Guest post by Meridian Swift. This post originally appeared on Volunteer Plain Talk.
We need volunteers. We say as much, in ads, to staff, to other volunteers and to the woman behind us in line as the barista makes our coffee. So, how can we justify rejecting anyone who steps forward and raises their hand? Because, as much as we want every person who even mutters the word “volunteering” to succeed, we need volunteers who will make a positive impact on our missions.What do you do when someone applies to volunteer, and you realize they won’t work out? Do you practice avoidance because you’re a nice person and nice people don’t reject other people, especially to their faces? Do you accidentally lose their paperwork? Do you string them along by saying, “Every job is closed right now due to an internal audit, and I’m not sure when the jobs will open back up so hang in there,” in hopes they’ll get tired of asking?
Or do you accept them and just hope the problems won’t be too big? Do you keep them so close that they’re practically an extension of you and then you fall behind on deadlines? Do you place them with great volunteers, hoping constructive influence will remake them?
OK, I’m not proud of it, but at one time or another, I’ve actually used every one of the above “strategies.” And yes, you guessed it — every one failed. These strategies failed because they weren’t sound to begin with.
We volunteer managers are often faced with difficult choices, ones made more difficult because we are working with volunteers. Unlike an HR department that hires staff, our situation is much different in these four ways:
- Unlike staff, we don’t have a limit on the number of volunteers we can accept, so it becomes much harder to turn away a volunteer
- Qualifications for volunteers are viewed as much simpler and broader than for paid staff
- There’s this perception surrounding volunteering that anyone who offers their time is already fit for the job, which is the complete opposite of the perceptions of staff hiring
- Unpaid work is viewed as simple, easy and can be done by anyone
Perceptions of volunteers and their contributions hinder our ability to be choosy, but we must be because we’re responsible for providing volunteers who positively impact our missions.
But there’s another reason to be choosy. As we advance our volunteer engagement programs, we have to tighten up our methods to achieve maximum impact and move away from being overwhelmed by unproductive ends.
The first step in finding solutions is to examine our own objections to having a difficult conversation with a potential volunteer. The difficult “rejection” conversation is different from having a talk with an existing volunteer in these ways:
- We don’t know the potential volunteer as well as we know an existing volunteer
- We haven’t given the potential volunteer a chance
- We worked hard to recruit the volunteer and now we’re rescinding that invitation
- We don’t know the approach that works with a volunteer we barely know
- We feel like we’ve failed because our recruitment strategy didn’t capture the perfect person
We can’t keep using avoidance or risky strategies. Those counterintuitive strategies waste everyone’s time and create ill feelings when our goal is to create positive and productive relationships. And we can actually create a relationship with a rejected volunteer.
The first thing we need to do is to stop using the word “reject.” Reject is a harsh word, meaning deny, eliminate and dismiss. Instead, let’s look at reshaping the potential volunteer. Let’s view every person who comes to volunteer as our chance to create organizational advocates. Not everyone has to volunteer to become an advocate. Heck, one-time volunteers or people who tour your office can become advocates.
Volunteer managers excel at building relationships, and rejection just doesn’t fit our style. Once you rethink rejection as the potential for a new relationship, you can prepare yourself to “reshape” the prospective volunteer by:
- Reminding yourself that not all people will fit the volunteer role, but all people can be advocates
- Reassuring yourself that your goal is to create an advocate, not a person who feels mistreated because of avoidance strategies
- Giving yourself permission to feel disappointed, but assure yourself that you are a proactive leader who is finding the best solution for all
- Reminding yourself that it is more cruel to set a volunteer up for failure than it is to find an alternative solution from the start
- Viewing the opportunity to mold your engagement program
We volunteer managers are not comfortable rejecting volunteers, so let’s stop looking at it in this way. We want everyone to excel. But not everyone has to or will excel in the task boxes our organizations have created, so it’s up to us to invent new boxes.
If we develop a volunteer engagement system that allows for different avenues, reshaping becomes much more palatable for us and for the new advocate.
A very dear colleague used to use the phrase, “Let’s part as friends,” when turning down a job applicant. We can take that one step further and say to any potential volunteer who may not be right for a particular task, “Let’s advocate together for a cause we believe in.”
Author Bio: Meridian Swift has been a volunteer manager for twenty years. She is the author of the book, "The Volunteer Shelf Life" and blogs about volunteer management on volunteerplaintalk.com. She has held the CVA certification since 2005, and has presented volunteer management workshops on state and national levels.
