Equipped to Serve

Preparing volunteers to serve with confidence & integrity.

Vision, Faith & Courage

Connecting Training to the Vision of the Ministry

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One of the goals that any trainer should work towards is showing how the training that we ask of our volunteers fits in to the larger vision and goals of the ministry. Training volunteers who are going to work with clients usually demands both a financial and a substantial time commitment. It can seem daunting to a potential volunteer.  Explaining the why behind the expected commitment to training can often help volunteers see why the study and time commitment is important in achieving the vision and mission of the Pregnancy Center.

I have developed a power point presentation that explains how the skills taught in the Equipped to Serve training is driven by:

  • the beliefs we have that caused the Pregnancy Center to be developed which in turn drives  . . .
  • the mission of the ministry which then must identify . . .
  • the who we minister to which demands that we define . . .
  • the how we minister which then hopefully answers the question . . .
  • the results of the ministry . . .

Often Centers have an introductory session for potential volunteers that usually shares the vision and mission of the ministry, what the expectations and requirements are for volunteering, and all the ways to volunteer in the ministry. This is a great time to use this presentation. It shows the importance and reason for the training and ties it in to both the mission and the corporate and personal results of volunteering in the ministry.

I have put this power point I turned into a video that you can view on YouTube. I am having trouble embedding the video here on my site so you will have to copy the link below and put it in your Google Chrome search engine.

If you find this helpful and would like to use the visual I am happy to send you a copy of the Power Point presentation. You can alter the file to reflect your mission statement.

If you would like the Power Point please click on the connect link at the top of the page and send me your request.

What Volunteers Need to Know

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Lorne Sanny – Past President of The Navigators

Have you wondered what volunteers need to know in order to do their job with confidence and integrity? What, as leaders, must we provide to our volunteers in order to envision them yet enable them to feel secure in their service to clients? How do we lead gracefully but still have standards for our volunteer program and ministry?

Years ago at a Pregnancy Center conference, Lorne Sanny who at that time was the director of the Navigators, spoke at our conference. His talks focused on leadership and much of his talk has resonated with me ever since. Dr. Sanny stared his service with The Navigators in 1956 and served for 30 years before he retired. Dr. Sanny went to be with Jesus in March of 2005.

He taught ­­that the people we are leading need to know four things:

  • What am I supposed to do?
  • Will you let me do it?
  • Will you help me when I need it?
  • Will you let me know how I am doing?

Let’s take a look at each of these questions in light of your work with volunteers. These questions apply to volunteers as well as paid employees, especially as most of the Pregnancy Center workforce is made up of volunteers.

What am I supposed to do?

This question speaks to several things:

  1. The quality of your job descriptions
    • Do you have written, detailed job descriptions for every volunteer position in your organization?
    • Does the job description explain the duties and expectations of the position clearly?
    • Are the training (basic and in-service) requirements explained in detail?
    • Are volunteers told when and how evaluations will be performed?
    • Does the job description identify who is their go-to person on staff should they need help?
  2. How clearly you articulate the expectations of the volunteer positions during a pre-training interview
    • Do you hand out job descriptions during your pre-training volunteer interview?
    • You can’t always count on people reading or paying attention to what you see as important in a job description. What is important and essential to you? Emphasize those things during your interview.
    • What kind of questions do you ask during the interview that will help you and the potential volunteer to determine if they are right for the position? We have all suffered from training potential volunteers only for either of us to find out the position did not align with their giftedness or abilities or passions.
  3. How well you hold volunteers accountable to the job they have agreed to perform?
    • Accountability is a tricky situation in volunteer programs. It is important to know what your expectations of volunteers in various positions are and how you will hold them accountable for what they are signing up for.
    • How many days, hours per week or month are expected? What happens if they cannot fulfill those hours?
    • What kind of training – basic, on-the-job, and in-service training is expected? What happens if they continually do not fulfill these requirements?

Will you let me do it?

