Volunteers are Consumers - Part 2

I sit in a lot of meetings with other nonprofit organization leaders and every time the topic of volunteers come up, there seems to be a clear divide between those organizations that sigh at the thought or get excited about the topic.

Volunteers are people and people have motivations. A volunteer comes to you because they wanted to make a transaction of their time and skills in exchange for the expectations they set out to have met. They come to you because they believe you can facilitate the experience they desire based on some social influence or values alignment. In order to evaluate whether you can meet their expectations, they engage you through questions and requests that require you to respond to with relative urgency, clear content, and a welcoming service-focused energy. These volunteers are likely doing this with multiple organizations at the same time or at least evaluating your responses against previous experiences they’ve had. Does this sound like most consumer driven transactions you’ve made?

At NeighborLink recently, we were approached by a local bank wanting to do a service event in celebration of their first full year in our community. Internally, a team of employees decided doing a community impact project where there bank invested a significant amount of money, engaged employees and customers of the bank, and partnered with a community minded organization was a great way to celebrate this new milestone for the bank. Brainstorming happens, ideas solidified, and the pursuit of the right community partner took place.

They heard about NeighborLink, reached out, and pitched us on what THEY had in mind and wanted to know if we could facilitate it. They new we helped homeowners and had a lot of requests for assistance. They were inspired by a TV show that renovated entire blocks in a neighborhood over the course of a week, and wanted to do something similar. They had a set of expectations, came to us, and we had to decide whether we could help them.

Renovating entire blocks is not exactly the work we do at NeighborLink. It’s true we help neighbors in need with home maintenance projects, but we only help those that are requesting help. In the 12 years we’ve been around, we’ve not a block where every house had a neighbor in need. So, we have an option to get frustrated by an idea pitched to us that is outside of exactly what we do by volunteers, or we can take this as an opportunity to discover what they really want to accomplish and facilitate it through NeighborLink.

The organizations that sigh at volunteers are those organizations that have little imagination or appreciation for the resources volunteers can offer. The requests, demands, and attitudes of volunteers can be frustrating at times. Volunteers need their own lessons in being good consumers of volunteer experiences. However, organizations need to take a step back, recognize that you are facilitating a transaction with someone and then figure out a process to do that well.

For some reason, when I recognize that every interaction with a new volunteer resembles a consumer driven transaction, it help disarm the situation and helps me understand that this individual wants an experience and I’m here to provide that.

Volunteers owe us nothing. Donors owe us nothing. Our organizations are here to benefit the portion of society our mission focuses on. They were created by individuals that had a passion and willingness to invest they’re time and money towards finding a solution. We only survive because there are others around us that want to do the same thing. When they reach out to you, they want to know whether you’re really like them or not.

The bank that came to NeighborLink had an idea of doing a block renovation project because that’s what they saw that related to the spirit of the idea. After talking to them, what they really wanted to do was to help people in need and show the community that they care. A few questions on our end and a bit of education on how to make the biggest impact, they were sold on the reality that they could have a greater personal impact by selecting neighbors in close proximity that are already asking for help. So, we’re facilitating that and it’s going to be better for us all.

I could have sighed because that bank was just another group of volunteers wanting something from us that we don’t provide nor aligns with what I want to get done as the director of NeighborLink. I chose to recognize that they want to invest in helping others and it was my opportunity to help them do that in a way that it benefits both of us. They get to do a big project and we get to help some neighbors.

Volunteers are consumers and want what they want. The very fact they reached out to you to make their transaction instead of another organization is like winning the lottery in my book. We have missions to execute and we can’t do it alone. Train your staff to think of volunteers as consumers and give them the customer service training they need to solve the problems, identify the opportunities, and capture the resources being offered. Not every volunteer is going to choose you in the end and you may need to point them in another direction, but please stop sighing at the thought of volunteers. Or don’t, and send them to NeighborLink.

Volunteers are Consumers

Some of the best things I received from finishing my MBA were deep, meaningful thoughts on the work that I currently do rather than new, technical insights from the coursework. I suppose this is the point of graduate level work and ultimately why I wanted to go back to school.

