Energize Book Blog

The third and fully revised edition of From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement has just been sent to the printer! It’ll be available for sale in March. Until then, here’s another excerpt to whet your interest. It introduces an idea new to the 3rd edition: for your volunteer program to sail smoothly, you need to get middle managers on board.

Middle Managers Are Key

Every decision must be implemented across and down the organizational ladder, relying along the way on the buy-in of middle managers: branch or affiliate directors, department heads, unit supervisors, and others for whom volunteers become a factor in their teams’ effectiveness. These key people convey overt and subtle messages about expectations and can become an obstacle to effective volunteer involvement by not encouraging their team members’ attention to volunteers. In the worst cases, this can amount to sabotage.

Are your middle managers supportive of or resistant to volunteer involvement? Do they understand their “once removed” volunteer support role? Do they have the skills necessary to help their direct reports develop volunteers for the greatest impact?

Middle managers may feel that volunteers drain staff time from priority work. Because these supervisors evaluate employee performance, they have substantial influence over how staff  in their units approach all their responsibilities.  They can be great allies or real obstacles to success. Here’s why:

• Middle managers set the tone for how things are done in their corner of the organization. Their personal beliefs and attitudes about volunteers will shape the way staff and volunteer teamwork is supported (or undercut).
• Because middle managers train new employees to do their jobs properly and evaluate employee work performance throughout the year, they substantially affect how their staff members approach any area of responsibility, including volunteers. Do they have the vision and expertise to establish expectations and standards for working with community members?
• They have the authority to approve work assignments created for volunteers by the staff. So, if a middle manager’s image of volunteers is that they are mainly nice but not very skilled, staff in that unit will design volunteer positions with low expectations (and self-fulfilling prophecy will produce volunteers who don’t care to be challenged). Conversely, middle managers who raise the bar on what volunteers are asked to do will help an organization to attract more highly qualified people.
• Middle managers set the agenda for staff meetings and individual supervision sessions. Do they regularly make time to focus on volunteer involvement in their department, unit, or branch? The inclusion or absence of volunteer-related issues on the agenda sends a message,  is it that volunteers matter or don’t?

Employees can infer from their supervisors that spending time with volunteers is a diversion from their “real” job, to be done (if they wish) only after other, more important work is completed. Or supervisors can visibly recognize and reward staff who help volunteers to do well!

The point, as always, is not to assume that middle managers are on board with what it takes to support those who are expected to supervise volunteers. Take time to discover what this layer of management really thinks and win their enthusiasm for volunteer involvement. Otherwise, frontline staff will be caught in the middle, expected by top executives to put effort into partnering with volunteers, but undercut at the unit or branch level by the person most influential to that employee’s job assessment.

Include middle managers in planning sessions, training, and evaluation of the volunteer program so that they feel ownership of volunteer participation in their unit or department. Make sure that they, too, receive personal recognition for their efforts. They need to see that volunteers help their department to “shine” and are contributing to, not diverting from, accomplishing goals.

“Volunteers Donate, On Average, 10 Times More Money than Non-Volunteers.” That’s a headline sure to get the attention of anyone in the not-for-profit world. It’s just one of the important findings in a recent study released on December 3 by the Fidelity® Charitable Gift Fund and VolunteerMatch.  The findings support Energize’s long-held stance that volunteer-involving organizations should remember their “time donors” when looking to support volunteer involvement financially. In 1996, Energize President Susan J. Ellis wrote in her best-selling book From the Top Down, “studies have shown that satisfied volunteers frequently are so supportive of the organizations with which they serve that they become donors of money and goods as well.”

When revising her book, Susan greatly expanded her take on the connection between volunteering and donating funds.  Here’s an excerpt from the soon-to-be released 3rd edition of From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement. This fully-revised edition will be available for purchase in early 2010 (keep checking back here or sign up for the Energize Book Buzz, which will announce the book’s release!).

The Volunteer-Donor Connection

Pre-publication excerpt from the manuscript of the 3rd revised edition of From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement by Susan J. Ellis, © 2010, Energize, Inc.

As an executive, you do have to be concerned with the funding to keep your doors open. So while I have just stressed the importance of engaging volunteers for the benefits they bring as volunteers, consider this perspective as well: A check never writes itself. All contributions of money or valuables come from people who are voluntarily demonstrating their support of your cause. This implies a strong correlation between those who give time (to whom we refer as volunteers) and those who give money (to whom we refer as donors). Would your consideration of volunteers change if you were to start calling them “time donors”? Or speak of “fund raising” as “people raising”?

Do you regularly ask for a report on how many volunteers in your organization are also financial donors and vice versa? If not, why not? If yes, have you analyzed what this means? Are the databases for these two groups integrated or, at least, accessible to both volunteer administration and development staff?…

Asking Volunteers to Give Money, Too
Periodically the debate surfaces over whether it’s appropriate to solicit money from volunteers. Those who are uncomfortable doing so have a sense that this might be “double dipping.” Despite research showing that people who volunteer are more likely to also give cash than uninvolved people, the reluctance to ask for money from volunteers keeps the development office and the volunteer resources office operating in distinctly separate spheres.

One stereotype is that volunteers don’t have a lot of money. This, of course, is only understood for frontline volunteers, since those engaged in things like planning the gala dinner are conversely assumed to be wealthy enough to pay for anything requested of them. Beware all assumptions!…

But let’s get back to “it just doesn’t feel right” to ask faithful volunteers to give money, too. An organization can — and probably should — offer volunteers the opportunity to donate funds, but it has to be done in a way that is clearly different from soliciting people who are not already actively working for you. The key is to start by acknowledging that the prospective donor is a volunteer. It’s true “recognition” to know this important fact. Nothing is worse than a volunteer receiving the same mailing sent to everyone, as if his or her service is invisible.  Try the following sort of appeal:

We are so appreciative of the time and talent you share with us throughout the year as a volunteer. Thank you!

Please know that your volunteer contribution is of great value in many ways. Volunteers ensure that we can spend every dollar we have on needed services and still do more. We also know that giving us your time comes with various costs/expenses to you personally. But because you are so familiar with our work, you know that it takes both participation and money to accomplish our mission.

How can we ask strangers to contribute funds and not give you the chance to decide if you want to add a check to the ways in which you already help us?

Of course, there’s no obligation to give money. It’s completely your choice.

Done properly, such a solicitation can (and should) feel like a thank you. Possibly this request for a donation should be sent only once a year, without follow up. The point is to include volunteers in your fundraising efforts, but not to guilt them into writing a check.