Equipped to Serve

Preparing volunteers to serve with confidence & integrity.

Volunteer Supervision

How to Recruit and Retain Quality Volunteers

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Do you become frustrated when you spend time conducting a training class but when training is over only half, or less than half, of the attendees end up volunteering?

You get what you ask for, so start by defining what you want.

Start by developing a list of the qualities you are looking for in your volunteers. A short list of qualities might include:

  • Committed
  • Consistent / Faithful
  • Reliable
  • Teachable
  • Aligned with your ministry vision

How do you screen for and educate to these qualities?

You must search for and honor these qualities in all aspects of your volunteer program – recruitment, screening, training, supervision and appreciation. It is especially important in the recruitment and screening phases. It is important to establish expectations and requirements from the very beginning.

Recruitment

  • Your volunteer recruitment materials must keep in mind the qualities you are looking for
  • How do you talk about what you do and how you do it in your recruitment?
  • How can you utilize the actual words of the qualities you are looking for in your recruitment text?

Screening: Interviewing, Job Descriptions and References

Interviewing  
  • The questions you ask in an interview should enable you to see how these qualities have been utilized in other areas of their lives
  • Some sample questions:
    • Where have you volunteered? What were the requirements there? What did you enjoy the most? What was the hardest part of that experience?
    • How have you invested in your own personal growth in the last year?
    • What attracted you to volunteering at the Pregnancy Center?
    • What are you hoping to learn from volunteering with us?
    • What are you most committed to in your life right now?
    • Consistency/Faithfulness is an important quality we are looking for in volunteers. Please share a situation in your life where you were consistent/faithful in the face of adversity.
    • What does being reliable mean to you?
    • Give me an example of when you had to learn something new and how you learned to do that something.
Job Descriptions
  • All of the qualities your are looking for should be reflected in the job description.
    • What time commitment you are looking for – weekly, monthly, yearly?
    • Training required – basic & in-service trainings (Be VERY clear about these.) Include make-up responsibilities if they do not attend the in-services
    • What is their responsibility if they cannot make a scheduled shift?
    • Reading and signing your ministry mission and vision so they are very clear about what you do and how you do it.
References
  • Many of the questions you ask a reference should revolve around the qualities you are looking for.
  • If you are using a written reference, you can ask them to rate the person from 1 to 5 on the qualities. If there are any 1s or 2s you should follow up with a phone call to clarify their answers.
  • If you are using a verbal interview, you can ask them to tell you about a time they have observed the potential volunteer exhibiting these qualities.

Training

  • There should always be responsibility put on the volunteer for knowing and showing that they are applying the fundamentals taught in the training.
  • Tell volunteers how and when they are going to be responsible for knowing and showing what is taught in the training.
  • What happens when volunteers are not teachable or are not capable to be in an advocate position with clients? Will other positions be offered to them?
  • Emphasize the importance of ongoing learning and practice (role-play).

Supervision

  • Hold all volunteers accountable to the standards you established and informed them about.
  • Be a role-model for the qualities you are asking of them.
  • Creatively hold them accountable for the fundamentals.
  • Role-play . . . role-play . . .role-play

Appreciation

  • Appreciate volunteers for the qualities they are exhibiting
  • Honor these volunteer qualities in a special way. Here are a few examples:
    • On their volunteering yearly anniversaries
    • Who have never missed an in-service.
    • Who have logged in the most client hours in the past month, year, etc.
    • Who have never missed a shift in ____ months.
    • Who are always practicing and learning and applying the skills
  • These honors can be in private (flowers, small gifts, etc.) to encourage the person who deserves the appreciation while not making others feel competitive or left out. This privately shows the qualities you value in volunteers and reinforces those qualities and behaviors.
  • Public honors can also be utilized by highlighting them in a newsletter or donor letter, honoring them at a banquet, putting their photos up on a bulletin board in the volunteer room, etc. This publicly shows the qualities you value in volunteers and reinforces those qualities and behaviors.

What qualities are you looking for in your volunteer program? Align all the components of your volunteer program to recruit, screen, train and appreciate for these qualities.

Remember . . . You get what you ask for!

Writing Effective Volunteer Job Descriptions

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Photo by fauxels from Pexels

In the blog last week I talked about envisioning volunteers. One of the first steps in doing so is writing an effective job description. It might be worth your time to take a look at your current job descriptions to see if they answer the following questions for your volunteers?

  • 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?

Job descriptions are the blueprints for recruiting, managing and retaining employees.

An incredibly useful tool, the volunteer job description helps your volunteer recruitment efforts, the management of those volunteers and retaining them. Setting expectations with a job description should be job number one for any volunteer manager.

Pregnancy Centers have a few complex long-term volunteer positions where specialized training is necessary. It makes sense to manage those positions like you would a paid position. That includes a detailed job description that you can use to recruit those volunteers. The job description can also be helpful when you evaluate volunteers, helping both of you to remember what the job is all about.

Each job description should explain the assignment, plus the skills, abilities, and interests necessary to perform the volunteer task successfully. 

Clarity is what every volunteer prefers. Before you even start recruiting volunteers, make a list of the jobs you want them to perform, and then describe those positions as clearly as you can. 

Job descriptions are powerful tools for recruiting and supervising volunteers. You can use these documents to carefully screen candidates and schedule their work. Besides clarifying what volunteers are expected to do, job descriptions send the message that your ministry is well-organized.

Doug Toft on the website missionbox.com suggests what to include in your job descriptions. I have made a few additions and adjustments to his list to accommodate the needs of Pregnancy Center volunteers.

Mission. Volunteers want to know your mandate. State the basic idea of your work in one memorable sentence.

Project or Position. Describe the goal of the volunteer project or role and explain how it contributes to your mission.

Tasks. Describe exactly what you want the volunteer to do. List specific, observable behaviors.

Skills. It pays to be very clear and concrete when listing qualifications for any volunteer position. Include education, personal characteristics, skills, abilities, and experience required.

Setting. Describe where the volunteer will work — outdoors, your main office, an off-site location, door-to-door in the community. If the setting calls for a dress code or special equipment, mention these as well.

Schedule and Commitment. How much time do you expect from the volunteer? Include length of service, hours per week, and hours per day. Include any special requirements such as weekend work. Answer common questions: How long will the job last? Can I determine my own hours? Are date-specific events or project deadlines part of the job?

Training and Supervision. Describe the required training including details of the times and locations of the training(s). Include initial classroom training, on-the-job training, in-service training and any training for special or seasonal volunteer jobs such as Walk-For-Life or other fundraising events.
Explain who will be available for assistance and how volunteers get feedback on their performance.

Screening. Describe up front any required background checks or screening tests for volunteers.

I would also include a section on:

  • Benefits of volunteering. List possible benefits as a result of volunteering such as learning new skills, working with a team towards a common goal, contributing to the goals and mission of your Pregnancy Center, loving on people in crisis in a meaningful and impactful manner.

You can download a job description template here.

This template is in Microsoft Word so you need that software in order to open the template. If you have Word you will be able to edit the document.

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.