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About volunteers and technology
Written by John Berry on 16th July 2024. Revised 20th July 2024.
7 min read
Simply, volunteers and technology together give the civil society organisation the capability to do work to satisfy its beneficiaries.The balance between competence and technology is for the manager of volunteers to select. Human competence can be changed, but slowly. Technology can be changed in an instant (if the desired technology function is presently available). Information technology is a special case. It exemplifies the idea of balance through stored knowledge. Here we discuss the concepts.
Getting volunteers to... volunteer
Written by John Berry on 23rd September 2020. Revised 18th July 2024.
4 min read
Getting enough volunteers with the right skill-set is huge problem for volunteer-reliant organisations. Here we describe a simple three-step model that is useful in understanding the volunteer recruitment problem, and its solution. Managers of volunteers must continually engage in recruitment. Their aim must be to get ‘the right people in the right jobs, always’.
The simplest form of instruction in managing volunteers is the verbal order. But that's seldom enough. Most CSOs develop beyond issuing verbal instructions throughout the day. Most move to a document-based operating system. This article discusses an approach based on expectation, request and promise communicated between civil society organisation and beneficiaries. Like ‘If you need us, we’ll be there’. Or like, ‘We’ll teach you skills for life’. We've included validation and verification of results.
Keeping records on volunteers
Written by John Berry on 27th April 2024. Revised 28th April 2024.
6 min read
It’s logical that the manager of volunteers would want to keep records that describe the characteristics of each volunteer they are responsible for. All CSOs should recognise that their managers are going to hold this sort of data. We give guidance on how this should be done in this article. Importantly, correct management of personal data influences the psychological contract between CSO and volunteer. Misuse may result in loss of CSO reputation.
Many would say that they simply don’t know why people volunteer. Certainly, it’s complicated. There is no one reason. Managers of volunteers must come to some understanding about why in each of their people. It's essential to volunteer management success. The manager must gently enquire, observe, and listen, and build a picture for each volunteer. It’s never acceptable for the manager of volunteers to accept that when asked, the volunteer shrugs and can’t say.
There is one recurring difficulty – agreeing what a volunteer is. Since volunteering is often contrasted with employment, there must be some statement of what’s similar, and what’s different. But it goes further than that. Here are some of definitions. Volunteering is work. It's a leisure activity. It's without financial reward, but there's exchange so volunteers don't work for nothing. Volunteers have free choice. It's impactful. And without volunteers the venture would fail.
