Flipping the Narrative on Volunteer Engagement

I have worked as a Leader of Volunteer Engagement in Australia for more than 20 years. In 2021, I was given the incredible opportunity to take on the role of Senior Manager of Volunteer Engagement with the Brotherhood of St. Laurence (BSL), a social justice organisation working alongside people experiencing disadvantage to address the fundamental causes of poverty in Australia.

Throughout my career, I have prided myself on ensuring that volunteers are seen and valued. But within weeks of starting work with the BSL, I realised that volunteering was not accessible to many in my community, especially those experiencing disadvantage and who BSL works alongside. Over the past 18 months, I have realised that some of my professional practices, guided by the unconscious bias that I held, often perpetuated harm against those who experience disadvantage in our communities. And I have realised that my practices upheld the inherent bias that exists in a lot of volunteer engagement systems in Australia and, I imagine, in many other Western countries and first-world cultures.

This wasn’t easy, but these realisations started a journey for me to lead the change work that must be done to ensure volunteering is accessible to and inclusive of everyone.

Setting the scene

BSL holds very strong values; it is one of the things that drew me to the organisation.

The organisation is an advocate and national voice on structural changes that help to create justice for all and give every person the opportunity to thrive. It also works towards systemic change, like government policy change and changes to institutional and program frameworks and practices.

I got excited to embrace these values and practice models to ensure inclusive and accessible volunteering practices with the organisation. But after starting at BSL, it wasn’t long before I realised that our internal systems often perpetuated the very harm that we were seeking to eradicate in our community. Because in our communities, we have people with:

• Low literacy skills;
• Low digital literacy skills;
• A distrust of institutions;
• Limited access to transport;
• Limited access to childcare;
• Limited access to technology and reliable internet;
• Reliance on casual work; and
• Cultural values that are misaligned with western concepts of volunteering, for example, not working for free or supporting their own family instead of the community, and more.

Becoming aware of the narrative

During the first six months of my time with BSL, we did a lot of consultation; the organisation and my colleagues believed in and harnessed the strengths and lived experiences of volunteers. However, I quickly realised that there were two narratives at BSL that significantly limited the impact volunteers could have on the outcomes of our work:  

• Narrative One: The long-held belief by many in not-for-profit organisations that “volunteers help us do more with less.” I noticed the deficit language that we used – we will take on anyone, we are always desperate for volunteers, we just need someone who can do X, Y or Z.
• Narrative Two: Volunteering is an activity for the privileged to help those in need. I heard this from volunteers who shared with us that the reason they volunteered was to help those who didn’t have as much as they did, or because they felt sad for “the needy.”

I knew that these perspectives were shared by people who truly care about other humans and want more for their communities. But they also demonstrated a lack of understanding about how our beliefs, bias, language and motivations can lead to us to continue to perpetuate harm, rather than engaging in the work of challenging the systems that oppress people in the first place.

Noticing and identifying barriers

The first step to begin to flip these narratives is to identify the barriers to volunteering. To do so requires undertaking a process of critical reflection. Consider: 

• How do you advertise for volunteers (e.g., passively, almost entirely online, flyers and posters, newsletters or by connecting with communities and building relationships)?
• Is your application process confusing, complicated or time-intensive? Or is it super simple and streamlined?
• How are your screening processes managed (e.g., entirely online with complex written instructions and no conversation or with offers of support and guidance through conversation and demonstration)?
• How do you welcome new volunteers (e.g., with a long email explaining what is expected of them and what they must do next, with multiple attachments and links or personally by many people and multiple ways of accessing information at the right time)?
• What are the expectations of volunteers when they start (e.g., just get on with it! or with loads of support, conversations and opportunities to ask questions)?
• How and what do you communicate with volunteers?

We should also consider what skills and resources volunteers need to work with your organisation, and if you provide support if they do not have these skills. For instance, it’s important to ask if your volunteers need: 

• a high level of written literacy and comprehension skills;
• a high level of digital literacy skills;
• access to transport;
• to be available for regular shifts of multiple hours duration;
• to be able to do everything on the volunteer role description;
• to come on site;
• to have access to the internet; and
• to have access to a smart phone or computer.

Inclusion and accessibility need to become core values of volunteer engagement across our organisations. We need to critique our current practices to learn whether they really are inclusive, or whether they exclude people based on the systems and processes we have created.

Taking visible steps to inclusion

Creating a safe environment for everyone is complex due to our own unconscious bias and the systems we work within. There are, however, some very simple things we can do to start to create safe, inclusive spaces.

