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silence

25/4/2014

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Why are we surprised when potential volunteers don’t get back to us, and does it matter?

One of the most common complaints I hear from volunteer-involving organisations is that many potential or new volunteers never respond or suddenly stop responding to emails and phone calls.

Often, I would argue, we only have ourselves to blame. On other occasions I believe there should be no blame at all – these drop-outs are unavoidable and actually a good thing.


Our fault?

When you apply for a job it’s common not to hear anything back unless you’re shortlisted for interview. Sadly many volunteering enquiries also go unanswered. So someone could apply for 5 jobs and hear nothing back, and enquire about 10 volunteering opportunities and get two replies. Why, then, are we surprised that if they’re not interested in our volunteer role when they learn more about it they simply ignore us? We’ve taught them that it’s fine to ignore someone.

Another common reason for sudden silence is a lack of support or information. I have known potential or new volunteers to stop responding when:
  • it took the organisation weeks or even months to reply to their initial enquiry
  • they haven’t been provided with information about the role(s) available and what they involve
  • they haven’t been made to feel welcome (e.g. by being introduced to others, shown where they can get a coffee, greeted at an event, etc.)
  • they simply haven’t been told where they need to be and when (sadly this happens a lot with committees, who assume that because their committee meeting dates are advertised on a website or in a newsletter new volunteers will automatically attend)
  • they’ve missed a session or meeting and are worried about going back. Giving a new volunteer a call to check they’re OK and see why they weren’t there can make them feel valued, reassure them it’s OK to come back, and enable you to identify any concerns they have.
  • they haven’t been given anything to do or, conversely, they feel bombarded with tasks they don’t want to do/feel ill-equipped to carry out

Part of good volunteer management is to support people through the early stages of volunteering – from when they enquire right through to when they’re a fully-fledged volunteer (and, of course, beyond that). We need to get things right.

Unavoidable drop out?

On the other hand, in my opinion, any healthy volunteer programme should have some drop out during the recruitment process (whether that’s a formalised process or not). It’s natural that some people will decide a role isn’t for them when they find out more. In fact you could argue that it’s good to try to put people off by being upfront about the realities of the role as early as possible.

An example of this which I often quote is the RNLI. I live at the coast and I once thought, “Maybe I should volunteer for the lifeboats.” I followed this up with a visit to their website, which quickly put me off the idea. Why? I read this…

“Imagine for a moment that you’re part of the crew on a lifeboat. It’s 2.30am on a freezing January morning and the pager’s just woken you from a deep sleep in a snug warm bed. You then head out to sea in complete darkness and 10m waves rise and fall around you, ready to swamp you at any moment. Strong gale force winds throw the lifeboat around like a toy. A fishing trawler is in difficulties 23 miles out to sea.
Still want to volunteer? Read on…
”

(from http://rnli.org/howtosupportus/getinvolved/Volunteer-zone/Pages/Volunteer-opportunities.aspx?tab=Lifeboat-crew-member)

That put me off, and rightly so. I read that with horror so I’m not the right person for them. Much better to save everyone the time and effort of enquiring when it’s not the right role for me.

A less life-threatening example is the children’s reading charity Beanstalk, who I worked for until recently. They require volunteers to go into their local school twice a week, for 1.5 hrs each time, for a full academic year. At every stage of the recruitment process they ask questions like, “Are you intending to look for full time work in the next year?” “Can you commit to 3 hrs a week during school terms?” It’s natural that some people will drop out as a result of these questions and this is a good thing. To provide consistency and stability to the children they read with, volunteer reading helpers have to be able to give that level of commitment. It’s much better that people who can’t do that drop out sooner rather than later (or are directed towards another role with the charity).

Facing the facts

So we shouldn’t always beat ourselves up about every potential volunteer who never makes it to being a volunteer. But we should think about what happened and introduce good processes to prevent avoidable drop-out and the inevitable disappointment it causes all round.


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Can the army learn from the voluntary sector?

15/1/2014

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The restructure of the armed forces has been in the UK news for some time. It seems less and less likely that the army reserves can recruit enough new reservists to meet its targets and fulfil its contribution to the restructured force. In fact in December The Times reported that one recruitment target had been slashed by almost three quarters. Elsewhere, it was reported that the online recruitment system isn’t ready and has fallen nearly 2 years behind schedule, that applications have been lost in the system, and that people have been waiting as long as nine months to see if they have passed basic security checks to join the force.

In a Radio 4 interview, a man who had recently tried to sign up to the reservists cited the following difficulties:
-       No one at his local army reserve office knew how he could go about applying (they ended up telling him to go home and look online).
-       The online application form blocked his application when he couldn’t answer one of the first questions. There was no way to move on and come back to that question later.
-       There was a lack of response on a phone line.

This is big news because it affects the paid workforce of the UK’s military forces.

However, if you are involved in the voluntary sector it may all sound familiar. These are issues that we have been aware of and fighting against for many years now in our efforts to recruit sufficient skilled volunteers for charities and non-profits (and yes, I know that reservists aren’t volunteers, but there are similarities).

Fantastic progress has been made, with many charity sector organisations now leading the way in effective and efficient recruitment – if only the army had come to us we could have pointed them in the right direction!

Unfortunately there are still volunteer-involving organisations trying to recruit volunteers without getting the right things in place. Like the would-be reservist above, would-be volunteers can’t get through to the right person, the system doesn’t always work, and there can be long delays.

The army has now launched a £3million recruitment campaign to boost both regular and reserve forces. Very few voluntary organisations could ever afford to do likewise, so we have to get it right to capitalise on each and every individual who considers volunteering with us. Even with £3million, the army may still find it hard to recruit if people can’t get through the application process.

So come on voluntary sector, if you had the ear of the head of the army, what would be your top tip for how to improve recruitment?  

And could you learn anything from this affair to help you in your volunteer recruitment? 


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    Kirsty MCDowell

    is a specialist in training, volunteer management and relationships, and facilitation. She is also a passionate musician and a keen (though mediocre) rower.

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