Leading Through Volunteers
Jenny Fay’s professional career has been all about accomplishing life-changing visions through unpaid volunteers.
She served as Children’s Pastor at a 6,500+ member church leading 400+ volunteers for 14 years.
She served as Executive Director of an organization providing aftercare for sex trafficking survivors and resources for people in the sex industry for 3+ years.
She currently serves as the Community Engagement & Development Director at Olive Crest Nevada, a foster care organization.
I have had the privilege of seeing her lead firsthand as a volunteer, coworker, and friend. I have been impressed time and time again by the size of the tasks she accomplishes by recruiting, empowering, and inspiring an army of volunteers. So, I reached out to her recently and asked her to share a little of her secret sauce.
Here is what she sent me…
My friend, Sundi, has been in key leadership roles in fancy retail stores for as long as I can remember. She spends her days creating and implementing ways to turn up-scale stores around, leading staff, and crushing goals.
She makes good money,
and she’s SUPER successful.
But at the end of the workday,
she doesn’t lay down and feel like
she made a difference in the world.
YOU KNOW WHEN THAT HAPPENS?
Sundi feels like she made a difference in the world on days
when she leads a second grade small group at church.
She feels it on days when she gets to sit across from
a sex trafficking survivor and just listens.
Sundi feels that kind of fulfillment
through countless other volunteer roles she has.
Did you catch that?
These are all VOLUNTEER roles.
Sundi doesn’t get paid to do the
things that fill her up the most…
So why does she do it?
Volunteers, like Sundi, show up for unpaid roles
because they see the value in what they do.
They understand that
what they do makes a difference.
And that’s what makes it so fulfilling.
And the converse is true. If volunteers, don’t see the value in what they do, if they don’t see how it makes a difference, it won’t be fulfilling. And they won’t keep showing up.
Leading volunteers so they feel fulfilled in their experience requires a
DIFFERENT kind of LEADERSHIP.
I’ve experienced this in my 17 years of
recruiting, training, and leading volunteers.
I’ve seen two leadership themes that make all the difference:
CARE + INSPIRATION
People need to feel cared for and inspired in order to continue showing up for essentially a job that doesn’t pay.
So let’s take a look at each of these themes a little more, starting with…
CARE
When I oversaw 100’s of volunteers in Children’s Ministry at a church, we adopted a phrase I heard from another ministry. This phrase continued to serve me in my time leading 100+ volunteers to work with sex trafficking survivors. And I lean into this phrase now in my role at Olive Crest where we are working to end child abuse and neglect.
The phrase is simple but takes intentionality. The phrase is:
Connected
Cared For
Urged to Grow
I live in Las Vegas, a sprawling city, where folks often may drive up to half an hour to volunteer. While Vegas is the biggest little town you’ll ever encounter, it’s still very easy to feel disconnected from others.
Growing up in Oklahoma, I knew my neighbors. We waved at each other as we pulled into the driveway. We borrowed cups of sugar and eggs from one another instead of running to the store. For most people, that isn’t their experience here. In Vegas, we all pull into our garages at the end of the day and head into our homes without ever encountering a neighbor.
Often people volunteer because
they are looking for connection,
whether they realize it or not.
When working at the agency with sex trafficking survivors, I asked all our Volunteer Leaders to hold monthly, in-person, meetings with their Volunteer Teams. Our volunteers needed intentional time to connect with their team.
They needed to feel known and like they knew others at the organization.
In Children’s Ministry, I would talk to our Volunteer Leaders about how they may be the only ones at the megachurch we served in who truly know the names of their volunteers. Their volunteers might go through a weekend service without anyone ever addressing them by name. What a lonely and disconnected feeling!
And what a difference to feel connected.
How good does it feel when someone knows your name
and notices when you show up or don’t show up!
Accountability plays into connection.
I’ve seen people use accountability to beat volunteers over the head and shame them for what they did or didn’t do. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about intentional conversations that help people follow through with their volunteer commitments, especially when they first join the team.
(Notice I said “team.” I believe
every on-going volunteer opportunity
should be couched in a team.
But back to the accountability concept...)