Create an initial welcome

After attending a conference workshop with Sean Kreyling, I have become very intentional about how I introduce myself in person and virtually, both actively and passively. I have learnt to take my time and really introduce myself to my audience or colleagues – I share my background, my gender, my education, my upbringing and my family, my expertise and experience.

By sharing all of these details about who I am and what I bring, I am both building rapport with those I am engaging and laying my unconscious or experience bias on the table. I acknowledge that mine is not the only way to see the world, and there are many things that have resulted in my unique view of the world.

Living and learning in Australia, I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which I work, live and play; the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. I also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which I grew up, the Whudjuk people of the Noongar Nation. I acknowledge Country and the Traditional Custodians when formally introducing or speaking at a meeting or event.  

I do this to acknowledge our First Nations people, their deep wisdom and knowledge for caring for and living in harmony with Country, and their lived experience of loss and continued oppression from Colonisation in Australia.

Create inclusive spaces

I share my pronouns (she/her) when introducing myself to people and groups, on my email signature, virtual screen and name badge. I do not to use the term ‘preferred pronouns’ which can imply that I will consider someone’s pronouns but won’t necessarily choose to use them.

I do this to demonstrate that I acknowledge people have their own chosen identities and pronouns, and I will respect them.

I describe what I look like and the environment in which I am working: “I have short blond hair, I’m in a striped long-sleeve shirt with a pink rose and a blue butterfly on the left shoulder. I am sitting in a black, leather chair.”

I understand that some people have vision impairment, or their technology might not allow them to see me on the screen. I do this to ensure those who can’t see have as much of a layered engagement with me as those who can see me.

Be mindful of language

At a recent conference presentation, I learnt and used sign language for the first part of my session.

I recognise those who have a hearing impairment or are deaf and rely on sign language need to be able to understand what I am sharing.

I use #PascalCase or #CamelCase when using hash tags in my social media posts, whereby the first letter of each word is Capitalised.

This enables people with vision impairment, cognitive or learning impairments, low literacy skills or low English fluency, and those who use screen readers to read what is written in the hashtag and invite further engagement with my post.

I am mindful of the language I use, trying to always ensure that I use advantage or strength-based language as opposed to deficit language.

I do this to ensure that I am always recognising that every person has their own set of strengths and it is up to me to help identify and harness them, to encourage their growth and fulfillment in meaningful ways to them.

It was Faiza Venzant – in her interview with Rob Jackson on the Advancing the Profession podcast – who really made this lesson hit home for me. As the Executive Director of the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration and General Manager, Volunteer Development at the YMCA of Greater Toronto, Venzant highlighted the deficit language that often gets used when talking about people in need as being “disadvantaged people.” And while many of us would modify this to say “people who experience disadvantage” (including myself) to remove the deficit suggestion, Venzant said that she uses the phrase “underprioritised people” because this shifts the responsibility for people’s experience to those who created the system that causes the cycle of disadvantage.

Partner with volunteers

At BSL, we established a Volunteer Experience Reference Group – a group of volunteers across a variety of programs who share their experiences and ideas and test and challenge some of the changes we make. We also established a review process where we run every proposed change past team members who have volunteers and participants who have particular support needs.

In the short time the Reference Group has been meeting, they have had a significant impact on the direction and content of our volunteer engagement practices and frameworks to ensure they are inclusive and meaningful. They provided most of the content for our organisational guidelines for acknowledging the death of a volunteer, and also provided advice on our Volunteer Recognition Framework.

Honour volunteers’ unique selves

A volunteer shared that they had felt unsafe and excluded disclosing their gender on our application form because there wasn’t an option to choose something that enabled them to self-describe outside of binary gender terms.

We streamlined our application form and changed our gender selection from male or female to man/male, woman/female, prefer to self-identify (with the option to share) or prefer not to share. We also added an option for volunteers to share their pronouns with us.

Ensure the space and tools to do the job

We advocate for accessibility modifications, tools or equipment where necessary. A few of our buildings are old: they might not have accessible toilets; they might have stairs and no lift; they might not have standing desks available; or they might need a handrail to support someone to walk upstairs. We became aware of volunteers who were told that we didn’t have a suitable role for them because there wasn’t appropriate access for them.

We took volunteer applicants’ experiences with inaccessibility to our Executive team, and our Disability Action Plan reference group, and were very proud that the organisation made an instant decision to no longer purchase or lease any building that wasn’t accessible. Believe that real change is possible when you advocate!

