Category Archives: Support

The Volunteer Project: Three Observations From Year One

Community, Empowerment, Our Experiences, Significance, Support

This month, we are celebrating the one-year anniversary of the release of our book The Volunteer Project: Stop Recruiting. Start Retaining. I know, it seems weird to celebrate a book. But when you’re a first time author, and you invest hours and weeks and months into jotting down words and fine-tuning your ideas, you spend a lot of time asking yourself: Is anyone actually going to read this stuff?

It turns out that, at least for The Volunteer Project,the answer is yes! Within our first month in the marketplace, we met 50% of our goal for first-year sales. To date, we have more than tripled that goal. Apparently church and nonprofit leaders are itching to figure out how to make their volunteer cultures the types of environments where volunteers not only stay involved, but invite their friends to join them as well.

Something that makes The Volunteer Project unique is our Zero Recruitment Model (ZRM) Survey. The ZRM is an online assessment tool for measuring volunteer satisfaction. It captures data from both leaders and volunteers, and provides a picture of areas within the four strategies (celebrate their significance, provide first-class support, fuel meaningful connections, and empower their passions) where leaders can invest to improve their volunteer cultures and ultimately their retention rates.

Over the past year, over 100 ministry teams have participated in the ZRM. These ministries have varied from volunteer groups of 10 people to 1,000s of individuals. Some of the leaders who utilized this tool are seasoned veterans with 20+ years of experience, and many are young leaders who are striving to create a fresh culture for their volunteers. Many of you reading this post may have even taken the survey and benefited from your personalized results. Today, I want to share some big picture ideas we noticed when we combined data from all of the churches and nonprofits that have participated.

In the volunteer portion of the survey, we ask volunteers to respond yes or no to the question:Do you see yourself continuing to volunteer at this organization six months from now? 95.2 percent of volunteers said yes. That’s great news! 95 out of 100 volunteers plan to continue serving! However, what about the other five percent? We wondered if there are some commonalities among those choosing to leave. So we compared their scores to those who indicated they planned to stay. The results were revealing. In all categories, the five percent scored lower than those who indicated they planned to continue in their volunteer roles.

Master Gauges

Here are three of the observations we made this year, in light of the combined data provided by the churches and organizations that have participated in the survey:

1. Volunteers aren’t making the connections they expected to If you want to raise your retention rate, the lowest hanging fruit is to provide better connections among your volunteers. We discovered that, across the board, from leaders to volunteers, nobody thinks this is happening well. One of the benefits volunteers expect when they sign up to volunteer is stronger friendships. The greatest thing you can do to help your volunteers feel more satisfied in their roles is to elevate their connections to one another.

2. Leaders think they are providing great support, but their volunteers just aren’t feeling it.While everyone agrees that we’re not knocking it out of the park when it comes to connection, there are some areas—like providing support—where leaders think they are doing great, but volunteers often disagree. Among the five percent who chose to terminate their participation as volunteers, many say they did so because they didn’t feel supported or empowered enough.

Have you ever seen one of those commercials for air fresheners or deodorant in which the individual no longer realizes that their living space, car, or body stinks? When it comes to supporting volunteers, many leaders think they are providing more resources and training than they actually are. If you want to raise your retention rate, ask yourself the question:If I was informed that an anonymous, undercover volunteer was serving in my ministry next month, what elements of support to volunteers would I immediately change, improve, fix or speed up?

3. Everyone agrees volunteers are making a difference—however, ongoing feelings of underuse will eventually override the staying power of significance. Establishing feelings of significance within your volunteers is a powerful thing. People love knowing they are making a difference. It’s obvious that what you do at your organization matters! Unfortunately, this won’t retain volunteers if they don’t feel empowered or that they are in roles that fits their gifts and skills. If you want to take your volunteer culture to the next level, lean into empowerment. Help your volunteers to achieve their goals and to find ways they can grow both in their roles and as individuals.

Thank you to everyone who engaged with The Volunteer Project this first year, shared it with your teams, and participated in the Zero Recruitment Model Survey. We’ve had a lot of fun hearing your stories and interacting with the volunteers you lead. Our team is excited to continue to learn and explore the intricacies of what makes volunteers stick.

