What Keeps You Awake At Night Part 4: Engagement Equity Erosion - What the Heck is it and How Can Nonprofits Avoid it Through Volunteerism?

According to our recent NFP Pulse on volunteerism, volunteer levels are steady or are on the rise for many NPO's across Canada. Speaking with ED’s from across Canada on the trends and issues that are affecting their associations confirmed this trend.

So what’s the problem, you might well ask?

Well, a few of the ED’s I spoke to have admitted to having developed the opposite challenge:  As one individual aptly put it, “we have volunteers coming out the yin yang.” 

Why?  Volunteers benefit from experience, networking and the ability to actively roll up their sleeves and help their NFP achieve its’ goals.  It let's them be "part of the group" and helps them to feel engaged with the organization and what it is doing. 

In many professional and trade associations in particular, the networking benefits are an even greater draw.  The fact that many employers pay membership dues and allow employees to belong to and be active through volunteering in professional or trade associations doesn’t hurt, either.

So the issue in this context is, in fact, too many volunteers and not enough opportunities.

In some ways, this is a great problem to have, but there are inherent challenges as well. Specifically, the individuals I spoke with are having a hard time finding the best possible people to fill the roles that need to be filled without alienating the other would-be volunteers and potentially eroding their desire to engage with the association. 

In other words, they are risking having would-be volunteers feel "left out" and/or unimportant...a big no-no in the nonprofit world.

If you wanted to be fancy about it, one might call this phenomenon Engagement Equity Erosion...Yes, I thought of it myself ;).  What I mean by this is that engagement is a asset that can be built up or diminished over time depending on the choices and actions made by an organization.

One of the ED’s I spoke with is addressing this challenge by asking would-be volunteers to undergo an application process which allows for individuals to be matched to the opportunities best suited to their experience and goals. Another individual emphasized the importance of putting extremely specific terms of reference when advertising a given opportunity to encourage a would-be applicants to weed themselves out...

But I'm not convinced that taking these steps will prevent engagement equity erosion from occuring. 

Are you? I would love to hear from anyone out there that has run into a similar issue:

Engagement is at the core of the value proposition for most associations – How do you avoid engagement equity erosion through volunteerism in your nonprofit?

Photo thanks to charamelody on Flickr

Comments

[Beth Steinhorn]

Ms. Moutinho raises a great question here – and we believe the answer is, believe it or not, to “think of your own department first!” We, too, have seen these trends throughout Canada and the US in our work with large and small nonprofits. While we believe that the rise in volunteerism is an unprecedented opportunity for reengineering how organizations engage with the public, many directors of volunteer services departments are overwhelmed… not to mention the unfortunate stories from volunteers who were turned away or whose messages were left unanswered by organizational staff who are at capacity. Why not engage volunteers with experience as managers or in human resources to help the volunteer services department handle this influx of inquiries? We have worked with many organizations to create volunteer-led placement teams who field volunteer inquiries, develop interview questions, and screen potential volunteers. These teams are led by a skilled volunteer who works in partnership with the volunteer services director. Once engaged, trained, and fully involved, this team can also work with other staff throughout the organization to help identify opportunities for new volunteer roles. The possibilities are endless! The key is for the volunteer services department to begin by creating capacity-building positions for volunteers within their own department. In doing so, they not only meet this growing demand for volunteer roles more successfully, but they serve as a model of high-impact volunteer collaboration for others in the organization – and they just might inspire others to follow their example.

[Carol-Anne Moutinho]

Hi Beth.

Thank you for your comments - these are great ideas! Do you have any examples of nonprofits that have successfully implemented this approach on a broad scale? Or do you find this approach to be more successful in targeted areas (e.g. using a volunteer team to recruit, select and place fellow volunteers). Is this more or less common in the charities versus associations you have worked with? Thanks for sharing!