Building a healthy volunteer culture starts by providing volunteers with a great experience. Volunteer management software can help your organization streamline the process.
Managing a group of volunteers is much more complex than it looks. If volunteers don’t get the right environment where they can feel like they are making a meaningful contribution to the cause, that desire to participate can quickly disappear. One of the biggest reasons nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and charities experience low volunteer retention is their failure to create a healthy volunteer culture.
Building a healthy volunteer culture is essential if your organization relies on volunteers’ contributions. It keeps your volunteer workforce motivated and productive, benefiting all stakeholders — from the community you serve to your organization’s highest levels of management.
In this article, we will help you turn your volunteer program into one that attracts the best talent, retains effective volunteers, and provides a rewarding experience in exchange for their work.
Volunteer Culture: Your Volunteer Program’s Defining Element
Before we get started on how to build a healthy volunteer culture from the ground up, let’s build a consensus on what volunteer culture is. Volunteer culture is the sum of all the interactions and activities a volunteer completes while working with your organization.
It could involve feeding needy animals at a shelter or explaining low attendance in your reading group to your manager. Any organization's volunteer culture will be heavily influenced by the standards of the industry in which it operates. Your organization’s volunteer culture will determine whether volunteers enjoy working with you.
Understanding the Importance of Volunteer Culture
Imagine your organization has a major event coming up. The first thing you are going to need is a volunteer workforce that is driven to make the event a success. That’s where volunteer culture comes in. It’s much easier to meet your organizational goals and perform at the expected level when the volunteers are happy to put in the effort.
A healthy volunteer culture doesn’t just produce effective and productive volunteers; it also encourages them to stick around with your organization. If you are experiencing manpower problems and low rates of volunteer retention, the fault likely lies in your organization’s current volunteer culture.
As a volunteer leader, your job is to ensure the organization’s volunteer culture benefits those working in the program. Here’s how you can tell whether your volunteer program is on the right track or not.
Signs of a Healthy Volunteer Culture
Some volunteer managers spend years trying to get their volunteer programs to start running at peak efficacy. Volunteer management involves many moving parts and can be chaotic to track while working with dozens or even hundreds of workers. If your volunteer workforce is displaying any of the signs below, you’re doing something right!
- High rates of volunteer engagement
- A demographically diverse volunteer workforce
- Wide-ranging assortment of skills among volunteers
- Safe working environments
- Clear channels of communication between volunteers and leadership
- Ethical volunteer leaders leading by example in key roles
- Increased sense of self-worth among employees
Signs of an Unhealthy Volunteer Culture
A negative or unhealthy volunteer culture is easier to spot than a positive one. When the culture they work in is toxic, volunteers cannot perform their duties to the best of their ability. If you notice your volunteer workforce’s productivity starting to slip, it might be time to call an emergency meeting to look for other signs of an unhealthy volunteer culture.
- Volunteer churn leads to regular occurrences of volunteers quitting
- Extreme workloads causing volunteer burnout
- Volunteers aren’t on board with the organization’s mission
- Volunteer feedback is overwhelmingly negative
- Morale among volunteers is consistently low
Six Steps to Build a Healthy Volunteer Culture at Your Organization
If you learn how to unlock the powers of a healthy volunteer culture at your organization, achieving your mission targets will become much easier. However, significant change takes time — and it doesn’t get much more significant than volunteer culture for many volunteer organizations. That’s why it’s better to approach the challenge of building a new, healthy volunteer culture in several stages to ensure the changes made remain permanent.
Here are the six steps to building a healthy volunteer culture:
Assess Your Current Volunteer Culture
Find out where you stand in the present before going any further with plans. Survey your volunteers and analyze your program with the best tools and sharpest minds at your disposal. In the assessment stage, you need to figure out how your existing volunteer culture is serving your organization’s mission.
Define Your Ideal Volunteer Culture
You’ll never hit the bullseye if you can’t even see the target. Instead of simply attempting to change established processes for the sake of switching things up, take the time to clearly understand what your ideal volunteer culture looks like. What kind of values do you wish to promote in your volunteer program? How will it benefit the organization as well as the volunteers?
The answers to these questions will help you define your vision for volunteer culture.
Unite and Educate Your Volunteers
Bring the various stakeholders of the volunteer program, like the program manager, group leaders, and grassroots volunteers, together under a shared mission. To this end, you should draft a handbook or guide for everyone in the program. This guide should provide a consistent frame of reference for all stakeholders, no matter their role.
Certain resources, like the organization’s mission statement, code of conduct, and many policies and procedures, should be made easily accessible for every member of the volunteer program. Not only does this keep the workforce well-informed, but they also have a shared sense of identity because of their common mission.
Appoint Capable Leaders
Volunteer leaders are at the forefront of setting the tone for an organization’s volunteer culture. An ineffective leader will fail to inspire their team, leading to volunteer turnover, low morale, and sub-par performance. On the other hand, a dynamic and inspiring leader can spark volunteers into action and lift their spirits.
It takes a unique blend of skills to be an effective volunteer leader. Not only do candidates require hard skills like organization and resource management, but they also need soft skills like empathy and compassionate communication. Along with these requirements, volunteer leaders must also display an affinity for the greater cause and completely support your organization’s mission statement.
Communicate With Volunteers
Your volunteers must have a clear channel to communicate with you. Today, the number of options can be counterproductive — using email, messaging apps, social media, and other channels concurrently can cause wires to be crossed and lead to miscommunications. A volunteer management platform makes it easier to keep your volunteer workforce in the loop.
Celebrate Shared Achievements with Volunteers
Though volunteers usually work for no pay, they still deserve the reward of knowing their efforts are being appreciated. It may not seem like a big gesture, but even small tokens of thanks for a job well done are essential for a healthy volunteer culture.
Better Manage Volunteers with VolunteerHub
VolunteerHub is an industry-leading cloud-based volunteer management software. It helps organizations with every aspect of their volunteer program, from volunteer recruitment to management.