  1. How do you ease your volunteers into visiting with clients?
  2. Who in your organization are the best people for newly-trained volunteers to shadow? Who in able to show new volunteers how what they learned in the basic training applies in real-life situations?
  3. When and how do you release them to try it on their own?

Will you help me when I need it?

  1. Does every volunteer know who they can go to if and when they need help?
    • An organizational chart shared during training as well as on the job descriptions is great for this, especially if you are a larger Center with a variety of paid staff.
  2. How do you evaluate volunteers without being in “the room” with them right away?
    • Follow-up with volunteers after their initial sessions with clients. Ask clear concrete questions that reinforce what they were taught in basic training. Use the list of the Seven Fundamentals.
    • Read their client documentation notes
    • Ask them to use the self-evaluation sheet found in the Equipped to Serve Training manual.
  3. What kind of notes do you keep on each volunteers strengths and weaknesses that can help you engage with them when they need help? It is helpful to keep these types of notes in their personnel files.

Will you let me know how I am doing?

  1. What are your plans for yearly volunteer evaluations?
    • Are they conducted on the yearly anniversary of when a volunteer started?
    • Is there an evaluation season or time of year where everyone gets evaluated?
    • Do volunteers get a chance to give feedback/evaluations to the staff?  When? How?
  2. Who conducts these evaluations?
  3. What should the criteria be for evaluations?
    • The evaluation should be based on the volunteer’s job description and expected levels of the skills taught during training
  4. How will you create the time or a system that would enable this to happen?
    • How can you create time in a staff members schedule to enable this happen? If you do not make a plan for evaluating volunteers they are likely not to happen.
    • I like to look at this process with volunteers more as coaching than strict evaluation.
    • This is the best way to keep your organization healthy. Coaching gives everyone a chance to be encouraged & praised in the areas they are doing well and look at areas that might need some improvement in a hopefully non-threatening environment.

I will go into more depth and develop a few helpful worksheets as I delve deeper into these topics in the coming months.

Please let me know where you might need help in these areas. Drop me an email or use the contact form.

Thanks for all you do and how you love on your volunteers!

Courage to Do What Needs to Be Done

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Photo by Sammie Vasquez on Unsplash

Here is the definition of courage that I found in the dictionary:

the ability to do something that frightens one; strength in the face of pain or grief.

It takes courage to persevere in this ministry. It is important to think about how to build or at least invite courage into your volunteer program.

Let’s think about this:

  • It takes courage to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.
  • It takes courage to persevere in the face of women choosing abortion.
  • It takes courage to love.
  • It takes courage to believe that love wins.
  • It takes courage to pursue people who believe differently than we do.
  • It takes courage to choose relationship over being right.
  • It takes courage to listen to people’s difficult stories and painful choices.
  • It takes courage to be vulnerable.
  • It takes courage to believe that Jesus is in charge.
  • It takes at least some measure of courage to do almost everything that volunteers are asked to do, especially when meeting with clients.

So how do we build courage into our volunteer programs?

I think we must remind ourselves, as trainers and leaders, the courage it does, in fact, take to work with clients at the Pregnancy Center. Then we have to hold that reality as we plan all aspects of the volunteer program.

In all aspects of the volunteer program we can build in the reality of the courage it takes to volunteer.

  1. When recruiting volunteers it is important not to “sugar coat” what it means to work with clients. Our prayers must be that God sends us volunteers who are up to the task and come with willing and open hearts to learn how to interact with clients based on your ministry model.
  2. When screening potential volunteers we must ask the hard questions to help us  both understand what is the motivation behind their choice to volunteer.
  3. Volunteer training can give volunteers the skills they need to utilize when a situation arises where they need to be courageous. Having skills to help volunteers navigate their way through difficult client situations can provide them with the ability and strength they need to be courageous in the face of personal fears or pain and grief.
  4. Setting clear job expectations and giving regular positive and helpful feedback allows volunteers to know what is expected of them, how they are doing and that you are available to help them improve. This can sometimes be difficult and time consuming for staff. If this is not in place volunteers are often left wondering how they are doing or not knowing how to evaluate their own performance. Without standards, feedback and encouragement volunteer rarely grow in their abilities to work with clients.
  5. Encouraging volunteers with prayer and the word of God is invaluable. Finding scriptures, books quotes, films, etc. that will encourage them to live-out your ministry model is essential in building courage.
  6. I think any kind of volunteer appreciation should include a nod to the courage it takes to volunteer and continue to volunteer.

