Big Bang for the Buck: Older Adult Volunteers Offer 800% ROI

Suppose you are presenting a project idea to your boss or client and can promise a return on investment of 800 percent. What do you think he or she will say – aside from perhaps, “What’s the catch?”

If your project involves using older adults as volunteers, you’re in luck. A new report shows evidence of a return on investment just that high when skilled, leadership-level volunteers are brought in to assist nonprofits and advance community goals.

Findings in The Boomer Solution: Skilled Talent to Meet Nonprofit Needs come from a three-year collaborative study of more than 60 nonprofits nationwide. The study was conducted by the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies.

As part of the study, older adult volunteers were placed in leadership roles and positions within nonprofit organizations that matched their area of expertise. The nonprofits developed and tested various models of integrating these volunteers with nonprofit staff.

On average, nonprofits that effectively used volunteers experienced a return of $8,000 for every $1,000 spent.

The numbers come from a return on investment measurement tool NCOA developed to compare the expense of recruiting, training, and maintaining skilled volunteers to the amount of funds raised by their efforts. The tool uses U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics and marketplace wage data.

Making the Most of Your Volunteer Program

Does your nonprofit want in on this idea? Here are some tips you can use to make the most of an older adult volunteer program:

— Assess and commit to a culture change. The organization may need to change to integrate skilled volunteers; communicate openly with current employees and volunteers to cultivate buy-in.

— Recruit the right talent. Position the role as offering “significant and meaningful work” with impact on the community to attract the best talent.

— Manage and match talent accordingly. Be open to volunteers taking on leadership roles, and be ready to create new positions to utilize this talent.

— Be open to new solutions. Think differently and try new things. Nonprofits that allowed volunteers to work autonomously and in leadership roles often enjoyed the greatest financial and operational benefits.

— Read the report. See the full findings, plus helpful case studies and best practices.

Does your organization have a program for older adult volunteers? What has your experience been? Please post a comment and share!

Making the Baby Boom a Resource Boom

If you’re reading this blog, you may already know the value that older adult volunteers can provide to nonprofits.

Recently, Thomas E. Endres, Vice President for Civic Engagement at the National Council on Aging, made the case eloquently in an article for Philanthrophy Journal. He says it so well that we’re sharing his piece with you here.

And we welcome your feedback. What suggestions do you have for maximizing this powerful resource?

Boomer volunteers a valuable resource

For nonprofits struggling with reduced budgets and increased demand for services, older adult volunteers are an available and abundant resource – and a smart investment.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics noted a 4.5 percent increase in older adult volunteers in 2009, and demographics suggest the trend is escalating.

Retiring Baby Boomers seeking meaningful volunteer opportunities offer a wealth of professional skills and experience to nonprofits, yet remain an untapped or underutilized asset.

Over the last three years, the National Council on Aging worked with over 40 nonprofits throughout the U.S. to engage Boomer volunteers and determine the true cost of training, recruiting and managing them.

Our findings show a tangible benefit: On average, nonprofits can enjoy a return of $8,000 for every $1,000 spent on older adult volunteers.

It’s not about changing the volunteer; nonprofits seeking to leverage this talent pool may need to slightly change themselves.

From what we’ve learned, here’s what it takes to turn the Baby Boom into a resource boom for your organization:

–Ensure everyone is on board.

Communicate openly with current employees and volunteers about how the organization may need to adapt to integrate these skilled volunteers. The entire staff needs to work together as a team; not view new talent as a threat. Volunteers who are not welcomed or appreciated will not stay.

Recruit the right talent.

Boomer volunteers often seek projects with a mission, not a task. Position the role as an opportunity to make an impact on the community, and conduct interviews to fill it. This job-oriented approach attracts talented volunteers more so than positioning the role as just a volunteer opportunity.

Manage and match talent accordingly.

Boomers want to put their years of experience to good use, and nonprofits must be willing to manage them in a new way. A volunteer with a marketing background need not spend hours stuffing promotional folders, but should have access to your current marketing plan to provide strategic guidance. Be open to volunteers taking on leadership roles, and be ready to create new positions to utilize this talent.

There has never been a better time for nonprofits to leverage the power of older adults.

The skills, experience, and perspective of these volunteers can truly transform nonprofits and the communities they serve.

If you are willing integrate, innovate, and experiment, you too can enjoy a boom in resources.

