Volunteer Operating Models
Getting volunteer engagement right can bring lasting benefits to organizations.
Volunteer engagement is a practical response to staffing capacity constraints: a financial resource or human resource constraint can be overcome by tapping into other resources such as motivation.
The energy volunteers bring to an operation can be catalytic but compared to staff and donors volunteers are not always seen as high priority stakeholders or as inputs for capacity planning.
I am not making a moral or ethical case for volunteerism here. Many organizations need not prioritize volunteer engagement because their goals and operating models do not require them.
But I am making the case that when external or internal conditions and requirements change organizations should at least reassess the level of importance volunteers have to their operating models. Many organizations face cyclical increases and decreases in staff capacity for example. In certain sectors such as community healthcare staff capacity constraints may be structural. However, the most dynamic organizations accept reality and adapt their operating models for volunteerism in these cases.
When organizations seek financial resources to "scale-up" their capacity they most often mean more staff. What I'm pointing to here is that organizations can scale in a qualitatively differently way with a volunteer-driven model depending on what they're trying to do. In many cases hybrid approaches will do with increased staff capacity in support of increased volunteer activation. Staff to volunteer capacity ratios are helpful metrics here.
A dose of reality is needed.
Just because volunteers are unfortunately thought of like free labor, volunteer engagement is not actually free. There is a cost (time, effort, money) associated with the recruitment, activation, and retention of volunteers. These costs can vary depending on multiple factors. But the costs relative to the benefits that volunteers can bring may be well worth the return on effort.
The point is that during their strategic review organizations should assess whether volunteers can serve as a larger contributor to their overall goal attainment and operational success relative to staff. More important than a yes or no answer is the why or why not and if so how could it work?
To set a baseline, we can ask,
What percentage of our workforce is volunteers currently?
What is the average number of volunteers supporting operations every month?
How integrated are volunteers into our day-to-day operations?
How many volunteers can a single staff person manage? What is the ratio of volunteers to staff?
The size of a volunteer base only tells one side of the story. We can also ask, "how much influence do volunteers have inside the organizational effort vis-a-vis other key stakeholders such as major donors or staff? How involved are volunteers in the day-to-day operations?"
It is true that "many hands, make light work" and there is more good work to be done in the world than there is staff capacity to do. Figuring out how to get volunteer engagement right is really important.
If you want to learn more about incorporating volunteers into your operating model subscribe to this newsletter and consider signing up for a strategy review workshop before the end of the year.