Home » Trends & Issues » Archive » September 2008

Trends & Issues

Jill-of-all-trades, mistress of none - HR challenges and opportunities in rural non-profits

Canada’s rural voluntary and non-profit organizations are anchors around which communities flourish. They are community partners along side the private and public sectors in building a high quality of life.  

I’m often asked to define ‘rural’ and I’ve come to think of rural more as a context rather than a cause. Rural is rich in its diversity and complex in its composition. Yet despite some of its unique characteristics, rural non-profit organizations also have many attributes in common with their small urban counterparts.  

One of the great things about working for a rural non-profit organization is the opportunity to do a variety of jobs. Working in such an integrative environment supports diverse learning and skill development. That makes people more valuable to their organization. But having responsibilities across multiple portfolios also means there isn’t the opportunity to gain expertise in skill and knowledge. We often need our non-profit staff to be ‘Jills-of-all-trades’ which can lead to inefficiencies, staff turnover or burnout.

That there are not enough skilled workers in rural communities is not the primary human resource challenge facing rural organizations. It has more to do with their size and scale. Smaller budgets and project funding simply don’t allow for a critical mass of key staff in strategic leadership, finance, communications, resource development and program delivery positions. Many rural organizations are either completely volunteer-driven or have very few paid staff.  

Some would suggest a solution to few staff would be to complement human resource needs with a contingent of volunteers. We know that rural volunteers (generous as they are) are getting older, there are fewer of them and the same volunteers are serving multiple organizations. There is the hope that baby-boomers, who retire early and return to their rural roots, will provide an infusion of skilled volunteers who are ready to contribute. Regardless, managing volunteers takes resources – sometimes in the short-term, more resources than if the staff just did the work themselves. Paid staff often find themselves serving as volunteers for their own organizations.  

Another approach has been the current push toward human resource sharing or mergers of smaller organizations. These approaches can be successful between organizations that already enjoy a certain level of self-sufficiency. However when used to resolve underlying financial sustainability and capacity issues, human resource sharing can often result in greater human resource strain and mergers simply result in larger unsustainable organizations.

Volunteers and staff of rural non-profits also face barriers to professional development opportunities and access to mentors. The time and costs associated with traveling longer distances often impede participation in professional development. The use of technology and online learning is one solution; however, even today, many rural areas have inadequate broadband infrastructure. An alternative is to deliver professional development right in rural communities, but it’s more costly and often it is the participants (who have the least resources and the greatest need) who are asked to bear the increased costs. Peer-learning is becoming a popular alternative. But accessing mentoring networks to support staff and volunteers who often work in isolation can be more difficult. It can be risky to both the individual and their organization to be so open about the issues they face with peers who likely work for organizations they many want to partner with, or that could be potential future employers.

The ebb and flow of human resource management as an organization expands in response to new funding and conversely as it contracts when funding ends is a fundamental challenge for rural non-profit leaders. One might think the answer would be straightforward: - keep the positions - cut the hours or keep the hours – cut the positions… but both of these are financial solutions not human resources solutions.    

How do we support human resource development for rural non-profits?

If there was one simple solution, we’d have solved these challenges already. But let us offer a number of possibilities to consider in combination to solve this complex problem:

• Supporting rural organizations to implement human resource best practices which include a more complex mix of full and part-time staff, project staff, long-term and short-term consultant contracts and volunteer experts
• Influencing funding policies to recognize successful programs require investment in fundamental organizational structures, not just incremental program activities
• Developing a volunteer council of experts that rural organizations can tap into for professional and skill development, coaching and mentoring
• Investing in volunteers and staff to develop their capacity to attract resources and build partnerships
  

If every rural organization had even an incremental investment in its human resource capacity imagine the possibilities...

• Who would the organization partner with?
• Where in the world could its expertise be shared?
• How many more philanthropists would find organizations that match their values, hopes and dreams?
• How many more volunteers would find meaningful opportunities to contribute to their communities?