A thought I’ve been contemplating for the past year revolves around the idea that individuals choose volunteer experiences no differently than they choose other experiential opportunities where time must be transacted.Volunteers are consumers looking to make a personal decision to transact their time for a perceived benefit or to receive the experience they desire regardless of the specific motivation.

I chose to focus on the motivations of volunteers with a concentration on faith-based volunteers for one of my major research projects. I focused on faith-based volunteers because NeighborLink is a faith-based organization that works primarily with churches, and I was hoping to learn more about why I get frustrated by the lack of action of a high majority of churches in our community. Of all places that should feel deep conviction about serving the poor and helping their neighbors, the Church should be leading the majority of grassroots community initiatives. Ultimately, I wanted to better understand why people choose to volunteer in the first place and what really motivates them.

The research led to a fairly simple realization. People are primarily motivated to volunteer because of social influence rather than deeper convictions or more strategic purposes. It didn’t matter whether they were motivated by faith, poverty, justice, or any other of the many individual motivations we could come up with. Approximately 85% of all volunteerism is in fact driven by social influences, which could be anything from family, friends, workplaces, churches, neighbors, social media postings, etc. In my mind, this simplifies things to the reality that it matters more about who I will be volunteering with rather than what I’ll be volunteering to do.

This is significant because it starts to inform me that folks aren’t initially interested in the specifics of the work we do as much as whether we have something that aligns with their social needs, or really their personal desires. It begins to make sense why a few times a year we get huge swings in volunteerism, traditional and social media pushes, a wave of donations, and a lot more kudos for our work in the community with little change to our intentional communication efforts. This pendulum swings in and out of our favor as a new wave of people discover and/or rediscover our significance. Some of that support results in new volunteers or donations, but most of it is simply increased social awareness.

Ultimately, volunteers are people and people are consumers driven by self-interest. Most of the volunteers we see at NeighborLink at any given time are on some sort of personal or professional development pursuit trying to grow in their faith, their skills, or explore the realm of serving others in an effort to find answers the internal tension they’re feeling. They’re not finding purpose in their job and want to do something meaningful with their lives. They don’t know what they want to do, so they give volunteerism a shot which allows them to do something completely different to learn a new skill or simply check out mentally. For those on a spiritual journey, they’re convicted by the Holy Spirit and are trying to be more obedient to their discipleship journey, which means they explore the areas of their world where they think Jesus would have spent His time. All of these are good and right reasons to volunteer, but they are all initially driven by a self-interest reason.

So what…. Well, I’m thinking hard about this reality and trying to expand my organizational worldview by realizing that I’m not simply competing with other nonprofits for volunteers or donations, I’m competing with every for-profit business looking to capitalize on discretionary time and money.

In my city, I must recognize that the demographic of my volunteers are making the decision of how to spend their weekend between time recreating on a lake, bicycle, or a festival versus helping their neighbors via volunteerism. I’m competing against shopping at the mall or funding a roofing project. I’m even competing against the TOMS shoes of the world who are adding social impact with consumer goods. It’s becoming harder to find brands not adding a social impact through profits to their business line.

Nonprofits hear it all the time. “I wish I had more time to give or more money to donate…” Almost every one of those people should say that they’re protected what they see as being more valuable to them rather than they don’t have more time or resources. So, how do we get them to believe we’re more valuable than they they’re spending time/money doing?

If the theory that social influence dictates 85% of volunteer engagement, then I have begin thinking about what’s influencing people that could possibly be involved at NeighborLink. I have to understand this reality in order to develop meaningful strategies to get the attention of those being influenced by the consumer realities around them. As much as I wish it wasn’t a reality, it is and it’s not going to change until we get them more involved.

The most successful organizations I’m attracted to have all figured this out. They’ve simplified their communication strategy, made their work as cool as they could, and create pathways to deeper engagement once they get that first connection with a new volunteer or donor.