Self-Directed Teams: A Case Study (Part 2)

In our last post, we heard about the abundant opportunities that self-directed teams of older adult volunteers can present. Now, we hear how the Madison (WI) Senior Center has successfully implemented these teams — and how you can, too.

Center Director Christine Beatty shared her approach in the National Council on Aging (NCOA) Webinar Self-Directed Teams: A Strategy for Significant Service.

Madison proved to be a good area to test this kind of program, as 41% of its workers are in professional and technical management, and 56% over 25 years of age have associate, bachelors, professional, or graduate degrees.

First Steps

The center’s first step was to create a more-sophisticated volunteer program. They used matching software to find roles for volunteers that matched the volunteers’ interests. In the past, they had done a cursory job of understanding volunteers’ backgrounds and abilities, so they started over, re-enrolling all volunteers.

For project consultants, they explored the use of stipends and provided professional-level responsibilities. They also created team consultants to develop self-directed teams that would benefit the senior center.

Teams and Projects

Next, the center set up several self-directed teams, which responded by producing a wealth of projects:

— The Public Relations Team determined a need for an internal welcome committee, advised on the center’s physical space and image, created new PowerPoint presentation and DVD promotional piece, formed a speakers bureau and began a project to encourage older adults to complete their Census forms.

— The Volunteer Recognition Team identified new recognition opportunities for different cohorts, replaced the center’s traditional luncheon with multiple, discounted events and took on leadership roles with those events.

– The Program Development Team interviewed multiple agencies regarding senior adult needs for programming and activities in the city of Madison, and it is preparing recommendations for policy making groups and the Madison Senior Center Board.

— The LGBT Senior Alliance Team has done outreach to other agencies and creates social activities for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered senior adults.

Characteristics of Good Teams

What makes a good team? Beatty said these elements are important:

— A clear, elevating group goal, or charge.
— Teamwork values and relationship development.
— A results-driven structure — the center was clear about the results it needed and wanted.
— Competent team members. The center always used the term “candidate” when volunteering; it did not promise anyone they could be on the team. Instead, it carefully assessed people’s skills and experience levels.
— Unified commitment from all team members — the center asked its team members to commit.
— Standards of excellence — because if major political decision-making bodies were going to use a report, for example, it must be a quality report.
— Organizational support — including a volunteer coordinator and executive director.
— Interdependence and shared work.
— Collaborative goals and decision-making.
— Self-monitoring of the team’s processes.

How to Develop a Team

To develop a strong team, share your organization’s vision and mission, and provide training and skills for collaboration. Provide a supportive organizational culture, and frame collaborative rather than individual goals.

Both patience and time are needed. Beatty recommends spending the time upfront to give volunteers the training and agency background they need to do a good job. In their case, a city staff person helped with training and team development. Check to see if local resources are available in your area, too.

Work to develop team trust and relationships. Delegate with authority to accomplish great things. Support change and innovations. Don’t be defensive; realize that fresh new eyes are looking at issues and contributing positively.

And start reaping the benefits of self-directed teams — to the volunteer, the community, and your organization! What experiences have you had? Please share your thoughts below!

Self-Directed Teams: The Basics (Part 1)

One way that organizations are making use of the rich resource of professional-level older adult volunteers is through self-directed teams.

As you learn about how organizations are tapping the rich resource of professional-level older adult volunteers, you’ve likely heard about self-directed teams. But what are they, exactly? And how can they work for you?

In a recent National Council on Aging (NCOA) Webinar, Self-Directed Teams: A Strategy for Significant Service, Christine Beatty answered these questions. Beatty is director of the Madison (WI) Senior Center, past chairperson of the National Institute of Senior Centers, and an NCOA member.

In this first of a two-part series, we share her thoughts on the basics and benefits of self-directed teams. She began with this definition:

What Are Self-Directed Teams?

“Self-directed teams are intended to conduct their own goal setting, decisionmaking, plan strategy and implementation, monitoring of task and group process effectiveness, conflict management, negotiation of resources, and reward/recognition process.” (Manz & Sims, 1987; Spreitzer, Cohen & Ledford, 1999)

In other words, self-directed teams call the shots. But they aren’t new; they’ve been used in Sweden and Great Britain since the 1950s. In the United States, the concept advanced significantly in the 1980s when Asia began capturing the market for steel, electronics, and automobiles from U.S. corporations.

Self-directed teams also were part of the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement. These teams empower employees to make decisions that affect their own work. As a result, they bring their minds to work — they make decisions and take responsibility.

