Some conflict is a good thing in most teams – and that’s as true for teams of volunteers as it is for paid staff.
But what happens if conflict with – or between – your organisation’s volunteers gets to a level where it’s hurting your organisation or the people involved?
Joe McCannon is the founder and CEO of the Billions Institute, which supports organisations in the social sector worldwide to take local successes to a global scale, and trains thousands of others to lead transformative movements.
He says that mismanaging volunteers is one of the most common sources of failure for large-scale efforts at social change. And in turn, that a well-structured volunteer experience “can build sustained, collective action and generate enormous creativity”.
Recognising volunteers in your organisation doesn’t have to involve spending a lot of money. There are many ways you can show them you appreciate them without having to spend a cent! To mark National Volunteer Week this week (13-19 May), Volunteering Australia have helpfully put together this AMAZING list of 101 ways you can show […]
Giving tough feedback to your team members is an inevitable part of managing staff or volunteers in any NFP, but can be incredibly challenging for a manager. But according to Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman of US-based leadership development consultancy Zenger/Folkman, these conversations are often harder than they need to be.
– Sponsored Content – As a not-for-profit organisation, it’s good practice to conduct a work health and safety (WHS) audit on a regular basis to ensure your organisation is meeting its duty of care to all your workers, and this includes volunteers. It’s important to apply a systematic approach to managing your WHS obligations for […]
Holding on to good volunteers can be challenging at the best of times – but if you’re involved with managing volunteers in your organisation, you know how valuable it can be if you get it right.
In part 2 of this post we explore the final two essential elements of volunteer retention – evaluation and motivation.
Holding on to volunteers in any organisation can be really hard work. In fact, there’s a chance that the person charged with looking after volunteers in your organisation may be a volunteer themselves!
With so many competing priorities and distractions in people’s lives, if you want to make sure your volunteers stick around you’re going to need a clear plan to keep them motivated.
Kerry Shields is the National Volunteer Manager at Starlight Children’s Foundation, a not-for-profit that seeks to improve the lives of children and teens who are seriously ill or in hospital. Kerry’s team is responsible for attracting, recruiting, engaging and retaining more than 3,000 volunteers, whose contribution of more than 55,000 hours equated to over $1.6 million in value to the organisation in 2015.
Ahead of her presentation at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, we spoke to Kerry about the value of approaching volunteer recruitment in the same way as paid staff.
Bronwyn Sheehan is the founder and CEO of the Pyjama Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that transforms the lives of children in foster care through education. Since the Foundation’s inception in 2004, they’ve trained 4,000 volunteers with the values-driven leadership Bronwyn has worked to embed in the organisation and its staff.
For her work, Bronwyn was awarded Qld Australian of the Year in 2009, and was a national finalist in the 2008 Telstra Business Women’s Awards. In the lead-up to her presentation at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, we spoke to Bronwyn about her journey, and how she’s managed to establish an organisation with such a committed volunteer workforce, from the ground up.
Four standout ideas we picked up at the conference from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the Happiness Institute, the Kitchen Garden Foundation and World Vision that you can apply to your organisation.