Best Practices 6 min read

How to Manage Challenging Volunteers

Eric Burger August 5, 2024

11:37

Every member of your volunteer program is important, which can make it difficult when you encounter challenging volunteers. These individuals may have problems taking direction, collaborating with others, or meeting expectations, and they often complicate or slow down your processes.

However, when you approach challenging volunteers with honesty, kindness, and firm policies, you can transform them into a valuable member of your organization!

Why You Need To Address Difficult Volunteers

Dealing with conflict can be daunting, especially when volunteers are generously offering their time and skills for free. However, it is crucial to address challenging volunteers promptly. Their disruptive behavior can escalate over time, impacting the culture of your volunteer program and the overall effectiveness of your organization.

Ignoring difficult volunteers can lead to:

Unnecessary conflict
Poor morale
Decreased volunteer retention
Lower productivity
Decreased volunteering impact
Poor program reputation
Increased legal risks

As soon as you notice a volunteer creating friction, take action before minor annoyances spiral out into major problems.

Step One: Formalize Policies for Difficult Volunteers

Strong policies always make it easier to handle challenges. Put systems in place for reporting grievances and resolving conflicts, and keep them consistent across the board. Make sure you:

Create official channels for volunteers and staff members to report issues with volunteers, such as online forms or emails to specific team members.
Establish a process for documenting volunteer incident reports.
Designate a staff member to handle these reports (often your volunteer manager will fulfill this role).
Outline a formal resolution protocol with clearly defined steps, including initial meetings with volunteers, performance reviews, follow-up meetings, and consequences for not changing behavior.
Describe the actions that would result in the volunteer’s termination, including specific benchmarks for improvement and offenses that merit immediate firing.

Step Two: Assess Challenging Volunteers

Managing difficult volunteers requires understanding the individual and the role they currently play in your organization. Be as objective as possible while exercising empathy. Just because an individual is not succeeding at the moment doesn’t mean that they are a “bad” person.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Where is this volunteer struggling (i.e., collaboration, punctuality, executing tasks, etc.)?
Are this volunteer’s actions negatively impacting others, including other volunteers, staff members, beneficiaries, and the public?
Who brought up the complaint, and what inherent biases might they have?
Did the organization play any role in creating these issues?
What specific changes do you need to see in the volunteer’s behavior?
Would a change in position help mitigate the problem?

Being able to clearly define the issues with the volunteer’s behavior will make it much easier to have a constructive conversation with them.

Step Three: Approach the Volunteer

With strong policies in place and an objective overview of the problem, it’s time to talk with the challenging volunteer. A face-to-face conversation is critical because it limits the possibility of misinterpretation and allows you to hear the volunteer’s perspective.

Before the meeting, make some notes for yourself so that you can keep the conversation as focused and constructive as possible. Be able to provide specific examples of poor behavior and suggestions for how the situation could have been handled better. These examples both bolster your position and provide insights for volunteers who may not have realized the effect they were having.

Meet with the volunteer in a private place and facilitate a positive environment:

Minimize emotions. Keep all language neutral and professional.
Focus on the actions the volunteer has taken in an official capacity—not actions that occurred outside of organizational events.
Clearly outline organizational policies.
Show the volunteer that you appreciate their contributions.
Allow the volunteer to voice their perspective.
Keep the meeting size small. If you are nervous, you can invite another staff member to join you, but bringing too many people into the meeting can make the volunteer feel outnumbered and attacked. If the volunteer gets defensive, it will be harder to have a calm, productive conversation.

Above all, make sure that the volunteer knows that you are not accusing them. Emphasize that you are trying to understand their point of view and find solutions that will make everyone’s experiences better.

Step Four: Create a Plan for Change

Collaborate with the volunteer on a plan for positive change, informed by your volunteer complaint policies. Including challenging volunteers in the conflict resolution process will make them feel more heard and valued, as well as give them more ownership over the changes they make.

