Making the most of volunteers in a recession

Volunteers are the lifeblood of so many charities. When pressures on voluntary organisations increase - as they are currently with an increased demand for services and constrained or reducing resources - giving the time to effectively support and engage good volunteers is often difficult. At their best volunteers can make a real difference to your organisation providing you with a resource which could improve your ability to survive.

You may already have volunteers and may just be interested in how best to manage them when pressures are increasing. There may be more that volunteers could bring to your organisation in terms of strategic advice or board support. You may not yet have taken the plunge and involved volunteers in your organisation. The following aims to offer some straightforward advice to guide you and provide you with some contact points for finding out more.

Improving the performance of your existing volunteers

A successful volunteer depends upon effective management.
Here are some questions to help you get the most from your volunteers in pressured times.

1. Is the role clear?
Make sure that each volunteer is clear what their role is and that they are equipped to carry it our effectively. Many volunteers don't have a clear role description and need more supervision as a result. This is not their fault. An hour invested in clarifying a role may bring quick results and greater involvement from volunteers resulting in less time managing them in future weeks.

2. Are they equipped for the role?
Many organisations have very good training plans for their volunteers especially where they have lots of people doing similar roles. However, a lot of organisations who find their volunteers aren't helping as much as they expected can help themselves through proper induction and task training. This saves confusion, misunderstandings and useless, wasteful work later on. It can also help indicate which volunteers aren't able to do the work at an early stage and give you and them the opportunity to take corrective action.

3. Do you need the role?
If the work your organisation is doing is changing, contracting or increasing, make sure you keep reviewing the relevance of the role, that the skills needed have not changed and that the role itself is, in fact, needed. It is also important to consider the real cost of having that volunteer when determining if the role is still relevant. A volunteer may not seem to cost very much, but if they are doing something that you no longer need, then this is wasted money. There are not just the volunteer expenses but also the hidden costs of managing the role e.g. staff time, training, etc.

Remember, this decision is about the role not the person doing the role. Having made that decision, then ask if the person is right for the role, is training required to enable the volunteer to do the role or are new skills required? While you may not want to upset people the question that needs to be answered is: is it really right for your organisation to keep on covering the cost of that role?

If you no longer need the role, can you provide the volunteer with a new role? This is probably a good time to talk about alternatives. Can you can steer them towards a new, more useful role in the same organisation or to another organisation that has similar roles. You may be able to get free or discounted training for volunteers to use them in a new way.

4. Do you need the volunteer?
It may seem hard, but you are running a voluntary organisation that is trying to survive. Carrying volunteers who may no longer be able to do the role effectively or who do not buy in to the organisations strategy or values, can be more costly long term. Don't under estimate the cost of actually having a volunteer. It may be that they can adapt and actually become an effective volunteer and that is usually the best outcome for the volunteer and the organisation. However, it may be that they cannot or will not adapt and this is the time to think very hard about retaining a volunteer or look for options on how an individual can be supported when leaving your organisation. Dignity is critical. These are often people who have given a lot over many years or for whom volunteering has a huge impact on esteem. They still matter even if it is time to move on.

Understanding the drivers for each volunteer role and the skill and capability of each volunteer will help the organisation decide objectively. Think about what needs to be put in place to manage the volunteer pool through a period of change - this will naturally involve managing some volunteers out of your organisation.

A review of all roles within the organisation or a department within the charity can be a good place to start. It depersonalises the process and can be a good point to encourage the whole organisation to rethink its contribution. However, if you know you have a volunteer who is not contributing then, just as you would for a paid member of staff, you should address this appropriately using a documented and fair process.

Increasing the impact that volunteers could make

It may well be that volunteers could impact on your organisation in a more fundamental way than you had anticipated.

5. Could a skilled volunteer help you?
In times of crisis, voluntary organisations often need help at a strategic level. Consultants are costly and few charities can afford their market rates. Concurrently, a financial crisis means that many companies are looking for ways to continue supporting the voluntary sector via the skills of their people rather than donating hard cash.

Could you make use of a volunteer with business or professional experience instead? You may be surprised at the skills you already have within your own volunteer team so its worth asking as a first step. There are several organisations offering online or brokered skilled volunteer placements for short or long term activities depending on the needs of your organisation.

Most skilled volunteers can impact quickly on an organisation. An external volunteer tends to be more detached and will often ask the searching questions that are really needed but often not voiced or noticed. While many small charities recognise the value of a skilled volunteer because they couldn't afford these skills any other way, few medium and large organisations consider bringing in these skills. Using volunteers for skilled work often runs contra to the way they use volunteers to deliver their mission. This can be a lost opportunity as many skilled individuals are looking for stretching opportunities that use the depth and breadth of their skills and experience.

As the relatively new chief executive of a skilled volunteering charity, the benefit is obvious to me now. However, it was nearly four months before I realised that I could ask one of the skilled volunteers we already had at Reach to help me with a review of my organisation's structure. Three months, a lot of soul searching and a tough board meeting later: I, the senior managers and the board have been taken through a top to bottom review of our organisational resources and structure and have started implementing the action points from the review.

If using skilled volunteers for strategic reviews is an untapped resource for you, give it a try.

Improving the performance of your trustees

In times of crisis, the board or management committee of a voluntary organisation often finds itself dealing with issues they may not have faced before. Some trustees will be less comfortable and some boards will find themselves unable to make effective decisions.

Trustees are volunteers and need to be supported and encouraged through this period. You may have a particular skills gap that needs to be addressed either by bringing a new trustee on to the board or through engaging a specialist to support the board through a particular decision making process or period.

Spend some time considering the needs of trustees. Talk with your chair or chief executive. Two good starting points for reviewing your leadership team are Hallmarks of an effective Charity or The Code of Good Governance.

Have you got the right skills on your board now?

·     What skills does your organisation need on the board to be effective?
·     What are the current skills of the board?
·     Are you losing any skills in the next 12 months (e.g. a trustee is stepping down at the end
       of their term of office)?
·     Assess the gap to determine what skills you need now and in the next 12-24 months

A number of organisations exist that can help if you need to recruit new trustees. There are also some organisations available to help individual trustees or boards improve their confidence and capability as well as some excellent resources available.

What if I don't have any volunteers?

This may be right for your organisation but it may also be a missed opportunity. Volunteers can be highly committed, effective and bring a new perspective. They can provide essential support to paid staff and get closer to users of an organisation's services or beneficiaries often ways paid staff cannot. Volunteers shouldn't be engaged lightly but when you are under pressure and need to prioritise your resources, the appropriate introduction of volunteers can make a real difference to your organisation and its ability to deliver.

You'll need a volunteer policy, a role description, a named accountable person to oversee their work and the funding to cover expenses. A named person as the manager of the volunteer is important as are clear guidelines on what an effective contribution will look like from the volunteer. It may be helpful to use one of the online or active placement agencies to help you recruit a volunteer.

Engaging volunteers for the first time can be challenging, not least because it is new, but also because their recruitment can be a turning point for an organisation. So take some time to consider the type of person you need what you want them to help achieve, their skills, and their availability and then give it a try.

Sarah King
Chief Executive
Reach
www.reach-online.org.uk