Service & Leadership

By Susan J. Ellis / Energize Inc.

As we celebrate the International Year of Volunteers, it seems appropriate to take a look at the recurring cycle of organizational development--from a volunteer perspective. Just about every nonprofit organization evolves from the actions of a small band of founding volunteers. While not every agency moves through all the following seven stages, every organization can be found somewhere on this timeline:

Stage 1: One or two people see a need before anyone else does and start shouting about it.

Major innovation and change rarely occur within established institutions. In fact, it is often those very organizations that put obstacles in the way of visionaries. The first people who recognize what needs to be done are often met with hostility. After all, who are they to tell us that spouse abuse is a serious problem? that we don't know how to treat the dying and their families? that AIDS is an epidemic? that Earth will be invaded by Venus? Welcome to the "Lunatic Fringe."

It may take a long time for pioneering volunteers to break out of isolation. It takes courage and staying power--but not necessarily money. Passion drives the activity and these volunteers accept the role of mavericks until...

Stage 2: Others start to see the validity of the cause and raise the decibel--and acceptance--level.

Not everyone escapes the Lunatic Fringe. But those visionaries who succeed in articulating something that others can see and accept begin to attract a few followers. This small band of volunteers support one another and develop some synergy to move their plans forward, but they still view the Establishment as indifferent, if not antagonistic.

Stage 3: More volunteers join in and social approval follows.

At some hard-to-define stage, the core of founding volunteers realizes that the cause has reached critical mass. Enough new supporters have joined in the work that the organization is no longer "underground" and is even gaining in popularity. There are enough hands to start new projects. Enthusiasm and a sense of accomplishment keep volunteers engaged. Thought is seriously given to incorporating and some small fundraising (often dues assessed to each member volunteer) underwrites out-of-pocket expenses such as postage and supplies.

Stage 4: Someone says: "Hey, we all have paid jobs to do and this unpaid work is exhausting us. Let's find some money and hire staff."

This is a watershed point. Clearly very few organizations can sustain meaningful activity over time without at least a few people who can spend full-time focusing entirely on the development of their programs. So fundraising goes forward and the first employees are hired to assist the volunteer leaders. In fact, at this stage, volunteers often find it difficult to let go of tasks they have grown accustomed to doing. Initial employees feel both underutilized and dumped on--a strange combination resulting from being given a long list of tasks volunteers no longer want to do, but not necessarily what ought to be delegated.

Stage 5: More staff are hired and volunteers eventually become assistants to the paid workers. The board of directors is still comprised of volunteers, but now they "govern" rather than "manage."

This is the longest stage to date, and the conversion of service provision by volunteers to service provision by paid staff usually evolves slowly. Of course, there are examples of the opposite. Most urban AIDS organizations watched themselves grow within a year or two from a dozen people in someone's living room to a staff of hundreds in a multi-story office building. Talk about culture shock!

The signs of what is generally called "professionalizing" an organization can be heard in remarks such as:

"We really ought to be concerned about confidentiality."

"Isn't it risky to allow volunteers to do this? Aren't we incurring liability?"

"Our clients deserve the most professional service possible."

It's not that such thoughts are wrong, it's just that they are often misapplied to volunteers out of ignorance and stereotypes. Regardless, frontline volunteers are slowly moved into peripheral roles and board volunteers are asked to think only about policies and governance. No one asks: How do they do this effectively if they are disengaged from the work of the organization?

Stage 6: The organization becomes an entrenched institution with all work of importance done by employees. (Even possibly legislated into a government function.)

Of course the founding volunteers can claim success if their maverick vision ends up as an important community service, having survived over the years. But there are dangers, too. For example, a paid-staff-only agency can become more concerned with financial survival than with client service. Or it can become the very "Establishment" that the current Lunatic Fringe is screaming about.

Stage 7: Someone says: "Do you know what would freshen things up around here? Let's recruit some community volunteers!"

Yes, the proverbial pendulum swing. Sometimes the motivation for re-discovering volunteers is positive. The organization might have become more educated about the ways that volunteers expand both perspectives and the budget, and recognizes that there are unique roles only volunteers can fill in community relations, friendship to clients, and advocacy. But there are also negative motives such as reluctantly settling for volunteers to fill budget shortfalls or seeking to window dress community involvement. Regardless, it takes a conscious effort for a long-established agency to open its doors to the best and most diverse types of volunteer participation.