I’ve got a ton to learn and this post is more about me processing out loud in order to invite commentary, but it has me focused on learning more about consumer research and analysis. I want to know what large brands do to study their consumers in order to understand their behaviors.

Have you been thinking about this? In what other ways are you noticing consumer trends in nonprofits? What have you been doing to bring this thinking into your organizations?

You Can't Get Volunteers at the Supermarket

As the director of NeighborLink Fort Wayne, which is a volunteer mobilization organization that helps between 2000 - 3000 volunteers each year find a meaningful experience helping neighbors in need, I get a lot of praise for what gets accomplished. I do my best to point that praise towards all the volunteers because they're really responsible for our success, not me. Sure, I work hard to create the structure, manage the process, and resource the activity, but I'll touch 15 of the nearly 800 projects we'll do this year. We've got a really great decentralized thing going here and it's beautiful to watch take place. Grassroots volunteerism is alive, well, and in my opinion, the solution to our communities problems at the ground level.

With these praises from other organizations comes many requests wondering if we have volunteers that can help them do their tasks no one else wants or has time to do. They see what we can do with volunteers and wonder if we can share since they feel they could use more capacity. Volunteer hours are a precious commodity for nonprofits and we need everyone to give a bit of time to improve any one of the 1000 community improvement efforts going on each year locally. We all have a part to play. Organization leaders have a responsibility to activate volunteers to help us and to help their neighbors. 

Lately, these requests are causing me to feel like NeighborLink is looked at like a volunteer supermarket. "Hey, call NeighborLink, they seem to have lots of volunteers, maybe they'll give you some." If I go deeper with that, it seems like we're talking about volunteers like they're commodities waiting to be invested or consumed however we choose, NeighborLink included. There are times when I think I can simply promote a specific project and expect to have 10 people show up to do what I want just like that. We are always happy to share how our model works and consider these requests for help just like we do homeowners. These requests cause me to consider my own requests and consider that maybe we're all thinking about this completely wrong. 

NeighborLink doesn't own volunteers and we surely can't tell people what to do. I can't pull 10 people off the shelf and tell them to show up at your event or to paint your offices next Saturday and easier than I can tell 10 people show up and clean out the house of a homeowner that has hoarding issues. We rarely ever intend our requests like that, but it's something we all need to be more mindful of. Volunteers are not lining up at the door for any of us unless we have ongoing, very short-term, transactional nature to our volunteer needs and we've built our capacity and process accordingly. Think food bank processing. There are few organizations like this and the rest of us have to think differently.

Volunteers are people and we'll only share our time, treasure, and talent if we feel like we have excess to give or are inspired and challenged to activate our lives on behalf of others. Organization and volunteer coordinators need to flip the switch and consider what they can do for the volunteers rather than what the volunteers can do for them. If we want engaged volunteers, we have to learn what motivates them. 

To an extent this is why NeighborLink has been so successful. We've built a structure that allows people motivated by their faith, or those needing to figure out what that deep, unsettled feeling deep in their soul is connected to find others that can help. Helping others is connected to our own personal, spiritual, or professional development process and to be mindful of this is critical. We recognize that this process is different for each of us and maybe the best way we can help is to get out of the way and to let that personal process drive our volunteers decisions throughout the entire process. We then "help" as much or as little as that volunteer wants during the process. Our investment in the lives of a few dozen leaders results in their mobilization of their communities to do projects. 

Any organization using volunteers should consider themselves as a facilitator of transformation rather than a manager of transactions. You'll get more out of your volunteers if you invest in them rather than use them to accomplish your goals. In investing in them, your goals will be met as they catch the vision. Focus on relationships and not projects. Consider eliminating the barriers between volunteers and the needs you're trying to meet. Give them challenges rather than making it simple for them. Activate their skills or point them towards a new opportunity somewhere else if you can't use them. 

There is no supermarket of volunteers and if anyone ever tries to create a one-stop shop where you can get any volunteer you want if you just ask or incentivize them enough, I might just give up. We don't need to consumerize the volunteer process as much as we need to learn what motivates individuals as consumers of experiences. 

