My Tip of the Week: Help a Struggling Volunteer
February 2nd, 2011 by Tim SullivanIt happens in every group. One of your key volunteers, probably a great person, just isn’t very organized. How do you make sure her responsibilities get done without creating all kinds of drama and bad blood? It’s tricky, but it’s possible.
My first point is that it is OK (and even part of your leadership job) to think about issues like this. Your best defense is to guide folks into jobs that fit their skills and gifts. Deadline-phobic Mary may be a bad choice to chair your auction, but she might be perfect for recruiting new volunteers or running the teacher appreciation committee. It’s also a great idea to team the organizationally challenged with a more buttoned-up volunteer as cochairs.
If you find yourself with a solo chairperson who is dropping balls, then you do need to take some action. The best tactic is to find a willing volunteer with complementary skills and bring her onto the team. You don’t have to force the new volunteer into a cochair role or depose the current leader (the credit doesn’t matter, and the drama isn’t worth it), but you do want to subtly find ways to add the skills that are missing to the event you need completed.
For too many groups, the struggling leader means weeks or months of behind-the-scenes griping and then a disappointing final result. Leaders step in — nicely, when they can — to help find solutions before it’s too late.
We have lots of resources for building leadership skills on ptotoday.com; a couple of my favorites are “Empowering Committee Chairs” and “Are You a Leader or a Manager?“
February 3rd, 2011 at 9:49 am
Great post. Anyone who gives up their time should not have to feel overwhelmed and pressured.
February 26th, 2011 at 9:22 am
Here is a site that helps a lot when working with people that you need to volunteer to do or supply something. It is called HelpTime.com and it like an event participation tool. You create an event and add specific tasks or requirements. You also add what they call participants (people that are part of the organization or group that will potentially volunteer to help). After adding the participants an email is sent from the site with a link to your event. The volunteers follow the link and see all the needed help and can sign-up just by clicking on an open one. It’s really easy and lets everyone see at any time what is still needed.
I’ve used it as a class parent when we needed parents to send in items for a class party. Instead of sending a note home with the kids, I created an event and listed the items we needed (cups, plates, juice boxes, cupcakes, cookies … etc). I added the parent’s emails from the class list and the site sent out an email. Each parent was able to go online and see the items still needed, they could sign-up for whatever they wanted to send in. It saved a lot of time and saved people from sending in the same things.