Thursday Quote: Enchantment – Enchanting Volunteers

I recently heard about a gentleman who left his church (after many years) because he had nothing important to do there. While he was telling his story, he included the fact that the church he was currently involved in almost immediately got him involved in ministry and he is active, excited, and doing a lot more than he ever imagined he would. He’s also considering full time ministry as a result.

It can be very difficult to recruit church-goers into ministry roles. Some shy away from it altogether; and many who do recruit people for ministry often do so apologetically. In today’s Thursday Quote I’d like to share an awesome excerpt from the book Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions by Guy Kawasaki. Although the author makes no claims to Christianity, I’ve found many of the ideas and principles in this book apply directly to Christian Leadership.

How to Enchant Volunteers

Volunteers help organizations all over the world, and they are essential for the welfare and success of educational, environmental, social, religious, and other philanthropic causes. While the techniques already discussed in this chapter also pertain to volunteers, these folks deserve their own rules for enchantment: 

• Set ambitious goals. Volunteers want to know that what they are doing is important and that they are making a difference. Your obligation is to set challenging goals and not waste their time. If there’s anything worse than overusing volunteers, it’s underusing them.

• Manage them well. When people believe, they want to help, and it’s your responsibility to enable them to help as much as they can This includes planning and organizing how you’ll utilize their activities. You may not be paying them, but their time is still valuable.

• Enable them to fulfill their needs. Why do people join a nonprofit organization? There are three principal reasons: duty (“I should help my kid’s school”), belonging (“I like doing things with people”), and mastery (“Learning a new skill is more important than money”). Fulfill these needs, and you’re on the way to enchanting your volunteers.

• Ensure that the paid staff appreciates them. You and your employees must believe in the value of volunteers – if you lack this belief, maybe you should not recruit them. Volunteers often give their heart and soul to an organization, so it’s important that your paid staff appreciates their efforts.

• Give feedback. People want to know how well they are doing. With volunteers, this is doubly important because you can’t use compensation as a feedback mechanism. So after you set your ambitious goals, provide feedback, and they’ll love you for helping them learn how they are progressing.

• Provide recognition. Recognition comes in small forms for volunteers: business cards, an e-mail address, a workspace (even if it’s shared), attendance at conferences and public and private expressions of gratitude. See anything that’s expensive on this list? Good, because there isn’t.

• Invite them in. At least once a year, invite your volunteers into your headquarters. This enables people to meet face-to-face instead of only virtually. Remember the value of proximity to achieving likability? The same concept applies to volunteers.

• Provide free stuff. “Stuff” means food and drink at working sessions as well as T-shirts and other forms of tchotchkes. Unfortunately, these kinds of goodies are often the first thing an organization cuts when going gets tough, but, dollar for dollar, they are among the most cost-effective forms of compensation that you can offer.