Trends & Issues
It's ALL about the people
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Colleen Kelly is the executive director of Volunteer Vancouver. She leads a team of ten employees and nearly 200 volunteers who deliver nine programs including GoVolunteer.ca, BoardMatch.org, a full program of workshops, Board Development training, and Executive Director & Board Governance Learning Circles. Colleen served as a member of the Sector Steering Committee of the Voluntary Sector Initiative and was the co-chair of the National Volunteerism Initiative Table. |
Colleen Kelly Although I have spent twenty-five years working in the voluntary sector (Yes, paid to lead a volunteer organization!), it has usually been with an organization where the focus has been on volunteer engagement. It is only in the past few years that we’ve come to a crystal clear realization the most significant factor for volunteers to be appropriately engaged, is determined by all the paid employees working in the organization. Therefore, it is hard to only focus on a volunteer program and be successful. In fact, the focus must be on ALL of the people in the organization. And that mindset begins with the paid employee who is the leader.
According to the National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations, there are four major challenge areas in the sector:
1. No time to plan
2. Shortage of volunteers
3. Lack of new perspectives on the board, and
4. Financial sustainability
In that order.
Volunteers today are driven by the mission of an organization. They want to see a clear link between their volunteer contribution and the outcome - they want to provide their skills and expertise, and they want their volunteer assignment to be project-based and time-specific. Not necessarily in that order.
A viable solution? Organizations must build capacity through people; focusing on their own excellence and not solely on the people they serve.
People before dollars
As Jim Collins says in Good to Great and the Social Sectors:
“The number one resource for a great social sector organization is having enough of the right people willing to commit themselves to mission. The right people can often attract money but money by itself can never attract the right people. Money is a commodity; talent is not. Time and talent can often compensate for lack of money, but money cannot ever compensate for lack of the right people.”*
Volunteers are attracted to strong organizations
This is a catch-22 statement. Volunteers who are able to build capacity are attracted to strong organizations—ones that know how to engage them in the ways that make sense. When the organization isn’t strong, the (paid) people are often overwhelmed with fulfilling their mission and have not had a focus on their own internal structures, and are therefore, unable to take on more people.
It is imperative to begin with a focus on people infrastructure and ensure leaders are viewing the organization with a People Lens©. If we look first at the people we could engage – both paid and unpaid – in our organization, it can move us to a position of strength. We think these are the areas of focus to build strong organizations that have a people-first way of doing business:
1) Organizational Culture – focus on building a culture of organizational excellence—which stems from being community-based and mission-driven.
2) Informed Governance – members of the board are engaged—in governing. They understand their fiduciary, strategic and generative roles.
3) Strong Leadership – there is a strong senior staff team, distributed leadership, and an intentional focus on developing these leaders to be effective for the organization, and for the sector.
4) Intentional Planning – the organization understands that directives, strategies and personal performance plans are all part of planning for the future. There is alignment in roles, and a focus on planning strategically to build a continuity of leadership.
5) Great Place to Work – ultimately the organization must be a place where all people (paid and unpaid) want to be – because they feel they make a difference and they have an opportunity to learn and commit to a better world.
There is an old Irish story that tells of every cottage in Ireland having stew on the stove. In good times the stew is full of many vegetables and lamb and flavourful broth. In the lean times, there are few vegetables and no lamb, and very watery broth. The Irish can only serve you a delicious stew if they have the good ingredients to make it delectable. In the same way, organizations cannot deliver an effective service if they do not put the very best ingredients into the stew to ensure quality program delivery. The most important of those ingredients is people.
Related links and resources
Organizations with a people-first philosophy
Taproot Foundation (USA): provides grants of people, rather than dollars.
Framework Foundation (Canada): created a concept called a Timeraiser that is about engaging people to build capacity: http://www.timeraiser.ca/
Volunteer Vancouver (Canada): delivers learning opportunities for not-for-profit leaders
From the HR Toolkit (login required)
* Collins, Jim, Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Jim Collins, 2005.
