Making Sure Volunteers and Staff Get Along

So you’ve decided to enlist leadership-level older adult volunteers to extend your organization’s services. Congratulations!

Now, a quick question: Is your organization ready for this?

Integrating volunteers into staff roles can be a challenge, so the National Council on Aging brought to its sold-out Webinar series a session called “Changing Organizational Culture: Getting Your Nonprofit Ready for Professional and Leadership Volunteers.”

In it, Phil McCallion of the Center for Excellence in Aging Services, School of Social Welfare, SUNY at Albany and Gajtana Simonovski, of the Community Service Society, Retired & Senior Volunteer Program, New York, New York, shared their experiences in integrating the two. Here’s what they had to say.

First, Simonovski debunked the myths of what staff think about high-skill volunteers.

Myth: They will take staff jobs.
Reality: Most are not looking for another job. But they can free staff to do more strategic planning.

Myth: It takes more time than it’s worth to manage and train them.
Reality: Sometimes training takes more time in the beginning, said Simonovski, “but really there’s a big payout at the end, more than you put in.”

Myth: They agency hop, not staying long in one position, and won’t commit to regular hours.
Reality: They want flexibility and variety in their assignments, but are willing to make a commitment.

Myth: They will criticize staff.
Reality: They want to share their expertise and knowledge and enable nonprofits to involve skilled professionals in their planning process. “Rather than be afraid of their expertise, welcome it,” she said.

Phil McCallion thinks of leadership-level volunteers as consultants. He suggested that to get buy-in, be explicit that you are not replacing staff. Instead, convey that they bring experience and can help staff. Simonovski said they held a meeting for staff in the beginning to alleviate fears, and made the business case as to why volunteers would help staff do their jobs. McCallion also recommended doing and sharing a cost-benefits analysis. “If we start to see what the benefit is, absolutely we’ll see more buy-in.”

Taking care of basic logistics is important, too, such as giving them office space, a desk, phone, mailbox, even business cards. Asking volunteers to share desks and computers concurrently rarely works, said McCallion. For the Center for Excellence in Aging Services project, the office space usually reserved for volunteers and interns was reorganized to meet these volunteers’ specific needs. Creating the sense that volunteers had their own space and equipment was an important part of engaging people and making them feel committed, he said. And it signaled to everyone that the volunteers are making an important contribution.

Treating volunteers as staff in other ways is helpful as well, said Simonovski. For example, involve them in regular program planning meetings so that they become part of the team. Share project evaluation reporting with them so that they can see how the program is doing, and how they are doing. Offer professional development training. Correspond regularly through e-mail and phone calls and speak frankly with them, encouraging them to come up with solutions to project challenges.

The key, said McCallion, is building a sense of team, a sense of communication, and a sense that everyone’s opinion is valued.

This shift in thinking changes the traditional relationship between volunteers and staff. Whereas previously the roles were of boss and staff, now it’s a lateral or parallel approach that provides equality, said Simonovski. Instead of supervision, it’s about support. “In many cases, these volunteers have more experience than we do,” she said. As a result, staff members try not to squelch the volunteers’ creativity and experience.

And a leadership-level volunteer is less likely to hold a single position indefinitely. Short-term assignments and flexible long-term assignments are the new way. This change away from a single track makes sense, because “most of our organizations would never permit that for staff,” said McCallion. Volunteers feel invisible within organizations when playing that one role. A parallel approach is a big departure from tradition, and one that volunteers welcome, he said.

These factors feed into culture change, McCallion said.

An organization has to be open to fully involving volunteers to change its culture, he said. In fact, an openness to change is one of the most critical elements of a successful project with leadership volunteers. How else can you achieve change? Commit to using those volunteers to improve the organization. Prepare staff for culture change, ensure that management is open to feedback, and keep communication open.

How might you know when that transformation has taken place? Said McCallion, when there is no difference in terms of how people are seen in the hall.

What about in your organization? How have you brought together volunteers and staff? And how do you know when culture change has happened?

Integrating Volunteers and Paid Staff

I’ve been thinking about leadership in the business world, and leadership in the volunteer world. As a volunteer leader in a non-profit organization, I have seen that leadership from a volunteer is not viewed as the same as a business leader in the same organization.

Why is this? My first thought was that the difference between a paid staff member and non-paid volunteer was a bigger gap than I had realized.

Non-profits recognize the potential of an experienced, knowledgeable, and skilled group of volunteers that are willing, able, and anxious to share their skills for the good of the organization and community. In these current economic times, having a strong volunteer force to supplement and support the growth of an organization is a two-sided sword. It can be an advantage to the organization that knows how to use volunteer leaders, and a dilemma to sort out how to use them without threatening or competing with staff.

I struggle with this because as a leader I want to do all I can to support the organization and help it succeed. The staff leaders are supportive of my efforts but struggle as they develop ways to integrate the volunteer and staff roles. They also struggle with organization policies and in some cases employment laws that can limit the type of work that is delegated to a volunteer.

This was one of many surprises that I came across as a volunteer leader. I have spoken to other volunteer leaders who together with their staff leaders have found some interesting ways to deal with this situation.

I could use your help here, and am very interested in hearing about your situation. What have been your experiences and what has surprised you the most or least about your volunteer leadership experience?