Managing Volunteers by Amy Delamaide: Part One

A Tale of Two Volunteer Opportunities…

In October, I volunteered for two different community events. The people running these events had several things in common: both organizations depended on a few staff people and hundreds of volunteers to make a large, annual event possible. They had a few differences: one had seven years’ experience gathering and organizing the volunteers they relied on; the other was running its inaugural event and learning for the first time how to manage volunteers.

Nonprofits thinking about how to manage volunteers can learn from what both organizations did well.

The two organizations both did several things well:

• They held a pre-event informational meeting for volunteers.
• They assigned volunteers to particular staff person for supervision of the volunteers’ activities during the event.
• They held “thank you” parties for the volunteers, with food, drinks, and celebration of the volunteers’ contributions to the event.

The organization with years of experience in managing volunteers did a few more things well:

• They respected my time – The informational meeting in advance of the event wasn’t too long, there was food available, I met and got to know other volunteers, and I met the volunteer coordinator and the staff person to whom I was assigned.
• They had several points of contact - They built “supervisory redundancy” into their system of volunteer oversight. There was one primary volunteer coordinator. Then each different type of volunteer reported to the staff person who oversaw that function. If I had a question, there were at least two people I could call for help.
• They had a central Volunteer Spot – During the event, the volunteer coordinator was available at a central location. I could access information about the event, instructions on how to help, and food or drink at that location.
• They had info available - Printed information about the event was available to all volunteers at several locations. This helped me feel equipped to answer the questions of event-goers.
• They gave me meaningful work - The activities I volunteered to do were clearly vital to making sure the event went well. I felt that my service was necessary—if I hadn’t been there, the event would not have gone as well.

What does your organization do well in its management of volunteers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Picture courtesy of Mike Baird

"If I Can Help Somebody" | Introducing Dee Hinton-Turner

“Glory!” is one of the first words you’re likely to hear Dorthene “Dee” Hinton-Turner say. It’s not just an expression but a way Dee sees the world. Dee is inspired with a sense of mission and purpose. It’s this that drives her to help others, first as a Certified Peer Specialist, and now as a Peer Educator training CPSs at CCSR.

But Dee’s desire to help is not new; it goes back to her childhood, to singing Mahalia Jackson’s classic “If I Can Help Somebody” in church:  

If I can help somebody
As I travel along
If I can help somebody
With a word or song
If I can help somebody
From doing wrong
My living shall not be in vain.

Dee was not sure what shape that help would take until she began a relationship with Southwest Boulevard Family Healthcare in Kansas City, Kansas. Here, Dee discovered the power of peer support in her own life, and knew that, as she says “This is it!” The spirit had led her on a path to become a CPS and help others as she had been helped.

Dee set her professional sights on two targets, Rainbow Mental Health Center or KU Medical Center in Kansas City, persisting in her attempts to land a job as a CPS at these organizations. When she finally got in at Rainbow, “Oh my goodness!” she found the healing power of helping others works both ways: “Being a CPS is personal medicine for me,” according to Dee. “There wasn’t a lot of leadership or instruction” at Rainbow, she notes, so Dee could use her peers’ own needs to help empower them. This in turn helped foster in Dee a sense of her own independence and personal power. At the end of a day at Rainbow, Dee was “thoroughly exhausted,” but felt rewarded and fulfilled.

In the words of “If I Can Help Somebody,” 

My living shall not be in vain
My living shall not be in vain
If I can help somebody
While I'm singing this song
My living shall not be in vain.

Dee’s experiences as a CPS were not in vain. Some days, she went into work “uncertain if a discussion topic [she selected] would work,” but when it did, the negative self-talk common to psychiatric diagnosis dissolved, uplifting both the peer seeking services and peer support worker alike. In small, profound ways, her work was made up of many acts of faith.

That faith’s solid foundation and the role of spirituality in her life make Dee think of herself as “The Spiritual CPS,” and her goals as a Peer Educator include exploring the relationship between spirituality and recovery from psychiatric diagnosis. “My being at WSU is not by chance,” she says, but an opportunity to learn and develop even more helping skills, part of her vision to “strike out and know more.”

And in that there is the glory of empowering others to live lives that are not in vain.    

For more about becoming a Certified Peer Specialist, visit trainingteams.org.