Treating Volunteers like poo makes you an arse

Volunteers. Love them or hate them?

Love them of course.

If you let them spend time in or on behalf of your organisation – then you have to love them. If you didn’t really want to use them but you did – tough. You still have to love them.

How do you do this.? Well I have been doing lots of thinking about this and reckon I have an awesome idea. It is called a Volunteer Relationship Management approach. It must be good because it has an acronym already – VRM.

Apparently you can already take courses in it.

Courses… really?

VRM for me is doing a review of my SRM (Supporter Relationship Management) approach and adapting it for Volunteers.

Meet them – make sure you get their details and assign tasks based on what they’re good at and their availability

Understand them – make sure you know why they’re interested in your organisation, and create the relevant feedback communication (guess what – it will probably be similar to the stroy you used in your latest SRM communication).

Value them – Make sure that the tasks are meaningful, appropriate, and that you explain the worth of their efforts to the organiation’s success…. and the beneficiaries. And say thank you. And personalise that thank you.

Remember them – send them an update reminding them what their efforst achieved. And stay in touch with opportunities of how they can help again.

Check out this report on volunteering to get some more evidence of why you should treat your volunteers nicely. More than one third (36%) of volunteers reported they had not had any recognition for their good work in the last month of their volunteering

Should you give your ‘regular givers’ a name?

I’m often asked whether charities should spend time developing product or campaign names. I believe that the answer is often to consider whether it is a trick question or not!

The question above is of course, a trick question.

If you are going to remember, recognise, and value the support of ‘regular givers’ you are going to need to acknowledge their act of regular giving, and probably their status as a ‘regular giver’.

So… rather than use a piece of unfriendly, generic jargon such as ‘regular giver’ to personalize your communication.. why not spend a little time developing a unique name for them.

Here are some examples… if you would like more details of why I have grouped them the way I have, ask me for my opinionaid!

Group 1: Futuremakers, Full Stop supporter
Group 2: Field Partners, Discovery Partners, Frontline Member, Friend of PAWS, Golden Hearts supporter
Group 3: Human Rights Defenders, Frontline Member, Child Sponsor, Heart Saver, Kennel Sponsor

When should you be quiet?

You are proud of your organisation. You have raised a lot of money over the last ten years. You have secured a new corporate partnership.

You, you, you, you.

Whenever you feel yourself talking a lot about your organisation, stop yourself.

Don’t stop communicating altogether just keep quiet about all that stuff about you.

For the sake of your supporter relationships… try and keep out of the way of the two really important groups. It is very tempting to build your credibility with tales of your history, and information about your structure, but actually the people who care really want to hear about the beneficiaries of your work. They also want to be remembered and valued, so rather than take up their time talking about yourself… talk about them.

Just like in life, it is not always about you.