Retention

In 1971, behavioral scientists and innovative trainers Eva Schindler-Rainman and Ronald Lippett published The Volunteer Community: Creative Use of Human Resources. Though the book is now out of print, many of its concepts continue to resonate.  In this Voices from the Past, e-Volunteerism is pleased to publish an excerpt of Chapter Four, in which the authors present a force field analysis of volunteer motivation. The analysis helps explain what pushes people towards a “yes” to volunteering, and what pushes them towards a “no.”  The authors do the same analysis on another equally important volunteering decision: whether to continue as a volunteer, or to drop out.

Leaders are people who inspire others to follow.  They do this largely through their communication.  That influence partly comes from what leaders talk about, such as a vision of the future, organizational values, and other topics which have been well-described in many books and articles on the subject.  But the influence also comes from the way leaders phrase things.

Rick Lynch has based this article on some of his recent research into what kinds of communication inspire commitment and what kinds inspire resistance.  He identifies seven skills which will make you a more influential leader if you master them.

Think about the communications methods you – and others at your organization – use with volunteers right now. Is your organization getting the information it needs about volunteers and their activities via these methods? Information such as:

• Their accomplishments as volunteers
• Their feedback on assignments, relations with staff, other volunteers, and clients
• The number of hours they are contributing
• Tools/resources they are finding particularly useful
• Obstacles they are encountering
• Their suggestions or criticisms

What information are you getting via the communications methods you are using now, and what information are you lacking? In addition to volunteers sharing this information with you directly, is everyone who is working with volunteers sharing information with each other?

A lot of questions! But in thinking about these, you can already begin to see where your communications with volunteers is working, where it is lacking, and how you might make improvements.

Jayne Cravens gives us all practical tips on using Internet communication to engage volunteers successfully.

Steven Farmer and Donald Fedor have taken a look at factors which make volunteers decide to continue and increase their contribution of volunteer time and effort to a particular organization. This issue is a serious one to effective involvement of volunteers, since the motivation of volunteers may be negatively affected by asking for too little involvement (thus creating a sense in a volunteer that their talents and time aren't being well used) or too much (thus creating both a sense of being overworked and a sense that the contribution they are making isn't "enough").

Retaining volunteers is both an indicator of and a key to success in volunteer management. When volunteers keep coming back, it is a sign that the program is being managed in a reasonable way. The return of trained and seasoned volunteers gives the volunteer program manager more time to be creative and effective in carrying out the mission.