Making It Work: Best Practices for Your Volunteer Program
As you start to plan a program that taps older adult volunteers, it’s helpful to learn from others’ experiences.
CEO Linda Davis and Program Consultant Liz Rottger, of the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership of Marin in California, have best practices to share. Recently, they outlined a few as part of the National Council on Aging’s sold-out Webinar series Engaging Older Volunteers as Leaders in Your Organization.
Their center has two programs, both models that are appropriate for any organization.
The first is a Master Volunteer Program that matches volunteers to nonprofit service opportunities. The second is a Civic Engagement Leadership Team (CELT) that provides nonprofits with pro bono leaders to assist with projects that build infrastructure and institutional knowledge and improve systems.
From their experiences with both, they make these recommendations:
–Be realistic. You need to have a core group of volunteers to get a program started, and it takes time to do so. Nonprofits may need help building their capacity to use older adult volunteers. When a project gets big enough, you will need someone to help run it.
–Plan for success. For the Master Volunteer Program, an initial study uncovered the barriers and conduits to older adults’ engaging in service — and was vital to moving the project forward.
–Help nonprofits identify their needs. Talk with nonprofit staff members to find out where they can use volunteers. Ask them where a skilled volunteer could help — with a weakness in the board, administration policies, programmatic issues, etc. Suggest that if they have a project they’ve not been able to get to, they create a job description and recruit a highly skilled volunteer.
–Send the right message. “Marketing the program is very important,” said Davis. So is testing language with focus groups. For example, saying “still” — that an older adult is still active, for example — is a no-no. Instead, create an upbeat, positive message that emphasizes these professionals’ contributions:
o “Experience counts. Share it!”
o “Got experience…Marin’s nonprofits need you!”
o “Stay involved. Share your experience.”
o “Volunteer today. Everybody wins.”
o “I’m re-defining retirement. Are you?
–Recruit online. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough how important it is to have an intentional message – and to get that message out there on the Web,” said Rottger. Social networking sites are a good place to find professionals aged 50+, and the Web can both communicate information and motivate people to volunteer.
–Tap word of mouth. For recruiting, your rolodex is a good place to begin. Reach out to board members, friends, clients, families, seeking those who are recently retied. Look within your own organization.
–Recruit strategically. Take the time to do individualized matches. Use same process the nonprofit would use to hire a professional. Hold a serious interview; ask about volunteers’ dreams, about what they want to get out of their lives. Then use that feedback when creating the scope of work. Know that different cohorts need different approaches to volunteering.
–Make it official. Create a formal Memorandum Of Agreement that provides clarity as to what the volunteer will be doing, and treat it like a contract. Do an evaluation, develop work plans, and track the volunteer’s time; these actions elevate the volunteer’s value.
–Train volunteers. Take the time to explain how a nonprofit works, and how consulting works; they may be unfamiliar with both. Hold workshops at no charge so that volunteers can keep their skills sharp or acquire a new skill.
–Listen to volunteers. Hold quarterly meetings for volunteers to share their experiences.
–Show results. It’s important to look for strategies, outcomes and indicators of success that tell the story of what the volunteers have done, so they can measure themselves against the goals they’ve set for themselves.
Tags: best practices, engaging, leader, NCOA, nonprofits, older adult, volunteers
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