Benefits

This concept causes us to think of moving away from the normal way we do work — and away from bureaucratic hassles, Beatty said. It also improves recruiting and retention, increases productivity and reduces operating costs. Here are some examples she shared from the corporate world:

— AT&T increased the quality of operator service by 12%.
— Federal Express cut service errors by 13%.
— Johnson & Johnson reported inventory reductions of $6 million.
— Shenandoah Life Insurance cut staffing needs, saving $200,000 per year, while handling a 33 percent greater volume of work.
— 3M’s Hutchinson facility increased production gains by 300%.

Challenges in the Nonprofit World

These qualities are important, of course, to the nonprofit world as well. And while nonprofits rely heavily on volunteers, most CEOs do a poor job of managing them, according to a 2009 article Beatty shared from the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “The Volunteer Workforce.” Organizations often do not match volunteers’ skills with assignments, recognize volunteers’ contributions, measure the value of volunteers, train and invest in volunteers and staff, or provide strong leadership.

As a result, more than one-third of people who volunteer at a nonprofit one year do not return the following year — to any nonprofit. This attrition costs an estimated $38 billion in lost labor.

She noted a 2004 report from focus groups conducted by NCOA’s RespectAbility initiative that shares the concerns of nonprofit leaders. For example, they worry that boomers may not commit to causes, that they are caregiving for older parents and working long hours. Budgetary concerns may prevent organizations from hiring a volunteer coordinator, which hampers the organization’s ability to build a strong volunteer program.

Opportunities

So what are the opportunities?

Three-fourths of 78 million Boomers plan to work after retirement and half want jobs that “help others,” says a survey by Civic Ventures and the MetLife Foundation. As of this year, there will be a projected 75 million potential volunteers in the United States.

These volunteers can help build an organization’s capacity and leadership, and solve important community problems.

How did Beatty apply self-directed teams to take advantage of these copious opportunities? We’ll take a look at her solutions in our next post, Part 2. In the meantime, please share your own thoughts on this concept — and your successes with self-directed teams — in the comments.

Becoming a Boomer-Friendly Organization

Earlier, we discussed some best practices that two leaders from California’s Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership of Marin, CEO Linda Davis and Program Consultant Liz Rottger, developed in the course of establishing two programs for older adult volunteers.

Now, we’re back with even more of their helpful tips, discussed in the NCOA Webinar Making Your Organization “Boomer-Friendly.”

Recruiting

As suggested before, you’ll want to tap word of mouth and online networks to find strong candidates:

–Recruit a lead core of professional volunteers. Use people that you know to help network; start with your Rolodex or contact list. A personalized approach is essential. Invite people to join.

–Get “champions” to tell their story.

–Be active online. Have an attractive Web site and use social networking tools.

–Provide training opportunities.

–Perform ongoing outreach to organizations with pools of potential volunteers. Reach out to an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute or local retirement club, or volunteer for a speaker’s bureau that will get you out in the community.

–Use volunteers to engage volunteers. Have them staff the tables at events. Recently, the center recruited 50 volunteers that way. If you don’t have a senior information fair in your area, partner with other organizations to create one.

–Hold focus groups to publicize your program and gather information. The center’s last one revealed that people are nervous about having time to volunteer, because of the economic situation.

–And, as mentioned last time, watch your language. Avoid the word “seniors” and ageist and silly pictures. Send an upbeat, positive message that emphasizes the contributions professionals aged 50+ can make, perhaps using the tag lines in our earlier post.

Interviewing

Part of recruiting strategically is interviewing potential volunteers carefully, as if for a staff job:
–Develop a genuine interest in each person you are interviewing.

–Take time to learn about the background and interests of your potential volunteers.

–Ask, “What skill(s) do you have that you would be willing to share with our organization?”

–Seek out their passions and interests, but also ask about what they don’t want to do. A former Fortune 500 executive said, “I’ve gone to enough meetings. I don’t need to go to more meetings; I just want to count birds.” These preferences are important to know.

Making Volunteers Part of the Team

Socialization is important; 50+ professional volunteers want to be part of a team. They want to collaborate with staff, be involved in all phases of the work and feel their work is valuable.

One strategy the center has used to reach these goals is creating a “kitchen cabinet” of individuals committed to its vision. It also uses peer-to-peer mentoring to overcome stage fright, often pairing someone doing a consult for the first time with an experienced volunteer.

To make volunteers feel part of the team, Davis and Rottger suggest being conscious about your decision to use professional-level volunteers. Invite volunteers to staff meetings, and encourage staff trust of these volunteers. Model for your staff the behavior you’d like to see.

