Executive Director, Role of

What/who do you call senior leaders where you are?  Perhaps you use director, CEO, executive director, director of volunteers, board president and, for me, add bishops, archbishops, chairs of provincial or national committees, doctors (the great senior leaders in most voluntary health organizations, etc.). 

Now, count the levels between you and the senior persons you want to connect with…your direct boss, your boss’s boss, the “big cheese,” the prestigious chair of a key committee. 

Now choose the one to focus on that you most want to influence.  Get that person and his or her job firmly in your mind.  Picture his or her office if you’ve seen it.  Got it??

So, let’s begin to strategize together.  And strategize you must if you wish to truly influence these leaders.

Suzanne Lawson takes you on an exploration of why a volunteer program manager would want to influence senior leaders at all—and then offers some practical ideas for doing so.  This article is adapted from a speech Suzanne presented to the Toronto Association of Volunteer Administrators.

For years I have been encouraging managers of volunteer programs to function as in-house consultants; building commitment, capacity and competency of all staff that interface with volunteers in their organization. For too many years, I have seen the leaders of volunteer programs laboring diligently, trying single-handedly to manage volunteer programs in organizations where there was little buy-in, support or appreciation for their efforts. This has taken its toll on them and on the programs they have led.

Training tools/modules have been developed to help managers of volunteer programs train all staff in skills needed to work effectively with volunteers. But, staff training alone does not solve the problem. Although upper management is increasingly endorsing staff training in supervision of volunteers, they themselves are not always modeling good volunteer management at the top levels of the organization nor are they understanding and performing the roles necessary for them to contribute to a strong volunteer-friendly organization.

Without a synergistic exchange among the management team (including a manager of volunteer programs or those who provide shared leadership for the volunteer program), the organization will never achieve an optimal volunteer program.

Betty Stallings makes the case for developing a volunteer program management team, with solid advice for convincing agency executives this is best for the organization – and for them personally.

 

Introduction

Nonprofit organizations everywhere are engaging in strategic discussions to discover how they can be more efficient and effective in delivering services to enhance their missions. Too often they are not thinking about the impact of proposed changes on their volunteer manpower. Or they are having the discussion after the changes are made. At that point in time, it may be too late to consider the effect on volunteer involvement. I have observed national and regional organizations that, through benign neglect, did not engage volunteers in their initial strategic planning discussions. The impact was tragic. They lost many dedicated volunteers and donors who felt overlooked in the process.

“A Tool for Engaging Volunteers in the Change Process” provides a series of questions which should be addressed by staff and leadership volunteers as they are starting the process of major change within their organizations. The changes can be as great as mergers or can be less drastic internal changes dealing with how services will be delivered in the future.

It is often very difficult for paid staff to think about the effect on volunteers when they are concerned about how planned changes will impact their own positions within the organization. So, although these volunteer-focused questions may sound natural to ask, they must compete with the uncertainty felt by others about the organizational changes.

This article includes a print-ready handout of the change process Tool and a ready-to-use Microsoft PowerPoint presentation of the Tool to use in a meeting or training session.

Colleen Kelly suggests that volunteer management has taken the road more travelled – the easier road – because when we began the process of formalizing volunteer involvement we did so mainly from the point of view of organizations recruiting volunteers to “fill positions” largely defined by paid staff. “I feel that this is one of our most pressing current challenges: developing a people-centred process, rather than a position-centred one – the road not yet taken.”

Based on an experimental project at Volunteer Vancouver, Kelly presents the concept of deploying entrepreneurial volunteers (EV) as “Scopers” to assist organizations in determining innovative ways to utilize highly- or specially-skilled prospective volunteers. She notes there are two approaches:

• Working with the ED: We can begin a process of working with organizations to determine the very specific tasks that highly-skilled volunteers can do for the organization.

• Working with the EV : We can teach the entrepreneurial volunteer how to go through a process of finding – and getting – the right volunteer position.
  To read the full article

  BECOME A MEMBER

  LOG IN
  • Read more about The Road Not Taken
  • 1 comment

Most of us have seen board members separate their collective, decision-making role on the board from their individual, working role in other volunteer capacities. And we know that board members who fail to make or remember the distinction can be very problematic. The level of potential ethical dilemmas can escalate greatly in organizations where board members play many related external roles as well.

Volunteers with some self-interest can be very valuable to an organization. If the success of the organization is important to your hopes and/or your business, you may be passionate about the mission and willing to work hard as a volunteer. Unfortunately, such multi-faceted volunteers can also be a Hydra – a many-headed monster – if not guided by ethics. People of personal integrity are needed who are willing to abide by organizational values as well.

This article explores the concepts and issues of ethics and conflict of interest as they affect volunteer service on a nonprofit board of directors.

Larger all-volunteer organizations frequently have one or more paid staff to support the work of the association's officers, at least at the regional or national level. The relationship between the association's president or chairperson and the top employee is critical to furthering the work to be done. But just as these leaders have grown accustomed to each other's styles, talents, and quirks, everything changes and a newly-elected board takes office.

How do organizations handle the transition period when the baton is being passed from one president to the next? From practical tips to poetic musing, this article tries to help.

Somewhere, in an organization quite like yours, a staff member is in the countdown for the annual fundraiser... With the countdown underway, the lead staff member is juggling a thousand balls: confirming logistics for the entertainment; finalizing attendance figures with the caterer; being available to answer all kinds of last-minute questions…

There is one additional relationship that this staff member is juggling, along with the other 999 balls: the relationship with the event co-leader. This co-leader, a volunteer for the organization, is a person of tremendous dedication and passion for the organization and its mission. What complicates the relationship and adds to the juggling challenge is that this co-leader is also a board member.

The staff event leader is juggling this relationship because this year’s co-leader at times expects her suggestions and opinions on the event to be the final word... It’s hard to predict which it will be on a given day. Will the “co-leader” show up? Or will the “board member” show up? It has certainly made the event planning a lot more complicated than the staff member had expected.

Does any of this strike a familiar chord with events in your organization? If so, you’re hardly alone. Confusion and conflict over authority and roles are common occurrences in organizations that involve volunteers.