With Nov. 1 being established as International Volunteer Manager Appreciation Week, I thought that it would be appropriate to use this week’s column to provide some insight into the world of volunteer management.

If you have ever been to Randolph Hospital or the N.C. Zoological Park, many of the people you come into contact with to either ask questions or get directions are volunteers. Behind this army of volunteers is a volunteer manager who is responsible for the coordination, support, training, administration and recruitment of these individuals. They are skilled professionals who are adept at taking a singular passion from a person and turning it into effective action in order to meet their organizations mission.

Once an organization has decided to involve volunteers, there are a number of things that need to happen: finding volunteers, matching their skills and interests to the needs of the organization, supervision and most importantly, RECOGNITION! Recognition is important because it gives the organization a chance to formally say thank you to each individual volunteer. But, the tricky part for the volunteer manager is you must know all of your volunteers personally.

Some individuals do not want public recognition and I have known some volunteer managers that have lost wonderful people due to that very reason. Remember, there is no paycheck keeping a volunteer motivated. It is critical that a volunteer manager understand what motivates each person to give their time and always nurture each and every reason.

Without a volunteer management professional on staff – whether they are paid or volunteers themselves – volunteers can often fall between the cracks of already busy organizations and are left to fend for themselves or forgotten all together. In either case, the end result is a volunteer who doesn’t feel valued or engaged.

And that is a volunteer who will most likely leave, taking with them the energy and time they could have contributed to the mission as well as ill will toward the organization for how they were treated (think of it as negative PR).

There are two things to take from this paragraph: one, that volunteer managers must enjoy getting to know all types of people and two, be open to all situations that may arise (and they will).

Here is some research on the matter. A study conducted by UPS Foundation found that two out of five volunteers stopped giving their time to an organization because of poor management practices.

Also, the Urban Institute found that while four out of five non-profit organizations use volunteers, only three out of those five had a paid volunteer management professional on staff. And those with a volunteer management professional, half spent less than 30 percent of their time on volunteer management.

Are you asking, what does all of this mean? Well, it means volunteer management professionals are vital to the success of a volunteer program. Having a paid volunteer management professional on staff will increase the ability of the organization to involve volunteers. Which in turn, will save an organization a great deal of money in program implementation.

Did you know the average cost of a volunteer is $18.75/hour? I can only imagine how much more money non-profits could save if they put some time and effort into learning the world of volunteer management. The first step is to dedicate one individual within their organization to become properly trained in volunteer management, and with time, the cost savings will follow.

Well-led volunteers become an advocacy and public relations force for any agency or program, a force no amount of money could buy. I want to thank all of the volunteer managers in our community because they have the skills and knowledge to help people be a part of the solution in meeting our community needs. In the hard times we are facing as a nation, what can seem impossible to achieve, volunteer managers can achieve by pulling people together.

If interested in the field of volunteer management, the N.C. Zool has an internship program. Contact Toy Jarrett at (336) 879-7712 or e-mail toy.jarrett@nczoo.org for more information.

I hope I have given you a little idea about the world of volunteer management, if you have any more questions I can answer, contact me at (336) 626-6643 or amy@uwrandolph.org. Thanks for reading my column and hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.



Amy Byrd is coordinator of the Volunteer Center of Randolph County, a program of United Way. Byrd’s column appears the third Wednesday of each month.