You also can ask staff to look at their job descriptions and find areas they don’t have resources to do themselves. For example, at the center the staffer charged with running the Board Match program didn’t have the bandwidth to do the job well. This complex program, which demands interaction between candidates and nonprofits, is now run by eight volunteer coordinators.

The center also carefully outlines responsibilities, timelines, reporting requirements, etc., making them explicit and written as would be done for staff.

Following Up

Professional-level volunteers like to see results, so develop systems that measure the impact they are having — and share the results. Track volunteer time, and measure the return-on-investment and cost-benefit analysis. Tools such as NCOA’s SMART can do this. Agree on indicators of effectiveness and impact, and give your volunteers honest feedback on their performance.

To keep the program attractive to volunteers, think long-term to develop pathways for authentic volunteer leadership. Cultivate key volunteer roles, communicate well with volunteers, and create feedback loops that measure progress. Become a base for civic engagement in your community — and your community, your volunteers, and your organization will reap the benefits.

How to Focus the Nation on Older Volunteers

The stories that we share in this blog — in addition to thorough research studies — demonstrate just how well older adults can solve issues within their communities.

The challenge is getting funding to make more of these programs a reality.

One solution? Create a national strategy to tap older volunteers as a source of social capital to meet critical community needs. The Administration on Aging could create this strategy, in collaboration with the Corporation for National and Community Service.

How could this be done? We have a substantial opportunity coming up in 2011, when Congress is due to reauthorize the older Americans Act. This idea could become part of the legislation proposed.

Now is the time to begin fleshing out ideas of ways to improve aging services policy, so that we have plenty of time to develop them into solid recommendations with strong chances of passage.

To that end, a new Web site called The Exchange has been set up to gather ideas and encourage dialogue among all members of the aging field. The National Council on Aging manages this collaborative space and invites everyone in the field to participate.

Currently, the idea of creating a national strategy to tap older volunteers is The Exchange’s most popular idea. We at NCOA support this idea because our research shows adults 50+ are an extensive and untapped resource that can be mobilized to help address critical community problems and help build the capacity of community-based organizations. We hope others will join us in rewriting a new narrative of life after 50 that provides expanded opportunities to work, serve, learn and lead.

Others have contributed these valuable comments:

— “In this time of economic scarcity we need a plan to capitalize on a growing resource: older adult volunteers.”

— “Wholehearted agreement here. Currently the Act, in Title IV, promotes demonstration, support, and research in this endeavor. Unfortunately, there has been no money of effort dedicated to the endeavor. People seem to miss the point that it takes resources to accomplish great things, including avenues dedicated to volunteerism. So many partnerships between the Administration on Aging and other parts of the federal government would mirror the many partnerships folks at the local level endeavor in to accomplish ‘forces for good.’”

What do you think? Please join this brainstorming process on The Exchange. I invite you to vote and/or comment on this idea, to review other posted ideas, or to add your own.

Please check back in as the process evolves. Together, we can create an environment that grows and sustains civic engagement among older adults.

Training Leadership Volunteers Aged 50+

Adult volunteers aged 55+ often have strong yet diverse professional backgrounds. As you begin a volunteer program, it’s best to channel that talent and tailor efforts for your particular program.

A recent National Council on Aging Webinar, How to Put Together a Successful Volunteer Training Curriculum for 50+ Leadership Volunteers, tells you how. In it, Ann Curtice Rich, executive director of Chicago Life Opportunities Initiative (CLOI), and Kim Pavlock, creator of and mentor with CLOI’s Count Me In! Program, shared their training approach.

Over the course of a year, CLOI provided leadership training for older adult volunteers — former nonprofit executives, strategic planning consultants, and more — so those volunteers could identify nonprofits’ organizational needs and fill those needs with other older adult volunteers.

The initial two-day training came from the Community Resource Network, a program created by the Points of Light Foundation. It had these components:

1. Understanding Volunteering: Statistics and trends, volunteers’ motivation, organizational readiness.

2. Planning Your Volunteer Program and Engaging Staff: Organizational needs assessments, writing a purpose statement, appropriate roles for volunteers, budget worksheet, program planning.

3. Recruiting and Placing Volunteers: Position descriptions, marketing messages and recruitment strategies, and screening applicants.

4. Training Volunteers: Identifying needs and designing, delivering, and assessing training.

5. Supervising and Recognizing Volunteers: Defining and communicating expectations, guiding and supporting volunteers, and recognizing them.

