Strength in Numbers: A Renewed Case for Volunteer Engagement

In the nonprofit world, most of us are never going to achieve our missions with paid staff alone. The need is too big. Budgets are too small. Missions require influencing hearts and minds as much as they entail delivering programs and services. We must find strength in numbers. That is more true than ever, given the results of the last U.S. election and the cuts that have been proposed.

At the same time, many in our communities are wondering what they can do. If there has ever been a time to engage community in our work—all of our community in all of our work—it is now. This isn’t a time for small thinking about what volunteers are qualified to do. It does not serve our communities to hold volunteers at arm’s length, waiting until we have a perfect strategy for engagement.

The agencies that have a meaningful answer to “What can I do?” have the potential to boost their cause. Those with a strategy to mobilize the community in intentional ways will be more likely to sustain their work.

Here are a few ideas about how to be ready to engage those looking for a way to translate their energy and emotion into action. Pick one or two ideas, and build from there!

Advocacy for the Cause and Agency

• Get comfortable with lobbying, which is allowable for nonprofits. Stand for Your Mission and Bolder Advocacy have many useful resources.
• Invite volunteers (including board members) to join in the agency’s advocacy actions such as those below.
  • Meet with elected officials to share your mission, services, and community and organizational needs. Invite them for a tour of the agency’s work.
  • Attend public meetings to share how proposed actions or budget decisions would impact the community.
  • Call or email elected officials remembering that calls tend to hold more sway.
  • Follow nonprofit associations, like the National Council of Nonprofits or Independent Sector at the national level in the U.S. There are also issue-based advocacy organizations and state associations like CalNonprofits or the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.
  • Regularly scan for new legislation that can influence the community you serve or the agency.
  • Conduct research and help craft a case on issues that matter to the agency.
  • If there is not an existing advocacy plan, consider involving volunteers in creating one. Who has experience or energy for this work?

Education through Volunteering

• Build in education about advocacy into your volunteer opportunities and orientation. Show the links between policy and your cause.
• Include information at the end of volunteer projects about how and where volunteers can use their voices. Provide specific actions and talking points while encouraging volunteers to personalize messages with their own experiences or stories.

Volunteer Role and Project Design

• Get creative and experiment with volunteer roles. Where else do you need the community’s support to advance your mission and operations? Ask for guidance from co-workers, the community you serve, volunteers, and/or peers at other agencies who are engaging volunteers in the ways you would like to try. The more people who are engaged well, the more potential ambassadors for the agency and cause.
• Cultivate relational proximity. Link those with and without lived experience in meaningful and authentic ways. Design for connection, collective goals, dignity, and shared respect for everyone’s efforts.
• Offer reflection opportunities. Help volunteers make meaning of their service experience and connect it to broader needs in the community.  

Organizational Development

• Get strategic about volunteer engagement.
  • Build volunteer engagement into strategic plans or create a volunteer engagement strategic plan.
  • Consider how volunteers can support each of the agency’s priorities. How might volunteers contribute to programs, events, and services?
• Invest in volunteer engagement. You can’t get a return without an investment.
  • Provide resources for staffing, training (for volunteer managers, other agency staff, and volunteers ), technology, space, support, recognition, background checks, liability insurance, etc.

Advocacy for Volunteer Engagement

• Find your voice and use it. Just because others do not yet see the value of volunteer and community engagement does not mean they never will. It may be up to you to bring and sustain attention on it.
• Get acquainted with the agency’s strategic plan or goals (or frequent topics at team meetings).
• Make specific recommendations that link volunteer engagement to agency strategy.
• Persevere. A ‘no’ today is not a ‘no’ forever. Ask for feedback, revise your request, and try again.
• Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Try out new approaches, roles, impact indicators, and reports. You likely have more leeway than you realize.

Community

• Find your people and connect with them regularly, even if it’s one other volunteer manager at another agency.
• Get involved with your local community of volunteer managers, such as DOVIA (Directors of Volunteers in Agencies) or AVA (Association of Volunteer Administrators).
• Join or participate in a national community of volunteers such as AL!VE (Association of Leaders in Volunteer Engagement) in the U.S. They offer a variety of trainings as well as Communities of Practice for specific types of agency causes.

Renewal

• Go offline more often (or at least cut back on doomscrolling).
• Breathe, rest, play. Bonus points for doing any of these things in community. We need you for the long haul!

None of us can achieve our missions on our own. We need energy, labor, contributions, connections, expertise, experience, awareness, and trust. This is a time to link arms with our community and find our strength in numbers. This is a time to renew (or begin!) a commitment to thoughtful and strategic volunteer engagement.  

Photo credit: Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels