www.missionbased.com

Management Tip
Evaluating Volunteers
Most nonprofits use volunteers, and many provide much, if not most, of their services through a dedicated volunteer cadre. More and more, these volunteers need to be able to perform high level tasks that are sometimes life and death. Don't believe me? 75%, yes, 75% of fire fighters in the United States are volunteers. Life and death for sure. Think about how many Habitat for Humanity homes would fall down if they organization did not attract skilled artisans to supervise other volunteers. Doctors Without Borders (DWB)? Highly skilled and highly dedicated volunteers supported by great staff, rather than the other way around.

There's an old management adage: "You can't manage what you don't measure." I agree, and for a nonprofit manager, this includes volunteers. Volunteers need to be recruited, screened, trained, supervised, evaluated, disciplined and let go, just like your paid staff. These wonderful people agree to labor without financial compensation, but that doesn't mean that their work, if done well, can't improve your organization tremendously. Nor does their working for free mean that their efforts, if done badly, can't hurt your nonprofit.

So, you have to evaluate. In the link above from Idealist, there's an evaluation template for you to use, but let's spend a minute to talk about the sequence that leads up to evaluation. First, you have to have clear expectations of your volunteers. What do you want them to do? This turns into a job description, along with a skillset required. (tough to be a DWB volunteer without an MD).

Once you have this done, you need to develop training on what you want done, how, where, when, and most importantly why. This training allows you to fully prepare the volunteer for their work, and to later hold them accountable without their being able to say "No one told me!" Make sure that your training includes the fact that each volunteer will be evaluated, why, and how often.

Next, remember that, if your volunteer supervisors are also volunteers (often the most experienced volunteers) they may need a little supervision training themselves. It's not fair to kick them up the ladder without adequate information and training.

Finally, when you evaluate, remember that there should never be surprises. This goes for employees too, of course. NO surprises during evaluation. If the person is great, you should be telling them regularly. If they are messing up, same thing: they should be hearing it often. Also, evaluations should always be two way: the volunteer should get to evaluate their experience, training and support.

Good volunteers want to help your organization, not hurt it. They want to be held accountable for their efforts. If a particular volunteer doesn't feel he or she should be evaluated, then perhaps they should seek to serve another nonprofit rather than yours!

July, 2010 -by Peter C. Brinckerhoff