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Volume V, Issue 1, October 2004

Working with Volunteers in Major Fundraising


Keyboard Roundtables
Moderated by Rob Jackson
Contributors:
Bridget Cluley , Eileen McMahon and Ken Wyman

One of the fundamental roles of volunteers throughout the world is raising money. Even organizations that do not involve many volunteers in helping to provide direct services rely on board-level volunteers and others to advocate for their cause to individual donors, private foundations, and other sources of cash. Often the coordination of fundraising volunteers is separated from that of direct service volunteer management, but also frequently the two categories blur.

This Keyboard Roundtable focuses on those fundraising volunteers who are engaged in securing major gifts or running large revenue-producing special events. An international panel of practitioners discusses questions such as: what to look for in a major fundraising volunteer and what to avoid; how to recruit and manage major fundraising volunteers and how this differs from recruiting other volunteers; and challenges in engaging volunteers in fundraising, especially if they are themselves big money donors or really important in the community. 

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Comments

Michelle Hewton, National Co-ord of Volunteers, Markham Ontario CA

January 25th, 2005, 5:44pm

I'm looking for suggestions on any resources for training staff to work with lead volunteers such as Major Gift volunteers, Steering Committee Chairs, Regional Chapter Chairs. I’m especially interested in developing staff awareness, skill and understanding about the differences in working with these types of volunteers as opposed to regular volunteers.

Rob Jackson, Volunteering Development Manager, Royal National Institute of the Blind, 105 Judd Street, London GB

January 12th, 2005, 5:43pm

Hi Karen (in response to Karen's question), I've certainly come across this situation in my work with fundraising volunteers. In my experience, this quite often results from the absence of strong, clear boundaries at the start of the volunteering relationship.

We tend to look on our fundraising volunteers as either acting on our behalf or in aid of us.

If they are acting on our behalf then they are working as authorised agents of our organisation. In this case they are given very clear boundaries about what is and isn't acceptable, where the relationship starts and ends as well as all the other good volunteer management stuff.

If the volunteer is acting in aid of us then they have a lot more freedom as to what they can do but this comes at the price of less support from our organisation - they are an independent thrid party who has chosen us as the beneficiaries of their fundraising activity.

It is this concept of the nature of the relationship they have with us that determines much of our ongoing relationship with our fundraising volunteers and helps us to avoid some of the problems you mention.

Karen Clark, Volunteer Coordinator, P.O.W.E.R., Pittsburgh PA USA

January 7th, 2005, 5:42pm

Has anyone worked with major fund raising event volunteers who work extremely hard, put on a great event, raise lots of money, but make things difficult for staff because they begin to see the event as belonging to them instead of to the agency, and start to treat the staff as their employees?