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