Most volunteers, especially new volunteers, feel insecure. They aren’t sure if they are needed. They aren’t sure if they’re doing their task right. When they don’t show up or follow through with their volunteer commitment and no one seems to notice, this may feed that insecurity. They may think, “I knew they didn’t really need me.” Or they may assume, “I probably wasn’t doing it right so they don’t want me to come back.”
A simple phone call or text message to check on
why someone didn’t show up or follow through
communicates that you noticed they weren’t there
and that you want them there.
It is actually a gateway to them feeling
more connected
to their leader and the team.
It also opens the door into
CARING WELL
for them.
People need to know you care more about THEM than about the task they can accomplish. Yes, we are doing important work, and yes we are counting on people to do what they say they will do. But that doesn’t trump their value and needs as a human.
When we call to check on a volunteer after a no-show,
it creates space to hear what’s going on in their lives.
Maybe they are feeling overwhelmed.
Maybe they or a loved one is sick.
There’s always more to the story.
So when I call to check on someone,
I always start by asking (really asking) how they are doing.
You can learn a lot from this one simple question.
And then you know what I do
and what I ask our Volunteer Leaders to do?
I keep checking in on them,
even when everything seems to be going fine.
I want volunteers to feel like
we know and care about
what is going on in their lives.
We want to celebrate with them
and mourn with them.
We want them to know they are cared for.
The last piece of real volunteer care
is helping them grow.
Whenever someone volunteers with me, I want them to feel like they are better because of it.
This means I’m constantly looking for, and I’m encouraging Volunteer Leaders to constantly be looking for, how we can invite volunteers into new experiences and new skills.
One volunteer worked a job where she didn’t oversee any direct
reports and probably never would because of the nature of the role.
When I invited her into a leadership role and mentored her, it was life-changing.
She mentioned several times what a growth opportunity her volunteer leadership was.
I also try to encourage volunteers by sharing how they have grown in their time on the team.
Maybe a volunteer struggled with social anxiety when they first joined the team and then eventually offered to host a gathering in her home. Or maybe a high schooler started as a sporadic volunteer who wasn’t really engaged and grew into a weekly volunteer who was punctual and focused. That’s a feat for anyone, especially a high school student.
These are big growth steps. I want to create intentional space for this kind of growth, and I want to make sure I point out to volunteers how they’ve grown.
When folks are connected, cared for, and urged to grow,
they are far more likely to continue showing up and leaning in.
But care isn’t the only ingredient in the recipe for leading volunteers.
Inspiration is CRITICAL.
Appreciation and inspiration can sometimes get mixed up. They are both good, but they are very different.
Appreciation says, “I see what you did, and I am grateful for it.” This is important, and I encourage our volunteer leaders to make it a practice. But inspiration takes appreciation a step further by helping someone see how they contributed to the mission.
Appreciation often stops at, “Thank you.”
Inspiration says, “Thank you for
counting all those cans of soup.
Now we know how many emergency food
bags we’ll be able to prepare for the
families we serve who are in need!”
See the difference?
Anytime a community group comes to volunteer at an agency where I work, I always spend the first 20-30 minutes sharing about the organization – what we do, why we do it, etc.
If a group is only there for 2 hours, I’m literally spending a quarter of the time talking to them about our mission.
Why would I spend so much time doing that?
I’ll happily spend a quarter of their volunteer time helping them understand what the mission is and how they are contributing to it.
Without that, a volunteer group might come
in and fill bags with hygiene items. And when
they leave, they will have felt like they put
shampoo bottles in Ziplocs… on to the rest of the day.
But after that 30-minute conversation about our
mission and how their task contributes to it, they
have a completely different experience. As they
load bags with hygiene items, they are literally
thinking about our clients in need who will receive
that bag. They are looking for extra little things to
load into the bag to brighten someone’s day. And
they go home feeling like they made a difference
in their community, ready for the next
volunteer opportunity we have available.
That’s the difference inspiration makes!
I, by no means, have this leadership thing all figured out. I stumble and fumble my way through it on the daily.
But through the years, I’ve seen that REAL CARE coupled with INSPIRATION can create a culture where people love to volunteer and are excited to be part of the mission.
Oh, and this works amazingly with paid staff too!
And when that happens,
I find myself getting excited
about the mission all over again.
It’s kind of a beautiful flywheel effect.