6. Evaluating your Volunteer Program: Deciding what to track, collecting data, and applying results.

CLOI supplemented this training with an additional six weeks of training, during which mentors and nonprofits generated training topics, such as these:

Leadership Training covered how to be a consultant or business coach — what to do during the first meeting with the nonprofit directors and how to set priorities, expectations, and goals for success — plus team-building exercises.

Just In Time Training was additional training with internal and external resources from throughout the city, such as volunteer managers from the Salvation Army and American Red Cross. Volunteer managers discussed, from their perspective, the experience of using older adult volunteers. This training also covered how to think about volunteer roles differently and identify leadership-level opportunities, how to create position descriptions and recruit, and how to get staff buy-in for these volunteers.

Monthly meetings offered opportunities for mentors and nonprofits to interact with one another and share their experiences, separately and together, and opened greater opportunities for program learning.

Here are the Top 10 Lessons Learned:

1. Create an environment of trust and openness where everyone’s opinions are valued.

2. Encourage the sharing of ideas so that everyone can learn from each other.

3. Discourage the conversation from being dominated by one or two people.

4. Facilitate the discussion and get out of the way — allow trainees to share their experiences and train themselves.

5. Be creative and flexible. This is a relatively new field; there are no right or wrong ways of doing it and everyone is in a difference place.

6. Training takes longer to plan and implement than you think!

7. Utilize community resources to help with training.

8. Encourage good communication — talking about what’s working and what’s not on a regular basis fosters trust and mutual respect.

9. Leave egos at the door.

10. Be open to all feedback and implement suggestions as much as possible.

What training programs have you used with success? Please share your ideas with us in the comments!

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.

How to Create Effective Partnerships

So you have a great idea that would enable older adult volunteers to help your organization or your community, but you don’t have the resources to get the project going yourself. What do you do?

Ann Rich, of Chicago Life Opportunities Initiative (CLOI), would suggest you find yourself a partner. And in a recent Webinar in the National Council on Aging’s sold-out series Engaging Older Volunteers as Leaders in Your Organization, she tells you how to create effective partnerships.

What is a partnership? A marriage is one example, Rich said. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship with shared goals, decision making, and responsibility for outcomes.

Partnerships let the parties maximize their resources, share information and ideas, coordinate services and programs, even join forces to advocate for a cause. Other examples include coalitions, public/private partnerships, networks, and joint projects such as programs or events or fundraisers.

One successful partnership joined CJE SeniorLife and Mather LifeWays through the RespectAbility Initiative that Atlantic Philanthropies funded and NCOA led. That partnership formed Rich’s group, CLOI. Originally, CLOI was made up of 17 organizations that came together to see how best to unite older adults with Chicago-area organizations to address community needs.

The partnership was formed because nonprofits were straining to meet growing community needs under limited finances and human resources, and growing numbers of Boomers were looking for opportunities to explore what was next for them. Initially, CLOI created several pilot programs, such as a resource directory for older adults and a welcome wagon for new community members.

After the initial phase, CJE and Mather LifeWays had a strong interest in continuing the project, and neither had the money to do it alone. So they created a new partnership that since has produced various programs that place older adults in leadership roles within nonprofits, train volunteers to raise funds, pair nonprofits and adults aged 50+ to prioritize what comes next in their lives, and offers lectures by pioneers in life and career coaching.

Picking a Partner

If a partnership sounds good to you, what should you look for?

First, seek out others committed to the same goals as you. And be specific about what you want to accomplish. The more clear you are in defining what you’re looking for, the more likely you are to find a suitable partner, Rich said.

She also offered these suggestions.

— Make sure both partners have shared goals, values and purpose.
— Understand what’s in it for each party.
— Know each organization’s strengths — examples might be marketing or research capabilities.
— Outline what each partner brings that the other lacks — such as finances or a strong vision of the direction the project could take.
— Consider your past experience with your potential partner. What’s their track record? Are they trustworthy? Are they committed? Will you share credit for the project? What are the threats or possible turf issues? Do you have chemistry, get along?
— For formal partnerships, ask if each partner has the organizational and financial capacity to take on the partnership. Decide how staffing, communications with the board of directors, fiduciary mattes, etc., will work.

Above all, don’t rush the process. It’s important to pick partners, Rich said.

