Why Volunteers and a Spiderman Theory of Volunteer Responsibility
Most organizations with whom I consult make some effort to involve volunteers.
Some are wildly successful. Others are not.
There are many factors that lead some to be more successful than others, but two stand out that I want to explore in this article.
First, most successful programs are crystal clear about why they’re mobilizing volunteers and they design their program accordingly.
Second, most successful programs find the right balance between asking volunteers to take responsibility and giving them power. That gives rise to my Spiderman theory of volunteer management.
Why Volunteers?
Before we can get to Spiderman, it’s important to first ask the question: why volunteers? There are dozens of potential answers, but in general they tend to fit into three big categories:
- Getting more stuff done
- Building power
- Generating leaders
Getting more stuff done
If I’m a staff person for an organization, I can spend an hour doing an activity. 1 person x 1 hour = 1 unit of activity.
If instead I spend that hour recruiting volunteers and find one volunteer who’ll show up and do the activity for 3 hours, then I’ve magically transformed my 1 hour into 3 units of activity.
Of course, there are many assumptions here, such as the assumption of 1 hour = 1 volunteer recruited, that the volunteer can do the activity as effectively as the staff person, that it won’t take even more staff time overseeing the volunteer, etc.
Each organization needs to unpack the various activities for which it’s looking to use volunteers and run the math (using the best estimates you can for your rate of volunteer recruitment, how much training and oversight time will be needed). Then it can answer the question: will a volunteer recruitment focus lead to more bang for the buck than just doing the work without volunteers.
Building power
Organizations also use volunteers to build power. To the extent our organizations are trying to impact public decision-making, perceptions of political power matter. And in general, organizations who appear to be backed by lots of people have more power than those backed by fewer. And volunteer activity can be harnessed to be visible to public officials.
Beyond this general maxim, it’s also the case that public officials are more likely to respond to the pleas of their constituents than they are to paid staff for organizations. Of course, that assumes the constituents are on-message, well trained, etc. And not all constituents are equal – as much as we wish they were. Some constituents will be especially appealing to some elected officials based on their role in the community (e.g. business owner, clergy, neighborhood leader, etc.).
Generating leaders
Beyond building power and getting more stuff done, we also use volunteers to generate leaders.
Within our organizations, we’re always looking for the next set of board members and those willing to take on higher-level responsibilities. If we don’t involve volunteers at the more basic level, it will be harder to identify organizational leaders or take potential board members out for a “test drive” in some other role.
In addition, to the extent our organizations are part of movements, we are hoping to generate movement-leadership as well. In training a volunteer, they may wind up taking on leadership for an allied organization. At OLCV, I always took pride when our volunteers wound up serving as staff for other organizations after going through our training program. Since our organization’s vision was explicitly to serve a network/movement, we saw that as a clearly positive outcome.
Matching your volunteer program to your primary reason
It would be easy to just say: “we want all three of the above” as the reason for a volunteer program. But in my experience, especially when organizations are first really investing in their volunteer program, it’s important to decide their primary objective among the three, and then design their program accordingly.
- A getting more stuff done emphasis may lead to a focus on clear, simple-to-do tasks and urgent campaigns around which to motivate lots of volunteers.
- A building power emphasis may mean a focus not on the overall number of volunteers, but rather identifying volunteers from key audiences (the constituency being served, influential within the community, etc.).
- A generating leaders emphasis may lead to a focus on a smaller number of volunteers recruited to take on higher-level tasks with a lot of training and relationship-building baked into the program.
Matching power and responsibility
That gives rise to the second point I want to make about effective volunteer programs – they find the right balance between asking people to take responsibility and giving them power.
That’s where Spiderman comes in. Spidey’s catchphrase is: “With great power comes great responsibility.” My volunteer corollary for that is: “If you want your volunteers to take on real responsibility, you must give them real power.”
Many organizations vest real power in their board and zero power in their other volunteers and then wonder why those other volunteers won’t take on more responsibility. This becomes particularly challenging if the organization’s plan relies on creating a core group of “mid-level” volunteers who’re there to do more than take on tasks, but less than the obligations of board service.
In my experience, the solution lies in providing zones of authority for these mid-level volunteers. These are areas where they have responsibility and with it, some power to make decisions – whether on organizational policy or allocation of organizational resources.
This can be scary for some boards because it means these mid-level volunteers can make mistakes. In my experience, though, as long as appropriate side boards are put in place, giving these mid-level volunteers (working through committees, task forces, work groups, etc.) authority can vastly expand their commitment to the organization – and from it the level of work they take on.
During my time at OLCV, this played out with multiple straight election cycles where our campaigns involved more than 1000 volunteers, heavily fueled by chapter steering committees recruiting their friends and families to volunteer.
Of course, your mileage may vary. The devil’s in the details.
Each organization needs to find the right balance given their organizational culture, lay of the land, and priorities. But better to think this through explicitly rather than leave it to chance.