Clarify expectations: Make sure the volunteer fully understands their responsibilities and what you expect of them going forward. Consider setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound).
Offer additional training: If a volunteer is struggling to execute specific tasks or understand your organization’s processes, more training may be helpful. Share some extra resources and consider offering one-on-one sessions.
Pair the volunteer with a mentor: See if a more experienced volunteer would be willing to take the challenging volunteer under their wing. The experienced volunteer can act as a strong role model, as well as being a resource for questions and peer-to-peer feedback.
Revisit the volunteer’s role: Consider reassigning the volunteer to other positions. They may simply be better suited to other tasks. Moving them to a different team can also help resolve interpersonal conflicts by reducing the amount of time contentious volunteers have to spend together.
Schedule a follow-up: Find a time to meet again shortly so that you can check on the volunteer’s progress, answer any questions they have, and refine your action plan.
Set a timeline for improvement: Make sure the volunteer understands that you need to see improvement within a specific time frame. You can even set a probationary period, and at the end of it, you and the volunteer can meet again to decide whether they should continue working with your organization.

How to Prevent Challenging Volunteers

While it’s impossible to control your volunteers’ actions, you can take steps to limit conflict.

Implement volunteer screening: Volunteer screening gives you the chance to see whether an individual is a good fit for your organizational culture. It also plays a key role in protecting your organization from untrustworthy individuals.
Write a comprehensive volunteer handbook: A volunteer handbook is an excellent resource for new and seasoned volunteers alike. The volunteer handbook clearly outlines policies, requirements, and processes so that every volunteer knows what is expected of them.
Offer thorough training: Make sure every volunteer fully understands the organization and their role within it. Provide hands-on experience before events and personalized, position-specific modules to make sure volunteers feel comfortable with their responsibilities.
Create a volunteer code of conduct: Write a code of conduct that describes how you expect volunteers to behave whenever they are representing your organization. Have volunteers sign the code of conduct to formally agree to the terms. This signed code of conduct can also become a valuable tool during a conflict resolution process.

Another important aspect of volunteer conflict prevention involves reflecting on the program itself. Ask yourself:

Are there any ambiguities in your current volunteer processes?
Do you represent your program realistically during recruitment?
Are you providing enough training?
Have you implemented position-matching surveys?
Are you assigning the right volunteers to the right roles?
Do you set clear volunteer expectations?
Have you provided thorough volunteer role descriptions?
Do certain volunteer opportunities need to be split up into multiple roles?
Do your volunteers have enough time to complete their assigned tasks?

The more you clarify your program, its policies, and its processes, the less likely you are to run into challenging volunteers.

When and How to Fire a Volunteer

While you may be reluctant to lose a volunteer, sometimes conflict resolution attempts are not successful. At that point, termination may be the best option for your nonprofit, beneficiaries, and your other volunteers.

First and foremost, you should understand the offenses that merit immediate termination. The specifics may vary depending on your organization, but most nonprofits will immediately fire a volunteer who engages in verbal, physical, or sexual harassment, violent behavior, stealing, data breaches, or drug/alcohol usage on the job. Make sure these fireable offenses are clearly outlined in your official policies, including your volunteer conflict policy and code of conduct.

If a volunteer has not engaged in an immediately fireable offense, make sure you follow the organization’s conflict resolution processes. Many volunteers will improve immediately after you bring an issue to their attention—after all, they started volunteering to have a positive impact—but some may still fall short. If repeated attempts to improve the volunteer’s behavior have failed, it is better for everyone involved if they are let go.

Firing someone is never a pleasant experience, but sometimes, it is necessary. Follow these best practices to ensure the termination goes as smoothly as possible:

Schedule a meeting with the volunteer, the volunteer manager, and another member of organizational leadership. Including a third-party witness is key to ensuring that proper procedures are followed, and it also prevents any false accusations from the terminated volunteer.
Notify the volunteer that they are being fired and respectfully outline the reasons for termination. Cite specific examples of poor behavior and the ways you attempted to resolve the situation.
Provide the volunteer with a written notice of termination and keep another copy for your records.
Ask the volunteer to return any organizational property that they have (i.e. keys, badges, etc.)
Write a meeting report for your records.
Update the volunteer’s profile in your volunteer database. Be sure to note the date they were fired and the grounds for termination. This information will be particularly helpful if the volunteer ever applies to your organization again.

Effectively Manage All Your Volunteers with VolunteerHub

Whether you’re dealing with challenging volunteers or long-term supporters, VolunteerHub makes volunteer management easy. Our software platform offers a robust suite of features to streamline your approach to volunteer management, ultimately saving your organization time, energy, and money.

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