Courage in the Pregnancy Center ministry is like a muscle that your volunteers are constantly building with your help. How you screen, train, evaluate, encourage and appreciate volunteer are the tools that will help them build the courage muscle they need to become long-time volunteers in your ministry.

How are you building courage into your volunteer program?

Envisioning Out of the Ordinary Volunteer Opportunities

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When I was a director I was always focused on recruiting what I will call “hands on” volunteers such as receptionists, client advocates, sonographers, people to help with the materials assistance program, people to help with fundraising events.

As I spoke at churches to recruit volunteers many people would come up to me and express how much they would like to volunteer but they could not give the time required by the volunteer jobs I had mentioned. Others expressed interest in supporting the Center but did not feel their gifts and talents lined up with what we were asking for in terms of volunteer positions.

For about 7 years I was the volunteer coordinator for a local hospice here in Pennsylvania where I now live. In order to meet Medicare requirements for hospice I had to reach a quota of volunteer hours each month based on the hands-on services we provided to our clients. It was pretty overwhelming some months. The good thing about the mandatory quota was, it caused me to think very creatively about how I could create volunteer jobs that would interest a wide variety of people.

I have been utilizing that same thinking for envisioning out of the ordinary volunteer positions for Pregnancy Centers. Hopefully these positions might engage more volunteers and help in the day to day of the Center and the long-term vision(s) of the Center. Some can be done from home and might not require a weekly commitment.

Depending upon the size of your Center and your budget many of these positions might be filled by a paid staff position. Other Centers may not have the resources to pay someone to do these tasks and need to look towards filling them with volunteers. Some are fun ideas and positions that may allow your clients to feel welcomed and honored and your volunteer appreciated.

So here is a list of possible volunteer jobs:

  1. Librarians – Recruit volunteer librarians to source and set up a lending library of books, movies and other resources that volunteers can borrow. Use the resources for book and/or movie clubs, in-service trainings, etc.
  2. Role-players – people who fancy themselves good actors or who have had previous life experiences with an unplanned pregnancy who are willing to come in as needed to role-play with client advocates who are in training.
  3. Graphic Designers – some Centers might already have a website designer or a graphic designer that they turn to for their graphic needs but if you don’t you might try and recruit a volunteer designer. Maybe there might be a small project, like designing note cards to send to clients that a graphic designer could help you with.
  4. Social Media Managers – Do you have a presence on a social media platform? Might that be helpful? A social media manager, once trained, could do this job from wherever. I can see one social media platform focused on reaching clients and another on your supporters. They would be two very different types of content so you could probably use two social media managers.
  5. Training Mentors– Do you have wonderful volunteers who have left because their life situation has changed and they cannot give as much time as they used to? If they were highly skilled client advocates maybe you can ask them to help get volunteers from the classroom or online training into the counseling room by reviewing the training wor, answering questions and engaging in role-play. Much of this can be done via a Zoom meeting from their own home.
  6. Training Administrator – Someone to help with the administrative tasks of training such as gathering the materials, communicating with prospective volunteers who are attending the training, collecting training fees, coordinating and keeping track of the progress of the people who are doing online or video training, being the go-to person if trainees have questions, etc. This could be done from home.
  7. Hospitality Volunteers – When I go to the salon where I get my hair cut the receptionist offers me, actually serves me, not only my beverage of choice but some lovely kind of baked good as well. I cannot tell you how welcoming and honoring that small gesture feels even if I say no to the offering. Now, in this time of Covid-19, this is not possible but hopefully it will be possible sometime in the future. Volunteers could offer to bring in a baked good for clients on a weekly or monthly basis. They can bring several at one time and staff members can take them home and put them in the freezer. Better yet, recruit volunteers who have the gift of hospitality to come once a month to the Center, bring a baked good and offer to serve clients who come that day.
  8. Contemplative Stone Makers – There are instructions on how to make contemplative stones for clients to take away with them here on the website. You can recruit a team of crafty volunteers or individuals to meet and make the stones on a semi-regular basis so you have plenty of stones to offer to clients. The downloadable instructions are here.
  9. Crafty Volunteers – Volunteers love to get little tokens of appreciation. Pinterest is full of some great inexpensive ideas that can easily be created by a group of crafty women. You might be able to gather a group together once or twice a month to work on projects or have a crafty volunteer assemble packets of supplies that can be picked up and then assembled at home.