Full Circle

Watch the street corners! "The signs of the prophets are written on the subway walls" and new visionaries are out there agitating for innovation and change. The question is: Will you force them to begin at Stage 1 on their own or can you welcome them into your organization at whatever stage you are in? If you think of volunteers mainly as assistants to the staff, this won't happen. But if you encourage the volunteer program to be an in-house think tank, experimenting with new ways of providing service, asking volunteers to be social entrepreneurs, and harnessing the out-of-the-box vision that the right individuals offer, think of the possibilities. After all, giving volunteers the freedom to deviate from business as usual might lead to projects you can then find funding for--allowing the historical cycle to spin inside instead of outside.

Originally published as the bi-monthly column "On Volunteers" in The NonProfit Times, 2001. Found in the Energize website library at: http://www.energizeinc.com/art.html

Energize Inc. is very excited about the publication of Ivan Scheier’s newest book, Making Dreams Come True without Money, Might or Miracles. You can learn more about the book in our online bookstore, but its release has evoked a reflective response in me that I’ve decided to explore as this month’s Hot Topic.

On the surface, Ivan’s book may not seem directly connected to volunteer management. Indeed, this is a book that I feel has the potential for a much wider audience, including volunteers themselves. Ivan considers dreams: why they so often die and why a few live and prosper. He further examines how anyone can be both a dreamer or a “Dream-Catcher”--a person who nurtures the dream-chaser towards accomplishing the dream. In the book, he gives “rules” for both dreamers and Dream-Catchers, and offers a blueprint for how to support rather than kill off the vision.

Those of you who have met Ivan in person and who have participated in one of his many Challenge Think Tanks will immediately recognize this terminology. But many of you do not know Ivan except through his books and his new online Archive at http://www.regis.edu/spsmnm/dovia/ivan. All this about dreams may sound very “New Age” and mystical. And when you learn that Ivan is going to be 75, lives in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and these days is a Reiki practitioner, you’ll really wonder whether Energize is off on a cloud somewhere!

The Essence of Volunteerism is Dreams

As we prepare to start 2001 as The International Year of Volunteers, I can’t think of a better time to reaffirm that the very essence of volunteerism is, in fact, dreams. Consider:

Volunteering is inherently an optimistic activity. No one volunteers for a cause they assume is hopeless. So the very act of participation implies a dream: this problem can be solved, this cause can succeed, this effort can make a difference.

Volunteers have always been--and continue to be--on the cutting edge. They recognize issues and the need for change before anyone else does. Often they have to drag the Establishment kicking and screaming into a new way of doing things. If it hasn’t been done before, someone has to imagine it first. The citizen volunteers who founded every organization and institution in most cultures were profound dreamers. Martin Luther King said, “Keep your eyes on the prize.” That’s exactly what volunteers do.

When work is also one’s livelihood, the job becomes an end unto itself. Yes, it is possible for someone to be very dedicated to a job and to be lucky enough to get paid for working toward a worthwhile social goal. But there’s a lot of interference: pay and benefits, career ladders, overwork and fatigue. Volunteers, on the other hand, escape what Ivan would call such “anchors.” As an activity of choice, unconnected to earning a living, volunteering frees the doer to focus on what she or he wants to do, even if there isn’t any money with which to do it. Dream-chasing is limited only by imagination and energy.

In our efforts to professionalize volunteer management, to calculate the worth of volunteer services in the gross national product, to develop policies and minimize risk, it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. We must never become so focused on the nuts-and-bolts of effective “management” of volunteers--doing things the paid staff wants them to do--that we forget our role as facilitators of what volunteers want to do.

Here are three examples of how we can all be Dream-Catchers:

1. Welcome mavericks.

In general, very few organizations (including most volunteer centers and even all-volunteer associations) are comfortable with people who march to the beat of a different drummer. How do we react if someone enthusiastically proposes a new idea for how to deliver service or even for what service to deliver? Are we willing to experiment or do we dismiss the different vision as naive, uninformed, or amateur? We ought to make the volunteer program the place that new ideas can be tested.

The traditional model is for the organization to define a need or problem, decide how it will be handled, and recruit employees and volunteers to fill predetermined job descriptions. Maybe we can allow creative thinking to thrive. For example, why not recruit volunteers who are concerned about the need or problem and challenge them to “find ways to do something about this”?

The volunteer program can dedicate itself to foster dreaming. On a regular basis, hold think tanks or at least “idea discussions” on questions such as:

If you were given an unrestricted grant of $10,000 (or whatever amount you wish), what would you spend it on?

Don’t just involve volunteers in these sessions. Paid staff rarely are permitted to dream and there is no reason why the volunteer office can’t be the one place they are welcome to do so. And how about involving clients in speaking for themselves about what they’d like? One model of volunteering is self-help. Perhaps instead of always recruiting outside volunteers, maybe we can engage recipients of service in helping each other or at least in steering the organization toward greater impact.