organization must have systems and supports in place to build and sustain a thriving volunteer program.

Application and Placement Systems

The application and placement process further illustrates the parallels between administration for paid and nonpaid personnel. The organization must develop application forms for volunteer positions and have them readily available for citizens attracted to them. The MVR or appropriate official reviews the application and schedules an interview with the candidate. The primary purpose of the interview is to ascertain relevant competencies, skills, and interests as well as pertinent background and qualifications of citizen applicants and to evaluate an appropriate matching to the needs of the organization (as specified in the volunteer job descriptions). In addition, the interview should be used to gather from the prospective volunteer ideas and suggestions for new positions that take advantage of distinctive talents or expertise brought by volunteers. Should a match look promising for both volunteer and organization, the applicant is often invited for a second interview, this time with the prospective department head or supervisor. If all goes well, a placement should result for the volunteer. If not, just as for paid employees, the organization maintains the applications on file for other openings. As with paid personnel, agencies will often stipulate a probationary period for incoming volunteers to evaluate the success of a placement.

Education and Training Systems

Members new to an organization, whether paid or nonpaid, cannot be expected to possess great knowledge about the agency initially: They require an orientation. The organization should arrange for orientation activities for volunteers and employees to address such topics as the overall mission and specific objectives of the agency; its traditions, philosophy, and clientele; operating rules and procedures; the rationale, policies, and standards governing volunteer involvement; and the roles and interface of paid and nonpaid staff members. As mentioned, distributing a booklet or manual containing the relevant information during orientation sessions is very helpful.

Some volunteer positions do not require training—that is, specific instruction or education—to perform or perhaps only brief on-the-job exposure (e.g., scheduling appointments, filing documents, or cleaning facilities). Many others have a great need for formal education (e.g., drug abuse counselor, dispute mediator, or computer programmer). In the latter case, the organization must ensure through the application and placement processes that the volunteer possesses the requisite competency, or must provide for the training needed, either in-house or in conjunction with an educational institution..

Management and Record-Keeping Systems

Just as for paid personnel, an organization should have record-keeping systems for its volunteer workers. These systems log important information about the volunteer, including personal background, areas of interest and competency, education and training, and preferred assignments. An agency will also need to maintain records with regard to the volunteer's relationship, experience, and performance with the organization, for example, the initial visit, entry interviews, job assignments, performance evaluations, and other feedback (e.g., from clients, paid staff, other volunteers, etc.). Computer software has been developed expressly for this purpose that can not only relieve the MVR of much of the paperwork burden but also facilitate and enliven the management function. Utilization of this software can aid enormously in keeping track of the skills, preferences, and availability of volunteers and matching them with suitable opportunities for placement and personal growth and development in the organization.

Evaluation and Recognition Systems

Organizations that rely on the assistance of volunteers may be reluctant to appear to question through performance evaluation the worth or impact of well-intentioned helping efforts. The fears of organizational leadership notwithstanding, volunteers have good reason to view assessment in a favorable light.

A powerful motivation for volunteering is to achieve worthwhile and visible results; performance appraisal can guide volunteers toward improvement on this dimension. No citizen contributes her or his time to have her or his labor wasted in misdirected activity or to repeat easily remedied mistakes and misjudgments. That an organization might take one's work so lightly as to allow such inappropriate behavior to continue is an insult to the volunteer and an affront to standards of professional conduct underlying effectiveness on the job. For many who contribute their time, moreover, volunteering presents an opportunity to acquire or hone desirable job skills and/or to build an attractive resume for purposes of paid employment. To deny constructive feedback to those who give their time for organizational purposes, and who could benefit from this knowledge and hope to do so, is a disservice to the volunteer.

Several mechanisms are feasible for the performance evaluation. Frequently, the supervisor to whom the volunteer reports conducts the review, or the responsibility may rest with the MVR, or with both of these officials. To complement the agency-based perspective, volunteers may also prepare a self-assessment of their experience, accomplishments, and aspirations in the organization. The assessment should tap their satisfaction with important facets of the work assignment, including job duties, schedule, support, training, opportunities for personal growth, and so on. Regardless of the type of evaluation, the goal should be to ascertain the degree to which the needs and expectations of the volunteer and the agency are met, so that job assignments can be continued, amended, or redefined as necessary.

The program should not only create systems for volunteer evaluation but also stress the importance of recognizing volunteer service. Recognition should follow naturally from performance appraisal. Agency officials might recognize and show their appreciation to volunteers through a great variety of activities: award or social events (luncheons, banquets, ceremonies), media attention (newsletters, newspapers), certificates (for tenure or special achievement), expansion of opportunities (for learning, training, management), and, especially, personal expressions of gratitude from clients and employees. A heartfelt “thank you” can be all the acknowledgment that many volunteers want or need. Others require more formal recognition. The MVR should make letters of recommendation available to all volunteers who request them. Recognition is a highly variable activity that, optimally, should be tailored to the wants and needs of individual volunteers.

Conclusion

In their eagerness to reap the benefits of volunteer participation, organizational leadership may overlook the groundwork necessary to create and sustain a viable volunteer program. Although understandable, this tendency can jeopardize the potential advantages of the approach and increase problem areas. To prepare the organization for volunteers, officials should set reasonable expectations concerning volunteers, establish an explicit rationale and goals for the volunteer program, involve paid staff in designing the program, implement a structural arrangement for housing the program and integrating it into the organization, create positions of leadership for the program, develop job descriptions for the tasks to be performed by volunteers, and design systems and supports to facilitate citizen participation and volunteer program management. To the degree that leadership undertakes these activities, the organization should avoid the potential pitfalls and generate the considerable benefits of volunteer involvement.