I think these downsides of having volunteers are well presented and correct from my experience. I think there is not enough discussion about what does it mean to have a volunteer base and manage it for the organization, especially about the downsides, so I appreciate this post even more.
I think I’m slightly worried about how strong the claim in the linked comment may sound that volunteers are in many cases a net cost (even though later it’s stated that it’s not a net disadvantage). I would say that in most cases volunteers are beneficial for the organization and worth investing your resources.
You can mitigate a lot of highlighted problems and costs quite easily* by developing adequate structure within your organization, investing in organizational culture, emphasizing independence and proper decision making. This would at least partially mitigate problems like training, reporting, no-shows, volunteer appreciation, turnover, etc.
I think the norms leaders establish in the organization are the most important factor here. I have first-hand experience of the same people coming to volunteer in a similar group, but with different volunteering norms, and while in one group they were not motivated, hard to instruct and encourage to do meaningful work, in the new one the problem perished to my big surprise.
For us, in the organization I’m in the management, the biggest asset to have a big and effective volunteer base and structure our work accordingly was the model presented by Rick Falkvinge in Swarmwise, modeled after Pirate Party he established.
I heavily recommend getting familiar with it. I think it increases organizational capacity and robustness. And even it may not be adequate for every organization I think it’s worth to steal from it as much as you can.
To give a perspective on this—in June 2019 - last time we collected data on this—we had 639 active volunteers in the organization with a median of 4 hours per week spent on charity work. This is accomplished with ~1 − 1.5 full-time volunteer management position equivalent.
I won’t go into particular pros and cons of this model as this comment proved to be longer than planned, but I appreciate what was posted already by cafelow and Linch (like filters being important or increasing pool of future employes).
*Note that my experience is limited, as I worked with volunteers only in 2 organizations and don’t have a good picture of how operations of other groups look like. Take this ignorance into account.
Thanks for sharing this.
I think these downsides of having volunteers are well presented and correct from my experience. I think there is not enough discussion about what does it mean to have a volunteer base and manage it for the organization, especially about the downsides, so I appreciate this post even more.
I think I’m slightly worried about how strong the claim in the linked comment may sound that volunteers are in many cases a net cost (even though later it’s stated that it’s not a net disadvantage). I would say that in most cases volunteers are beneficial for the organization and worth investing your resources.
You can mitigate a lot of highlighted problems and costs quite easily* by developing adequate structure within your organization, investing in organizational culture, emphasizing independence and proper decision making. This would at least partially mitigate problems like training, reporting, no-shows, volunteer appreciation, turnover, etc.
I think the norms leaders establish in the organization are the most important factor here. I have first-hand experience of the same people coming to volunteer in a similar group, but with different volunteering norms, and while in one group they were not motivated, hard to instruct and encourage to do meaningful work, in the new one the problem perished to my big surprise.
For us, in the organization I’m in the management, the biggest asset to have a big and effective volunteer base and structure our work accordingly was the model presented by Rick Falkvinge in Swarmwise, modeled after Pirate Party he established.
I heavily recommend getting familiar with it. I think it increases organizational capacity and robustness. And even it may not be adequate for every organization I think it’s worth to steal from it as much as you can.
To give a perspective on this—in June 2019 - last time we collected data on this—we had 639 active volunteers in the organization with a median of 4 hours per week spent on charity work. This is accomplished with ~1 − 1.5 full-time volunteer management position equivalent.
I won’t go into particular pros and cons of this model as this comment proved to be longer than planned, but I appreciate what was posted already by cafelow and Linch (like filters being important or increasing pool of future employes).
*Note that my experience is limited, as I worked with volunteers only in 2 organizations and don’t have a good picture of how operations of other groups look like. Take this ignorance into account.