Support all literacy levels

We created instruction sheets for processes such as online police checks. We made them as simple as we possibly could, ran them past volunteers and teams who worked with volunteers with low literacy levels, and then we simplified them even more.

The feedback we received was if the first instruction is ‘click on this link to complete your application’ and a little further on it says ‘now upload a photo of your ID’ then volunteers opt out of completing it all together and self-select out of volunteering because it is too complex – they didn’t know they had to locate identification. Our police check instructions now start by informing applicants and volunteers what they need to collect to be able to complete the police check application for before sharing the link for them to open.

We also proof-read everything we create for volunteers with a lens for simple language. Australian English is full of slang and our organisations use a lot of jargon and acronyms. Also, the education level of many people in leadership roles who create communications lend them to using quite formal language. We are very lucky to have a team member with a journalism background and experience working with communities who have English as a second, third or fourth language. Her skill set enables her to look over any document or communication and simplify its language, and to train us to be able to do the same as we oversee all organisational-level comms that go out to volunteers.

Inclusion and digital literacy

Ten percent of our volunteer workforce do not have an email address, and many more don’t have sufficient digital literacy skills. Yet we send all of our communications electronically, and we are moving toward an electronic application form. BSL believes that every person should have digital literacy skills to support them to achieve their employment goals, their autonomy and participation in life.

We are currently recruiting for volunteers to join our team to provide digital literacy training. This will help support anyone who wants to volunteer but who might struggle to complete the online application form themselves, or who doesn’t use an email address but would like to learn.

The intention isn’t for this team to complete the application for the volunteer; rather, we want the team to teach the applicants the skills they need to be able to do it themselves. We believe that good, digital literacy skills are an essential life skill and we want to provide whatever support necessary for people to get involved in volunteering.

Flipping the narrative

Currently, formal volunteering is not really an activity for everyone – it’s only for those who subscribe to the dominant, White culture and systems or who know how to manoeuvre through it.

So how do we flip the narrative to make it accessible to and inclusive of everyone? At BSL, we have made it a priority to:

• Ensure that every role is aligned with organisational strategic goals and values.
• Consider the intended impact of the volunteer and their work, and how we will measure and report this back to volunteers and other stakeholders.
• Encourage teams to build genuine relationships and partnerships with communities so they can lead the development of appropriate volunteer roles for people in those communities to have an impact.
• Actively recruit amongst those communities. As Jayne Cravens wrote in her blog last year, “We make it part of [our] volunteer management approach to adapt roles to volunteers and not volunteers to roles.”
• Advocate and influence our teams to change the systems that exist that create barriers for people to volunteer.

Where to from here?

It has certainly been a journey for our Volunteer Engagement Team at BSL.

Some changes to flip the narrative have been easy and seamless. Others have had many iterations and continue to be evaluated and tweaked as we receive more feedback. But we have noticed that  as we more and more live out our values of inclusion and accessibility, our eyes open wider to other existing barriers that make it difficult for people to volunteer. And we now open our doors to join our communities where they are at – rather than inviting them in to join us on our terms.

I am not naïve enough to believe that our efforts at BSL will make a big dent in the oppressive systems entrenched in our patriarchal, Colonial systems. Indeed, systems that exclude people from volunteering are everywhere. But for Volunteer Engagement to be an ethical profession, one that truly sees the transformational potential of volunteering, we need to take this journey together. We must be prepared to look deeply and honestly at our own unconscious and experience bias, the systems we work within, and the injustice that underpins these. Then we need to be prepared to advocate, change and influence. If we don’t, we continue to be perpetrators of harm against everyone we exclude from volunteering.

Resources to support you in your journey to make volunteering accessible to and inclusive of everyone:

Lisa Joyslin: Recognizing Racism in Volunteer Engagement (Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advancement, 19 June 2020)

Tobi Johnson, Jennifer Bennett and Dr. Helen Timbrell: The Hard Truth: Diversity & Inclusion from the Volunteer Perspective (Time + Talent podcast, 28 September 2020)

Lisa Joyslin: Volunteerism Best Practices: Not Best for Everyone (Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advancement, 28 October 2020)

Rob Jackson and Faiza Venzant: Advancing the Profession (Advancing the Profession podcast, 11 October 2021)

Jayne Craven:  Making volunteering more accessible for people with disabilities makes it better for EVERYONE, (Jayne Craven’s blog, 9 May 2022)

Breauna Dorleus and Victoria Machar: A Candid Conversation: Power and Privilege in Volunteer Training and Supervision (Engage: the global voice of leaders of volunteers, July 2022)