Retention

Think of how meaningful and useful it would be to peer inside the heart of every one of your volunteers – to understand what is important to them, what inspires them, what gets them excited, what taps into their passion, and what keeps them dedicated to your mission. Or you could gain insight into the factors that may diminish their enthusiasm or make them feel a little less jazzed about serving the cause. 

Sound like some crystal ball fantasy? It doesn’t have to be. Leaders in high-performing organizations are already doing this through what is called coaching, a form of leadership that sounds deceptively simple yet takes skill to do effectively and some practice to master.

In this feature article, author Barry Altland shows how dedicating time to engage in scheduled, ongoing, and meaningful conversations with longer-term volunteers reveals what is in their hearts that drives their choice to continue to serve. The key? Ask the right questions. Listen intently. Probe a little deeper than the occasional, casual hallway conversation allows. As Altland explains, this strategic, purposeful, and proactive time investment can and will make the difference in sustaining the engagement of more volunteers.       

In this feature article, Elisa Kosarin introduces behavior-based interviewing as an extremely effective screening method for assessing highly-skilled volunteer applicants. 

Kosarin’s article is based on the author’s extensive experience working for Fairfax Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) in Virginia, where highly specialized volunteers advocate for the best interests of abused or neglected children living under the court’s protection. Using behavior-based interviewing techniques, a  reassessment of volunteer screening and interviewing processes produced dramatic and positive results for the program, including: a significant decrease in the number of volunteers dropping or not taking cases (from 25 percent to 2 percent in just two years); and a dramatic increase in volunteer retention (from 29 percent to 48 percent over five years). As Kosarin explains, the implementation of behavior-based interviewing played a major role in this turnaround.

In addition to providing a short narrative on Fairfax CASA’s shift to behavior-based interviewing, the article includes:

• A step-by-step guide for implementing the method in a volunteer program;
• Practical guidelines for conducting the interview;
• Examples of how the method is applied in various other programs.

Organizations use many different approaches to attract and retain volunteers. For instance, one attempt at a macro level is required high school service, which aims in part to inspire large numbers of students to continue with volunteering into their adult lives by having them engage in volunteering during high school. 

This Research to Practice looks at another approach: conducting a reflective activity after volunteering to promote an intrinsic desire to volunteer. It is based on a novel field experiment study conducted in a controlled setting in order to provide clear evidence for the causal impact of reflective activity. The study found that those who had an incentive to complete a task (writing about the benefits of volunteering) that complemented their volunteer activity became more interested in volunteering going forward than those who volunteered but did not participate in the reflective activity. The study provides food for thought regarding the use of this mechanism, not only for retaining volunteers but also for providing important data to document the impact of the organization.

Want to incorporate writing techniques used by professionals to inspire, motivate and recruit volunteers? Want to know what works in prompting a reader to move from the armchair to the work site? Of course you do – because you already know that you can make or break your program with the power of words that are written, spoken or enhanced by video.

The secret to words that work is all about showing, not simply telling. Concrete images and specifics show your potential volunteers exactly what you are about and why it matters. Vivid details help you build interest and add drama, and help your readers visualize the unique value you can bring to their lives. You can show them precisely how you (and they) can make a difference in their communities. This feature article by Dalya F. Massachi offers suggestions, examples and ideas to move you in the right direction. You’ll learn to think of yourself as your readers’ eyes, ears, hands, taste buds, nose – and heart.

This feature article is based on an excerpt of the author’s award-winning book, Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact.

It’s a challenge that leaders of volunteers have always faced: how to retain productive volunteers. According to Volunteering in America 2008, one in three American volunteers dropped out in 2007, and this lack of retention can be costly. True, some turnover is expected and even projected. Oftentimes though, good volunteers are lost because of exceedingly preventable reasons. In addition to general retention issues, burnout is often cited as a reason for volunteer attrition. Volunteer resources managers would benefit from understanding the causes of burnout; ways to mitigate and prevent burnout; and how to identify burnout in their unpaid staff members.