VP-Order

Carey Nieuwhof’s “Just Turn Down the Microphone” Post

Empowerment, Support

When leading volunteers, we are often called to make tough decisions. Sometimes these decisions mean difficult conversations. We appreciate our friend Carey’s post from earlier this week about helping people find a place to serve… and leading them out of the wrong place. Check out the link below to read Carey’s refreshingly honest thoughts:

CareyNieuwhof.com: Why “Just Turn Down His Microphone” is a (Really) Bad Leadership Strategy

Why Would 100 Busy Execs…

On the Road, Support, Volunteer Project

Kreisher_dubai

WHY WOULD 100 BUSY EXECUTIVES ATTEND 4 THREE-HOUR VOLUNTEER TRAININGS IN THE SPAN OF ONE WEEK?
That’s the question we asked of the people who attended our trainings in Dubai where we were told to expect a turnout of approximately 50.  These were hard working professionals, many of which have families and demanding schedules.  It wasn’t from boredom or a lack of options.  Dubai is a beautiful city with so much to see and do!  The resounding and repetitive answer that we received was that the trainings were FUN and were impacting their entire lives…who they are at home as a spouse and parent, who they are as a co-worker or supervisor and most importantly, who they are as a follower of Christ.

They came because they wanted to learn how to be more effective in their volunteer role but they stayed for 3 hours and came back for three more trainings in that same week because we were adding value to their whole lives.

It’s so important that we remember that our volunteers are whole people.  They are so much more then the role they fill for our organization.  They are body, soul and spirit.  They’re spouses, parents, business owners, co-workers, friends, and all trying to find their way on their journey to follow Christ!

So, here’s the take-away…before you meet with your volunteers again, besides asking yourself the obvious question, “How can I better equip my them to fill their role in our organization?” try asking yourself the following questions:

“How can I help them to have deeper intimacy with Jesus?”

“How can I help them build and strengthen relationships with family and  fellow believers?” and finally, “How am I equipping them to have more influence with people far from God in their daily lives…co-workers, neighbors and friends?”

And lastly, but so very, very important, “Am I making it FUN?”  Please remember that most of your volunteers already have a job and they probably don’t want another one!  So, make it FUN and add value to their whole lives!  That’s how you retain quality volunteers!  Why would they go anywhere else?  It takes a little time and a lot of intention, but it’s so worth it!!!   That’s how you STOP RECRUITING AND START RETAINING!!!  In the end, it’s a lot less work to keep a volunteer then to continually recruit and train new ones!

HuddleUP

Support

We felt like failures. It was a Tuesday evening, and we were standing in the back of a room with 100 chairs. As we looked at the back of the heads of ten of our most faithful volunteers, we whispered ashamedly, “Where is everyone?” We had planned a volunteer training and less than ten percent of our volunteers came. The next morning we agreed to no longer schedule volunteer training that way again.

As we re-worked our training process, we turned to our friend Christine. She suggested we hold our trainings at times when volunteers are already gathered in our buildings. Out of this mindset, we developed Volunteer HuddleUPs. Our goal for HuddleUPs is to engage 85% of volunteers for 40 minutes 2x a year. Here’s how we do it:

  • We hold HuddleUPs in the Fall and the Spring. In the Fall, we focus on reminding volunteers of policies, guidelines, and emergency procedures. In the Spring, we focus on the heart of family ministry and why we do what we do.

  • Our church holds worship gatherings at 9:30 and 11:15 am, so our HuddleUPs take place two consecutive Sundays during the 9:30 hour. The information shared is identical both weeks, giving opportunity for half of the volunteers to attend one week and the other half to attend the next. That way our children’s programming can continue, but our volunteers still have time for training and team building.

  • It is crucial that HuddleUPs be fun, make volunteers laugh, and communicate information that is vital to the roles in which they serve. Even more importantly, training should always be beneficial to volunteers outside of their serving role. We work hard to provide content that enhances the home and work life of our volunteers.

  • When we communicate HuddleUP to volunteers, we never call it a training! Instead invite volunteers to a time of community and appreciation.

Since we began the HuddleUP model of volunteer training, participation has sky-rocketed. Volunteers are excited to be a part of these times, and we no longer feel the weight of standing in the back of an empty room on a Tuesday night.

Read last week’s preface post Let’s Get Together.

Let’s Get Together!

Support

One of the most challenging elements of leading volunteers is finding time apart from when programming is happening to cast vision, communicate information, and provide opportunities for building community. Volunteers’ schedules can be busy and the time they invest in your organization is invaluable, so it can often feel imposing to ask them to come out for additional meeting times.

Yet without these additional times of training and team building, your organization can quickly sway off-course and away from the mission. E-mail reminders and encouraging high fives in the hallway can go a long way for a short time, but what your volunteers need most is to hear from you face to face. They need an opportunity to hear your heart and vision, and be reminded of what priorities will drive your organization forward.

Don’t skimp on opportunities for volunteers to meet together outside of programming time. Be strategic on when you will gather your volunteers and what mission-critical elements you will include in these times. Take advantage of times together to have fun as a group and praise your volunteers for what they invest each week! Tell stories of big wins that connect with the mission. When done well, training time with volunteers can be more than “just another training.”

Check back next week as we describe how we (Darren and Steph) use HuddleUPs to invest in volunteers in our ministry.