Volunteering 101

1. Volunteering 101 Paige DeLeon Volunteer Resources Director René Carlin Volunteer Resources Manager

2. Today’s Learning Objectives: What is my role? Who are these volunteers? Value Ethics & Challenges Solutions for Success Blueprint

3. What is my role? Regardless of how you came to be in charge of volunteers, the challenge is to cultivate the attitudes necessary for success.

4. What is my role? Regardless of how you came to be in charge of volunteers, the challenge is to cultivate the attitudes necessary for success.

5. Belief in the value and power of volunteerism. • Recognition of people's potential capabilities, vs. their formal credentials. • Desire to make the program work to its fullest potential. • Openness to tapping a variety of volunteers • Willingness to stand up for the rights of volunteers. • Enjoyment of working with volunteers.

6. What is my role? We, as volunteer managers, are most interested in being effective vs. efficient most of the time. Assess, assess, assess.

7. Delegating • Not dumping or getting rid of tasks that you do not like/or are boring • You do not escape responsibility • Shared process • You serve as the guide

8. “So, who are these volunteers?”

9. Your Volunteer Base • Adult Service Groups • Individuals • Special Needs • Administrative • Students • Youth and Family

10. What Motivates our Volunteers? • The intellectual challenge • Opportunities to interact • Positive change and action • Doing something

11. Volunteers expand the sphere of influence • Help create the morale of a worksite

12. What turns off a volunteer? • Serious • Time-consuming • A sacrifice • The Experience

13. If we begin to pay attention to streamlining the work of volunteers, we may discover more volunteers willing to say yes.

14. Volunteerism is about engineering the experience to make sure that nothing gets in the way of that connection being made.

15. The Experience • Welcome • Sign-In Instructions • Housekeeping: bathrooms & break room • Clear training • Allow questions • Observe, encourage and correct • Thank them

16. The Experience • Guidelines are rules • Survey/feedback box • Follow-up • Recognition

17. What is the value? Worth? To whom? In what terms?

18. What is the value of a city park?

19. What is the value to your community?

20. Volunteers help EXTEND our services and what we do. Volunteers don’t save us money.

21. Confidentiality • Trust • Ethically right • Social responsibility

22. Ethics: definition?

23. Ethics: A set of principles of right conduct.

24. We have a responsibility as partners of a social services organization to have high ethical standards.

25. Ethics: “Musts” • Create a social climate through which human needs can be met and human values enhanced • Pursue excellence even when resources are limited; seek to overcome obstacles of excellence • Open and honest interaction avoiding discrimination or prejudice • Improve knowledge, skills and ability to make solid judgments • Decision-making advancing the long-term greater good

26. Give money or cigarettes to volunteers • Badmouth other staff or volunteers • Discriminate • Pre-judge • Drive a volunteer home or offsite • Share confidential information • Use inappropriate language or behavior • Start a wildfire Ethics: “Don’ts”

27. Ethics come into play when dealing with difficult volunteers.

28. Prevention Keys to Dealing with Difficult Volunteers • Many never clearly understand what it is they are to do, how they are to do it, or why they are there • K.I.S.S. principle: Keep it sweet and simple • The doing is the responsibility of the volunteer

29. Principles for Dealing With Difficult Volunteers • Try to handle problems promptly • Don’t try to confront difficult situations when you’re so upset that you’re not rational • Communication should be carried out in a one-to-one setting • Describe what you have observed • Indicate a shared commitment to finding a solution to problems • Arrange for follow-up

30. When All Else Fails • You confirmed your expectations • You clarified the volunteer’s role and assured yourself that they do understand it • You gave direction about how behavior can be changed to make it acceptable • You’ve tried to develop mutually acceptable plans • You tried to direct the volunteer to other projects or agencies • Nothing works

31. People are not unwilling to volunteer, but rather, organizations often are unwilling to welcome the skills and the inputof connected community members. 

32. People are not unwilling to volunteer, but rather, organizations often are unwilling to welcome the skills and the inputof connected community members. 

33. "To be creative you have to contribute something different from what you've done before. Your results need not be original to the world; few results truly meet that criterion. In fact, most results are built on the work of others.“ — Lynne C. Levesque Breakthrough Creativity

34. Questions? Handouts I will follow up with an online evaluation. Please provide feedback to help better this training. Thanks for coming and for all the work you do with our volunteers.

35. Paige DeLeon pdeleon@austinfoodbank.org