United Kingdom

Volunteers make great volunteer managers, but their value in these roles isn’t always recognised. This feature article by Tom Freeland explores the benefits that ‘volunteer’ volunteer managers or ‘lead’ volunteers can bring to an organization. He also explores the fears an organization needs to address when adopting this approach, and the joy and challenges of utilizing volunteers as volunteer managers.

What’s one way to increase the effectiveness of an organization that wants to involve volunteers in meaningful ways? In this e-Volunteerism feature, volunteer management experts Melanie Merrill and Ruth Leonard of Macmillan Cancer Support, London, write that in order to ensure continuous improvement of the volunteer experience, those who manage volunteers need to be well prepared, supported, and developed.

In this article, Merrill and Leonard explain how they equip volunteer managers through their Volunteering Quality Standards program, a unique framework developed to help raise standards in volunteer management and improve the volunteering experience of Macmillan’s 25,000 volunteers. The writers briefly describe these standards, and illustrate how “ensuring the voice of the volunteers” involves strategy development innovation on the part of volunteer managers. They conclude that “empowering volunteer managers through developing their skills ensures exemplary and impactful volunteer experiences” for those who give their time, energy, and experience to Macmillan. In other words, it’s how Macmillan brings out the extraordinary in everyone involved.

Vicar Fraser Dyer of St. Anne and All Saints, an Anglican Church in South London, believes that the “whole business of volunteer management in churches is somewhat tricky.” And he should know. Before Vicar Dyer became ordained, he was an active and passionate secular volunteer manager.

For starters, he writes, “there are no volunteers in church.” Though some churches do run proper volunteer programs for such projects as food banks and charity shops, Vicar Dyer notes that the rest of church life requires the active participation of those who hand out hymn books, drive elderly to church, arrange flowers, usher, take up and count the collection, and serve at the altar, to name but a few critically needed functions. And while these people are technically volunteering their help, they mostly do not self-identify as ‘volunteers.’

In this e-Volunteerism feature, Vicar Dyer argues that many of the strategic approaches to volunteer management don’t automatically apply in churches. He offers advice and guidance to clergy and volunteer managers in religious settings, and explains why “it is vital to understand which roles will benefit from more conventional approaches to volunteer management (such as office holders or those volunteering for a discrete church programme), and those for which a more relationship-based and collaborative approach will work better.” Above all, he believes, “individualisation rather than standardisation is the key.”

A concept that spreads the love through volunteering? Good deeds and dating in a single package? In this e-Volunteerism feature, volunteer-manager-turned-entrepreneur Hannah Whitehead describes her efforts to innovate against all odds—and yes, she brings Cupid along for the ride, too!

In June 2016, Whitehead launched a social enterprise called Good Deed Dating that works alongside charities in London to coordinate volunteering events for single people. In a nutshell, Good Deed Dating combines good deeds with dating, providing single Londoners with the chance to meet someone who shares their values while doing good for their communities. Spreading love while volunteering! The concept has been widely embraced and is growing, working to potentially change not only volunteering constructs but the lives of dating-challenged, adrift, Bridget Jones-like Londoners everywhere.  

“When I was working as a volunteer manager, I had big ideas and an appetite to make volunteering not only super accessible, but also genuinely engaging to as many people as possible,” writes Whitehead. “However, like many others I found myself hitting red tape and brick walls at every turn. I knew that there were hundreds of potential volunteers out there who just needed the right incentive to get involved.  Feeling frustrated, I decided to make the leap and set up Good Deed Dating to support charities to achieve more and empower volunteer managers to get creative with their volunteering programmes.”

With a great sense of adventure and a keen eye for program innovation, Whitehead describes why “thinking outside the traditional volunteering box can feel risky or like an uphill struggle, but it doesn’t have to be. Our goal is to spread the love through doing good and provide a new way for Londoners to meet likeminded people who share similar values whilst meaningfully contributing to their community.”

