Have you noticed there is a change in the way volunteers want to be engaged?

Traditional envelope-stuffing, door-knocking, database entry-type volunteers are harder and harder to find. Younger generations of volunteers are increasingly interested in the personal benefits from their volunteer roles, more than having an altruistic philosophy of volunteering. The “Zoomers” have a lifetime of experience, and they are not interested in spending time volunteering only with their hands. They want to use the significant knowledge in their heads to really move organizational missions forward.

All of these “next” volunteers are very passionate about many causes – and they are not finding ways to be appropriately engaged. It is often a frustrating experience for them to volunteer in community organizations. We must understand they are not completely altruistic. They do want to be paid — with an opportunity to really make a difference, to meet new people, to use the talent they have, to know the community valued their time AND talent. Yet a headline in the Vancouver Sun from a recent study released by Volunteer Canada stated two-thirds of volunteers had a “negative experience”. Wow! So what now?

At Vantage Point we feel it is important to tackle this phenomenon. There are a large number of people who want to be engaged in community (visibly demonstrated at the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics). The problem is community organizations are not intentional about how they could engage these significant numbers of people — differently. It seems like a simple case of supply and demand. There must be a way to connect these citizens with significant talent (who want to be engaged in a new way) and community organizations to build capacity to deliver their missions.

The competitive advantage of the community sector is that we do not require money to hire all the people who work with us. Many people enthusiastically GIVE us their time, talent and passion.

We took up the practical challenge early in the new Millennium. We have planned and experimented and studied and faltered — and forged forward in our own organization with a new way of engaging people — ALL the people. We have learned first to focus on the people-we-pay-with-money. These people must have different skills sets. They have to be able to delegate, convene, connect — and not be “doers.” Then we learned we must create a plan that examines all the external talent we could engage to deliver the mission and goals of the organization. That has taken us to a very different kind of workforce planning.

Workforce Planning

We were excited to see an article in CharityVillage® last fall on Workforce Planning. It was a breakthrough for us to think there was a focus in this area. If you are planning your workforce, you are signaling a more deliberate, intentional focus on the engagement of people. How many organizations do that? How many present a Workforce Plan — or a People Plan — to the board of directors along with the Financial Plan? We think this is critical in a focus to deliver the mission.

There are keys to lay the groundwork for the integration of people that aren?t paid with money in your workforce plan. You can begin creating the right context for this new approach by:

Clearly stating your mission and annual goals/directives. You will require a certain complement of people to deliver on these goals if your organization is going to be able to measure the impact you have made in community. There are people out there who are able and willing to help you achieve these goals without monetary compensation. But when you begin to engage people in different ways they must all have the same goal (your mission) and know that what they are doing is linked to that goal. This connection to your mission is a great motivator — simple and often overlooked!

Ensuring people truly are a priority! If you say people are your first consideration and all the important conversations in your organization are about money, then workforce planning can be a sham.

Gaining buy-in from the board of directors. You can implement this new structure in your organization by ensuring the significant talent that is part of your governing body is completely onside with this new way of doing business. When you involve members of the board in other ways in your organization, they will learn the magic of giving their talent — in addition to the very critical (and often abdicated) role of governing.

Emphasizing to the board and to the current paid employees the competitive advantage of accessing top-notch skill sets outside of traditionally paid roles. People who are paid significant dollars for their unique talent in their “day jobs” are often very happy to provide that skill to a community organization — without the fee that we could never afford in the first place. It is usually about doing something different than they do in their paid role, and yet employs that talent.

Preparing your organization for significant change. Creating and executing a workforce plan that includes paid-with-money employees and not-paid-with-money employees is VERY different. It isn?t about having volunteers in your organization. It is about planning and executing with a group of people in a brand new way. It is important to make this clear with everyone from the beginning of the recruitment and hiring process. Engaging other people is part of what is expected from everyone in a leadership role. It is part of the performance review.

With this in mind, you can then examine differently the steps of workforce planning as outlined in the CharityVillage® article by Kathline Holmes from Gailforce Resources:

Step-by-Step Process

1. Strategy integration — what is your mission? What are your goals for the year? How are you going to engage all the people to deliver your mission? Are there people in your current workforce that actually don’t support your mission? Sometimes saying “no” is more difficult than saying “yes.”
2. Environmental scanning — what is happening in your community? What currently characterizes the external environment that affects your organization and the people you serve?
3. Forecast workforce needs — what kind of talents might you require? Is evaluation critical and do you require someone constant in that role? What about ability to plan? Develop curriculum?
4. Analyze your workforce supply — who is available in your workforce? What does the standard labour market look like in your geographic region? What kind of external talent might be available in this same geographic region?
5. Weigh your HR Levers — who currently has the talents you require? Are the full-time positions you have created still relevant, given your direction and goals?
6. Identify the gaps — what exceptional talents could you include in order to more significantly deliver your desired organizational outcomes & strategic plan? With excellence!
7. Develop strategies — what will be your process to develop an action plan? What new tools must you find/create to determine all the people are accountable?
8. Evaluate and revise — do you annually examine, evaluate and revise your workforce planning process? Do you determine skills that were hard to find in external talent? Do you have to re-evaluate current full-time roles? What are the core competencies in each of these roles? Do you have to adjust because of a new strategic direction?

There is much research and considerable creativity immersed in discovering new ways of funding community organizations. The Social Finance Project is the most recent, very exciting and we wholeheartedly support a model of “investing” dollars in improving community, rather than sinking “donations” into a cause without a clear strategy to change the current condition. In addition to a new way of looking at financial resources, we also believe there is a new way to focus on human resources. It will significantly improve our ability to impact outcomes and build strong communities in our country. The step-by-step way to look at human resources differently — with a new kind of people engagement — is to examine workforce planning with brand new eyes!

Colleen Kelly is the executive director of Vantage Point where she leads a team of eight employees and 206 volunteers who deliver nine programs to social profit organizations to make it easier for them to lead, plan, govern and work with the right people to deliver their missions. Colleen believes in engaging all the talents of people — both paid with money and paid in other ways — to further organizational missions. She can be reached at ckelly@thevantagepoint.ca.