Retention

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.

If you Google it, there are 10 times the number of articles on “volunteer recruitment” than “volunteer retention.” With the number of volunteers declining nationally, understanding the dynamics and rates of volunteer retention for different groups of volunteers is crucial.

In this Research to Practice, reviewer Laurie Mook presents the findings of several studies that investigate predictors of volunteer retention, with a special focus on a recent study that explores how volunteers’ feeling of “community service self-efficacy” (CSSE) affects their continued volunteer engagement. This study—based on results of a volunteer program assessment survey of volunteers in three U.S. nonprofit organizations—was influenced by research on students in service-learning courses. In terms of practice, a volunteer’s feeling of CSSE can be assessed in the recruitment process, and increases or decreases in CSSE measured periodically. As Mook explains, this information can be useful for developing and refining volunteer management practices that contribute to volunteer retention.

Sustaining volunteer engagement is ultimately a balancing act. Volunteer management must utilise resources in the most effective way to address organisational needs while supporting volunteers in meaningful roles that allow them to not only flourish but to also have positive and rewarding volunteering experiences. Success happens when this win-win ratio is achieved.

As leaders of volunteers, we typically try to achieve a great deal with limited resources, tight budgets, and unforgiving timelines coupled with a lack of understanding about our role. So how can we achieve more with less and simultaneously increase the engagement of our volunteers? In this feature article, Christine Stankowski presents an option to do just that by applying what the business world calls a “process improvement framework” to the volunteer management process. This fresh approach, Stankowski believes, will increase volunteer retention, boost satisfaction and engagement, increase productivity, and improve problem solving. 

Volunteerism research has produced a wide range of palpable evidence supporting various motivations for volunteer involvement, including but not limited to humanitarian and altruistic concern for others; an unassuming yearning to help; a desire for satisfying self); an unwavering commitment to an organization’s mission; rewards; appreciation; or the reputation of an organization. While nonprofit and public organizations continue to rely heavily on volunteer support, there is still no simple answer to determine what motivates individuals to not only volunteer but also return on an ongoing basis. One tangible resource that has proven to aide in engaging volunteers is the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI), first proposed in 1998 by Gil Clary and Mark Snyder.

In this quarter’s Research to Practice, author and volunteer management consultant Tonya Howard Calhoun looks at a study that provides an online VFI for 155 registered volunteers working for different NGOs and NPOs in Saudi Arabia. The goal of administering the VFI was to determine the significance of the six functions measured by the VFI to volunteer behavior in the Saudi cultural context. The study not only illuminates the effectiveness of the use of VFI instrument across cultures, but also confirms that the VFI can help design training manuals for volunteer organizations, as well as enhance the volunteer management practices of recruitment and retention.

 

It all began when people with intellectual disability told us they wanted their own friends: friends who were not part of their own family or paid to spend time with them. At IHC we listened, and that premise became the foundation that IHC Volunteer Friendship Programme is based on: One person with intellectual disability is matched with one volunteer, and both decide together what they want to do out in their communities. — Sue Kobar

IHC is New Zealand’s largest provider of services to people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Its one-to-one, Volunteer Friendship Programme has been very successful. As author Sue Kobar explains in this feature story, IHC’s desire to attract younger volunteers has now expanded the concept of what the friends do together to include opportunities for much shorter, focused, and task-specific volunteering. While maintaining the same one-to-one premise, IHC implemented skill-based volunteering to support a person with intellectual disability as he or she sets out to learn a new skill (like using public transportation, for instance) or to achieve a personal goal (say, attend a Zumba class). 

As Kobar explains, these shorter-term assignments are a win-win for all involved. Such opportunities, which allow volunteers to set the time commitment to fit the project, have attracted younger volunteers to IHC who may very well be on the road to long-term volunteering. And along the way, the people supported by IHC learn new life skills. 

The world is evolving and volunteers with it. Today’s volunteers have diverse lifestyles, preferences, and needs that must be accounted for when volunteer managers develop volunteer roles and fine-tune their personal leadership approaches. That said, one thing remains constant: the key psychological processes that drive human behavior.

New discoveries in brain science, psychology, and human behavior are disrupting business as usual and creating new opportunities to connect, collaborate, and mobilize volunteers for the greater good. In this feature article, volunteer engagement consultant and trainer Tobi Johnson presents four well-researched brain phenomena that she argues can be strategically tapped to engage and sustain volunteer participation at your organization.

Volunteer stress is an important topic. While there are a good number of studies looking at this in terms of implications for the volunteer’s health and well-being, this quarter’s Research to Practice reviews exploratory research that analyzes the issue from an organizational perspective. Gathered from a sample of attendees at the Australian National Volunteering Conference in 2013, the data provides insights into sources and causes of volunteer stress, organizational responses, and desired organizational support.

And there’s good news: according to this exploratory study, a “wide range of volunteer stressors” appear to be “firmly within the purview of organizations to manage and ameliorate.”