Ingredients for Successful Partnerships

To pave the way for success, make sure you have these elements:

— A shared vision and objective from the beginning.
— Commitment from executive leadership of both partners.
— Ongoing commitment, communication and tending of the relationship by both parties, important as with a marriage.
— Written goals, responsibilities and accountability of each partner, and definitions of success.
— Leaders with strong skills to mediate the interests and concerns of each partner.
— Strong leaders who champion the project with enthusiasm.
— Recognition that finding common ground takes time if organizations have different cultures and fiscal management structures.
— Good communication around what’s working and what’s not.
— People with decision-making authority who can make decisions in a timely fashion.
— Egos left at the door.
— Openness to all feedback and suggestions.
— Good opportunities to maximize gifts of both partners.

Communication is highly important. If things go south, for example, be prepared to bring everyone back to the table to re-examine, revise, and re-up their commitment to the project, Rich said. Set boundaries, to avoid people trying to control the agenda, and remember that you’re not obligated to stay if the arrangement is not meeting your needs.

But if shared goals and trust are there, and the lines of communication stay open, a partnership can be a highly rewarding experience — both for the partners and for the people who benefit from the programs the partnership creates.

How to Find and Keep Leadership-Level Volunteers

One important step in starting a program using older adults volunteers is finding the right volunteers.

Most nonprofits that have participated in the Models of Significant Service project through the National Council on Aging (NCOA) agree that not just any volunteer will do — instead, as with any job position, a good fit is essential to make the project run smoothly and well.

In a recent session in NCOA’s sold-out Webinar series Engaging Older Volunteers as Leaders in Your Organization, Ken Murray and Paddy Clark of the Southern Maine Agency on Aging (SMAA) shared their tips for recruiting and engaging leadership-level volunteers.

These tips are born of their experience developing a model called RSVP (Retired & Senior Volunteer Program) Capacity Corps, for which they sought volunteers with high-level skills to help SMAA with leadership projects. (Learn about the tasks these volunteers did.)

Use Your Networks for Publicity

As one strategy, they formed a steering committee with representatives from other organizations such as AARP state offices and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and the Maine Commission on Community Service. This committee helped publicize the project to its own networks, which meant that when SMAA was ready to begin recruiting, people had already heard of the project.

SMAA also publicized the project through its own channels — its bimonthly newsletter and its Web site. It posted the notice on the free VolunteerMatch Web site and on the statewide matching service VolunteerMaine.org. It pitched the idea to cable TV and radio stations, ran articles in weekly community papers, and asked its project managers and the seniors it serves to spread the word. The Executive Director accepted speaking engagements and mentioned the project at meetings of coalitions and Area Agencies on Aging.

In short, SMAA networked, talking up the project at every possible opportunity.

Murray and Clark suggest that you seek out the special venues in your own community where you might reach mature adults with high-level skills. Examples include these:

–Businesses that encourage employees to volunteer.
–Education centers for older adults.
–Rotary and other service clubs.
–Senior centers and town programs for older adults.
–Employer retirement planning seminars.
–Professional associations for public relations, IT, development, etc.

Choose Messages that Pique Volunteers’ Interest

One important finding was that people responded better to an ad that included a skills list if they saw themselves in the list. After listing items such as strategic planning, information technology and development/fundraising, SMAA included a final choice: “Or tell us what you’d like to do.” This last item provided an open-ended invitation “that if they’d like to even nibble at the edges, we’d like to talk,” said Murray.

SMAA also found that these messages drew recruits:

–“Enjoy a flexible schedule.”
–“Join a team.”
–“Where your experience, wisdom and talents count.”
–“Work together to solve problems.”
–“Projects tailored to your skills and interests.”

Conveying the purpose of the project and how the volunteer’s skills could do good in the community was effective, too.

Engage the Volunteer

Once the volunteer is found, the task of engaging him or her begins.

Always meet one-on-one with the volunteer to assess skills and fit, explain the program, and engage the volunteer. Discuss expectations and the project itself, and let the volunteer know he or she will be part of the team and actively shaping the project. SMAA left details off its recruitment materials to allow this flexibility.

Get the relationship off on the right foot with an orientation. Include things like the project’s overall vision, issues the nonprofit is facing, the organization’s mission, policies and procedures, and how the volunteer can help.

Then, communicate often and well. Check in with the volunteer periodically so that he or she feels part of the team and knows what impact he or she is having on the project — an important component of satisfaction and engagement for older adult volunteers.

And now, communicate with us! Have you used any of these strategies yourself? Do you have other tips to share? If so, please post them in the comments.