Volunteer Work Design

In the last issue of e-Volunteerism, volunteer Stephanie Myers wrote about her journey to start Mind for Athletes (M4A), an organization that helps recognize mental health issues among student athletes. e-Volunteerism has pledged to follow Myers’ efforts in future stories, but Myers’ experience immediately inspired Along the Web author Arnie Wickens to research projects around the world in which volunteers support people with mental health illnesses and related issues.

This Along the Web focuses on community mental health programmes, some of which are entirely run and led by volunteers, including volunteers who are current or past users of mental health support services themselves. While there are excellent volunteer services in mental health, not all reach out and involve people who have personal experience with such disability. So in this article, we feature those programmes that are explicitly for mental health service users and involve volunteers specifically for that purpose.

Chris Linnell, volunteer services supervisor at the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County (FPDDC), Illinois, thought it was crazy when Eagle Scout Gavin Burseth approached her with the idea to bring a herd of goats to eat the poison ivy and other invasive plants at FPDDC’s campground. But sixteen-year-old Burseth, working to achieve the prestigious Hornaday Award from the Boy Scouts of America for significant contributions to conservation, was persuasive. After some creative volunteer management thinking and convincing advocacy from Linnell to the Natural Resources/Land Management staff, the project was approved. In the end, the goats did a perfect job of clearing the dangerous plants, and Burseth also delivered public education lectures and generated media interest in the project.

This fascinating example of an unusual set of volunteers (with lots of pictures) has important implications for volunteer resources managers in any setting. How do you react when a teenager proposes an unfamiliar or nontraditional service project? What does it take to convince others in the organization to support the idea? What special considerations arise when stepping into the unknown? This special e-Volunteerism feature will show you why the nontraditional and the unknown can be a very good thing.

 

Take a moment to think about your worst job ever. The one you struggled to get out of bed to go to. The one you gleefully left at the end of your shift or the start of your weekend. What job design factors contributed to your dissatisfaction? Was the work boring or repetitive? Did you have zero or low control?  Were you aware of how your work contributed to the organization’s goals?

Now take a moment to think about your best job ever. The one that made you just as eager on Monday morning as on Friday afternoon. How was that job designed? Did you perceive your work to be meaningful? Did you find the right amount of challenge? Did you receive both positive and constructive feedback? Were you aware of the way your work impacted others?

Now think about the volunteer positions in your organization, specifically the ones where you struggle with retention, absenteeism, motivation, or poor quality of performance. How can you apply the proven principles of paid job design to developing more satisfying volunteer opportunities? In this e-Volunteerism feature, author Debbie Anderson explains why it all begins with the work design when motivating volunteers to succeed.

Ask care providers of chronically sick children or adults how they are coping, and Kathryn Berry Carter bets that they will say they are tired, stressed, and worn out. During her tenure as the Volunteer Services director of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Berry Carter has witnessed first hand how caring for someone with complex medical needs can be tough physically and emotional.

Berry Carter often wanted to find an efficient way for hospital volunteers at St. Jude to help parents get a meaningful break. For years, she notes, “we limped along, providing some respite care for pre-scheduled needs.” In the fall of 2010, Berry Carter’s team became determined to take a hard look at this logistical challenge and to find a way to fix

In this article for e-Volunteerism, Berry Carter explains the steps she took at St Jude to implement a thriving and successful on-demand respite care program, one that has become an integral component of St. Jude’s family-centered care approach. Though the article mainly discusses respite care in a children’s hospital, Berry Carter describes how the same principles can be applied to respite care in settings ranging from senior nursing care facilities and Alzheimer day care facilities to hospital organizations and other pediatric programs.The St. Jude experience can be replicated in any of these settings, notes Berry Carter, who also provides tips on implementing any pilot program that explores new roles for volunteers, regardless of theme. 

It would come as no surprise if this Along the Web started with the statement: “Pets are an integral part of our lives.” Animal lovers have always known about the bonds between humans and pets (although many suspect that beloved pets knew this well before anyone else). What may come as a surprise, though, are the number of volunteer opportunities available for pets and their human companions. In this issue of Along the Web, Erick Lear introduces readers to this trending topic – a topic that has spurred the inclusion of many pet-friendly policies in corporate America and also the emerging field of veterinary social work. 

In this issue’s Training Design, Linda Miller, the president and founder of Intern Programs, Inc., offers a two-hour workshop on the timely topic of interns. In this interactive process, Miller walks participants through a series of questions to determine whether or not having an intern program is the right strategic decision for their organizations. Participants draw their own conclusions based on group discussions, peer support and material introduced by the facilitator.

As Miller demonstrates, the objective of this training exercise is for participants to develop their own customized “business case” for implementing or improving an intern program. Participants will also leave the session knowing how to facilitate a needs assessment for any process or proposed initiative that requires scrutiny within their organizations—an excellent skill to add to your toolbox!

 

Volunteer-involving organizations – whether nonprofits, government agencies or all-volunteer associations – regularly search for new philosophies and technologies to maximize volunteerism and advance the organization’s purpose. However, implementing the use of personality profiles rarely makes the list of strategic initiatives. But in today’s social world, understanding an individual’s personality is critical to serving up relevant communications and interacting in meaningful ways. In order to succeed, organizations must emotionally engage their volunteers.

In this feature article, authors John Marshall and Hugh Massie take readers step by step to illustrate and explain how to use personality profiles in volunteer-involving organizations. And, the authors argue, "the investment of time and resources to incorporate personality profiles into the process of recruiting, organizing and engaging volunteers is one that pays off tenfold."

Discussions of legal issues involving volunteers are usually conducted philosophically, using generic examples or what-if scenarios. In this feature, Donald W. Kramer, an American lawyer and editor with extensive expertise and experience in nonprofit legal matters, shares actual court cases and reviews their implications for volunteer leaders and volunteers. While all of the examples are from the United States, Kramer's article covers a range of concerns that surface in many countries around the world. If you and your organization tend to want to run and hide when you hear the word “lawsuit,” Kramer’s article, which includes a sample volunteer agreement template, will no doubt prove helpful.