In 2010, Volunteer NOW and the Voluntary Service Bureau in Belfast obtained Heritage Lottery Fund money to conduct a two-year oral and social history project to capture the volunteer stories of over 110 people in all walks of life in Northern Ireland. The work led to the publication of a book called Volunteer Voices: Belfast’s Creative Extremists and an exhibit open to the public. The book also included several historical accounts of the evolution of volunteerism in Belfast, sometimes bleak but also hopeful. As the Foreword states:

Most of the past forty years of Belfast’s history has been turbulent, fractured and painful. The City suffered and over 1,500 of its people died; countless others injured. During the early 1970s Belfast experienced one of the largest movements of population in Europe since the Second World War. Later with the erection of ‘peace walls’ and interface barriers, it became, and still is, a physically divided city…Amidst this reality, however, are countless stories of people with hope. People equipped with enthusiasm and energy who gave their time as volunteers…and “faced the dragon’s fire” believing it was possible to make a difference.

In Voices, we excerpt some of the many inspiring examples of the power of volunteering told in this book. 

Those who manage, lead, or work alongside volunteers often give advice to their teams, and may be surprised and perhaps frustrated when it's not acted upon. This can happen both in situations where volunteers have a lot of independence and authority to act on their own, but also when we try to encourage less experienced volunteers to make their own decisions.

In turn, volunteers may offer us helpful advice. Do we always receive it well? In this feature article, author Kirsty McDowell explores why understanding the ‘psychology of giving and receiving advice’ can help volunteer managers improve volunteer leadership practices and encourage people to act on their advice. 

When it opened in July 2002, the Imperial War Museum North (IWM North) in Manchester, England, unveiled an ambitious community volunteering project: the museum had recruited over 100 local residents, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, to work towards vocational qualifications in the museum prior to its opening, building confidence, gaining experience, and increasing employability. This ‘Shape Your Future’ Programme, first described by Lynn Blackadder in an October 2002 feature article for e-Volunteerism, was considered groundbreaking for the museum, while empowering and even life-changing for many volunteers.

Fourteen years later, e-Volunteerism revisits IWM North and brings readers up to date on the museum's many positive and innovative approaches to volunteer involvement since the original project began. Author Danielle Garcia reveals that IWM North continues to build a reputation as a major cultural institution, a community collaborator, and a leader in engaging what many would consider ‘nontraditional’ volunteers in service that blends self-help with accomplishing important work.

Those who manage, lead, or work alongside volunteers often give advice to their teams, and may be surprised and perhaps frustrated when it's not acted upon. This can happen both in situations where volunteers have a lot of independence and authority to act on their own, but also when we try to encourage less experienced volunteers to make their own decisions.

In turn, volunteers may offer us helpful advice. Do we always receive it well? In this feature article, author Kirsty McDowell explores why understanding the ‘psychology of giving and receiving advice’ can help volunteer managers improve volunteer leadership practices and encourage people to act on their advice. 

Andrew G. Haldane, Chief Economist, Bank of England, recently stated that “whether seen from an economic or social perspective, volunteering is big business, with annual turnover well into three-figure billions.” And in his recent lecture to the Society of Business Economists in London, Haldane also pointed out that volunteering “is a well-hidden jewel, whose social worth is rarely the subject of a public valuation.”

In this special feature, e-Volunteerism presents an edited excerpt of Haldane’s lecture, which provides what Haldane describes as “a valuation, however imperfect” to help understand the social value of volunteering and exactly why this economist thinks it is so important. “If the value of volunteering remains largely out of sight, it is likely also to remain out of mind,” Haldane predicted. “The potential economic and societal benefits from volunteering then risk remaining un-tapped. Yet with a nudge, that volunteer army could swell further.”

Because Haldane is an internationally recognized economist, his presentation carries considerable influence and importance for the volunteer community. Haldane’s lecture includes a description of the fascinating volunteer service called Pro Bono Economics that he helped establish in the UK, which will be of great interest to all e-Volunteerism readers.