This issue of Along the Web can help volunteer resources managers maintain a strong volunteer base. Written by Erick C. Lear, it begins with general information regarding volunteer retention, includes academic literature on the subject, and then offers specific suggestions and strategies for improving retention and preventing burnout among volunteers. Finally, threeunique self-tests are included to help volunteer managers identify those volunteers who may be at risk of burnout. 

Volunteer “voice” in nonprofit organizations has not been the topic of a lot of study. What happens, for instance, when volunteers encounter situations they find dissatisfying? This issue’s Research to Practice looks at this subject through “Volunteering an Opinion: Organizational Voice and Volunteer Retention in Nonprofit Organizations,”published in the academic journal, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, in October 2011. This study reviews the experiences of over 380 volunteers at several nonprofits in Southern California. It used an online survey to ask volunteers how they reacted to a particular dissatisfying circumstance, and then related their responses to their motivations for volunteering - and the degree of satisfaction with their experience. As writer Laurie Mook points out, the research reveals a relationship between the particular motivation leading volunteers to work for the organization and how they respond to dissatisfaction. The study also provides suggestions for eliciting constructive feedback from volunteers while also encouraging volunteer satisfaction and retention.

The expression “work-life balance” was first used in the UK in the late 1970s to help explain the unhealthy life choices that many people were making. According to one definition, people “were choosing to neglect other important areas of their lives such as family, friends, and hobbies in favour of work-related chores and goals.” In the 30 years since there has been research and discussion around the topic of work-life balance, taking on increased importance as the pace of life in developed countries becomes faster and faster.

As a volunteer manager, have you ever explored how volunteering fits into the balance of the lives of your team?  Many people talk about their lives as a ‘juggling act,’ in which they feel pulled in many directions by the demands of paid work, family care, community involvement, physical fitness and emotional health. Whether volunteers or employees, not all people have appropriate balance or clearly established boundaries in their lives. This Training Design is an opportunity to explore how the work-life balance of volunteers impacts your organisation.

This month’s Research to Practice takes a slight detour from reviewing research to report on an article that tries to take a completely new view on some well-known volunteer issues.  The article, called “It Ain’t Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management,” is written by Jeffrey L. Brudney and Lucas C.P.M. Meijs and published in the April 16, 2009 edition of the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Steven Howlett explains that in their article, the authors ask readers to consider what would happen if “we draw our eye from the need to recruit volunteers all the time and start to focus on retention?” So far not so new, Howlett admits, before adding that “the authors think they have a new way to describe how we should think of volunteers.  We should look on them as a natural resource, and one that can be exhausted or managed sustainably.” Instead of reviewing research, this popular e-Volunteerism feature may just trigger some research of its own as the authors attempt to extend this new way of thinking into implications for management.

When a volunteer walks through a manager’s door, each volunteer brings along a whole system of expectations, wishes and demands associated with the volunteer experience. Volunteer managers often recognize one category of expectations as the “fantasy world” of the volunteer. These expectations are frequently hidden from the volunteer manager and often only exist subconsciously for the volunteer.  While the volunteer’s altruistic motives are most important in the first stages of recruiting and integrating the volunteer, the volunteer’s fantasies are most likely to surface during the actual volunteer experience. During this stage, if these additional hidden needs of the volunteer are not fulfilled, the altruistic motives that the volunteer previously declared will gradually erode, often causing the volunteer to drop out early on.

In this e-Volunteerism feature story, we review how these fantasy concepts challenge volunteer managers and discuss why it’s important to understand the nature of volunteer fantasies. Ultimately, volunteer managers who learn to manage these conditions help influence the management practices of the entire organization – for the better.

This Research to Practice looks at a study of older volunteers and their volunteering profile. It is a study which uses panel data (that is, it tracks the same people over a period of time) between 1996 and 2004. The incorporation of panel data is quite useful, because so often research is a ‘snapshot’ at a specific time. This study tracks people between the ages of 55 to 65 in 1996, and then asks them about their volunteering practices every two years up to 2004. As you will see, the results tell us something about who volunteers, and something about why some people do not.