Of course all of these volunteer opportunities will need job descriptions. The more detailed the better with approximate time commitments, necessary training, etc.

Next month I will focus on crafting clear, effective job descriptions.

It Matters How You Talk About What You Do.

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Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

“There is power in a communication style that values relationship. It matters.”

I worked towards my Master’s degree while I was director of the Pregnancy Center in Baltimore. At the beginning of most classes we sat in a large circle and everyone introduced themselves. Most classmates introduced themselves by sharing where they worked and their job title. During these classes, I would often by-pass that description. I would tell people a little about myself, that I liked art, I had an undergrad degree in fine art and that it had been a while since I was in a higher education environment but I was excited to be in the class.

I often was hard on myself for not just coming out and saying where I worked and what I did. But the experience taught me how to be thoughtful about what I shared about my work and how and when I shared it.

In my particular course of study, there was often a lot of group work. In one particular class the professor broke us into small groups to work on a rather lengthy project. It turned out to be one of those times that the connection of the group went far beyond the class assignment. It was one of the most diverse groups I worked with in Graduate School and one of my fondest memories.

During one of our meetings someone said, “Hey Cyndi, you never said what you did when you introduced yourself.” This happened during one of our first meetings together so we did not know a lot about one another at that time. So I said, “I work with a non-profit agency that helps women faced with the decisions of an unplanned pregnancy.” As you can imagine, there were follow up questions. I answered the questions truthfully but also focused on what our agency does provide.  I told them that we do not provide abortions but would rather offer support and services that could eventually make abortion rare or unnecessary. I tried to use language that explained what we do provide at Pregnancy Centers without using labels or buzz words that might cause my classmates to stereotype me based on their assumptions. I also told them I am often fearful that, based how Pregnancy Centers are sometimes perceived, people will judge me harshly.

I was so nervous sharing this and feared their reaction. Instead, the opposite happened and others in the group began to reveal more of their story. One woman told us she was an ex-nun and shared similar feelings about not sharing that information because she feared people would pidgeon-hole or stereotype her. One of the guys shared he was gay and one-by-one the participants in the group began to share more intimately about their story and what they also feared. It was an amazing moment that bonded us together long after the class ended. After that, never once in that group of people, did I feel judged or diminished because of what I did or what I believed. We respected our differences because our relationship mattered more than agreeing or being right.

That is why I love the quote that is at the top of this post. Being pro-life does not always have to be adversarial. If we truly believe that relationship matters more than being “right,” it will affect how we talk about what we do and why we do it.

Your volunteers are advocates for the ministry. How they talk about the Center, what you do, how you do it, and the language they use are important. They are social media influencers and advocates not only in their church community but to their wider social circles, which may not always be pro-life. It is important to give them the vision, the language and skills to share the work of the ministry.

Part of the foundations of the Equipped to Serve training is identifying what speaking the truth in love looks like and how we can build relationship without compromising our beliefs. The skills learned in the training provide the mindset and the language to engage others in vulnerable conversations. As leaders we can lead the way both in training volunteers and well as role-modeling that our conversations and communication style values relationship.

Because it does truly matter.