Detoxifying Service Events

I was recently asked to write an article for a new online, open sourced learning community called, Charity Detox. Charity Detox was designed to create new and continue the ongoing conversations that have been a result of Bob Lupton's popular book, Toxic Charity. This book has sparked quite a bit of wrestling among church and nonprofit ministries here in Fort Wayne, and knowing the folks in Atlanta behind this website, it's happening around the country. 

I was asked to share from my past 7 years as Executive Director of NeighborLink Fort Wayne and the NeighborLink Network to share some thoughts and advice on how to improve church based service events as a way to limit the amount of potential harm to those we're serving and to ultimate ensure the transformation that is desired for the volunteers has a better chance of happening. 

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Detoxifying Service Events

At NeighborLink we see a lot of churches who want to "impact their city" through large and small scale service events. There are lots of reasons why those churches choose an event-based model of engagement, which could and should be discussed. However, for the sake of this post, I want to share a few suggestions that will lead you towards a healthier approach to service projects I've learned over the past 7 years of running an organization operating between good intentions and those in need.

Communication is Key

You would think this is a no-brainer with the leadership of a service project. However, it's something that gets missed all the time. Leaders don't communicate practical details to their volunteers, volunteers don't inform their leaders of schedule changes, and, more importantly, the person you're helping gets the ultimate letdown when a project is cancelled, a team is late, or you leave an unfinished project. Something that started off as a way to love your neighbor ended up being a failed project and leaves everyone frustrated because no one took complete responsibility for the project. You can never over-communicate details, updates, your expectations of the organization you are serving, and what you need from your volunteers. If you don't actually say it, consider it to be unknown. 

Connect the Dots

Failure to connect the dots for your volunteers on why their efforts matter in practical ways is easily one of the most overlooked aspects of effective service projects. It is also why I believe local missional efforts often fail to take root inside churches. If you choose service events as your form of engagement with your community, make sure you take time to share why you're asking people to do what they're doing, how it impacts them, and how their efforts matter to those they're serving. Even better, make sure you invite the organization or person you're serving to do that on the project site before anyone does any work. If it's an individual you're helping, have them introduce themselves to the group and vice versa. Always remember: It's about relationships, not projects. If you want your volunteers to get more involved, give them something more than jobs to do. Closely linked to this, is the need to.

Incorporate the Recipient

One way you can make your service events less toxic is by inviting the recipient - whether it's a person or an organization - into being a part of the solution. Ask the homeowner, whenever they can, to pay for materials, volunteer with you, or get a few things done before your team arrives. Ask the agency to have staff or other volunteers they know to be there to join in the service. In our experience of completing more than 4,000 projects in our city, we have seen over and over again how the people we help have something to offer that helps complete the project in meaningful ways. All you have to do is have the courage to ask!

Choose Your Project and Stay Committed

The single most important aspect that makes the NeighborLink platform work is choice. We make sure our volunteer or service group partners choose their own projects and connect with the person they serve directly. We've learned that it's essential for someone other than our staff to make the commitment directly to the recipient rather than us. We do this because an organization is easy to bail on, but it's much harder to bail on an 85 year-old widow because it is raining or you couldn't get the project done on time. I encourage you to get as many of your people personally invested in the work by choosing and owning the projects right from the beginning. And...hear this: keep your commitment at all cost. Don't let the parameters of a service event be your excuse for not completing the project. I wouldn't write this if it didn't happen on a regular basis. Don't let your service event become more important than the reason you set out to do it in the first place. You'll never impact your city if you're not willing to go in and do whatever it takes, even more than you ever imagined, for the cause.

Think Big Picture and Long Term

Finally, the best thing I can suggest is to think big picture and long term when you're planning your service efforts. Question whether the activity facilitates relationships or just accomplishes projects. Figure out how to ensure relationships are developed. If it's just about projects, expect to do more harm than good. Doing service in this way means you'll do fewer projects with fewer people, but it will be healthier and more likely to create the transformation in your volunteers you're seeking.