5 Ways to Supercharge Your Nonprofit's Volunteer Training
In this episode, I’ve invited Karen Knight, volunteer extraordinaire, to give us some specific ways we can supercharge our nonprofit’s volunteer training.
The demand for nonprofit services has increased, but the number of volunteers has decreased before and since COVID. It’s important that volunteers are trained well so that they have a good volunteering experience, and continue to volunteer.
This is the first episode that we have had specifically on volunteer training and I can’t wait for you to hear everything Karen has to share.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
04:11 Karen’s volunteer journey
07:18 The definition of volunteers and volunteering
10:25 Why it's important to train volunteers
14:07 Challenges in volunteer training
19:19 Supercharge your nonprofit volunteer training
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5 Ways to Supercharge Your Nonprofit's Volunteer Training
1.8 million.
That's how many nonprofits need volunteers in the US alone. That's according to Nonprofit Pro.
The Council of Nonprofits notes that the demand for nonprofit services has increased. However, the number of volunteers has decreased before and since COVID. Organizations all around the US depend on volunteers, yet volunteer rates are decreasing.
But here's something exciting…
The University of Maryland's Do Good Institute found that funders are interested in funding volunteer engagement.
Why is this exciting to me?
Because that means we can actually train our volunteers well.
I can only imagine that if you get volunteers, and they have a bad experience, they might not continue volunteering. This just keeps us in this cycle of not having enough volunteers for the demand our organization's experience.
We have to provide a good, enjoyable volunteer experience. And that starts with onboarding and training. That's why I invited Karen Knight, volunteer extraordinaire, to the podcast to give us some specific ways you can supercharge your nonprofit’s volunteer training.
With a career spanning over three decades, Karen is a seasoned professional renowned for her unwavering commitment to the nonprofit sector.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
1) Volunteering - What Does it Mean?
Karen shared with us her definition of a volunteer:
“A volunteer is anyone who goes out and helps somebody else without being paid with money. It's a wide-open field. So it's not just people who have a role in a particular organization, if you go shovel your neighbor's driveway, for them, you're a volunteer. So most of us have volunteered at one time or another, even if we've never set foot inside a not-for-profit organization.” - Karen Knight
Karen explains that volunteers who want to help in the nonprofit sector can do just about anything:
They can be a part of the board.
They can fulfill program or service roles.
A lot of the legal or financial help can be pro bono.
“A volunteer is someone who helps. And that's it, right?” - Karen Knight
Volunteers are actually an extension of the nonprofit and how they're doing their work.
Karen explains that a lot of times nonprofits complain that they can’t find volunteers
“Everybody volunteers. You just have to show them that what you want them to do is what they want to do and find the person to whom that's the perfect job. And those people are out there.” - Karen Knight
As long as you know what roles you need to fill, you will be able to find people that are the right fit.
I will mention that in the US, there are some employment law considerations that you would need to go through to figure out if a certain role is a staff role versus a volunteer role.
Once you've got your volunteers, it's time to start investing in them. Why is it important to train them? We’re answering that next.
2) The Importance of Training Volunteers
“Everybody wants to do a good job, whatever their task or role is, you come in and you want to make a difference. You want to feel good about what you've done.” - Karen Knight
Karen shares a simple example of stocking shelves:
If you walk into an organization and they ask you to stock shelves without giving you any further instructions, it will feel frustrating when they come back and tell you you’ve done it wrong.
“It gets frustrating, people will leave, they won't stick around. But if you take the time and say we put all the books in this area, and we put them in by order of author [...], you explain it to them, you train them on it, then they can do it, and then they feel good about having done it.” - Karen Knight
This is a simple example but more complex tasks will have more complex repercussions if there is no training.
“Sometimes, the rules can be pretty extensive. Some of them, depending on your organization, can be life or death. If you're on a suicide hotline, for example, or if you're working in a homeless shelter and someone has an overdose incident, how do you deal with that? They need to be trained, otherwise, it can harm them, it can harm others. And the organization doesn’t get the impact that it could have if you have ill-trained volunteers.” - Karen Knight
Karen mentions an important point here:
Providing clear expectations leads to volunteer satisfaction and less frustration.
Volunteers know what's expected of them. And they know how you want them to do the role that you've brought them in to do. And so you're getting what you need out of that, because you've provided those clear expectations, and they're leaving more satisfied with a job well done because they feel like they've met your expectations.
Beyond this, Karen mentions thinking about the nonprofit ‘customer or client’.
There is an impact on the person that is receiving services from the nonprofit and making sure that volunteer is trained is an important part of their experience.
3) 5 Ways to Supercharge Your Nonprofit's Volunteer Training
Karen shared five ways to supercharge your nonprofit's volunteer training. And I love how well these points align with staff training.
1. Create training that's relevant, meaningful, and fun
Karen gives an example of when she worked with the manager of an animal shelter:
The volunteers were complaining about the training they needed to take a dog for a walk.
“Why do I need to know how to deal with aggression issues and different diseases that dogs can get?”
“Why is this important?”
“It's a waste of time.”
Karen recommends three actions in this case:
1. Take a look if the training is relevant to that particular role.
“Train the volunteer on what they need to know. It's more likely to stick because they're not getting information that might get lost in all the stuff that doesn't matter to their role.” - Karen Knight
2. Use stories to explain why the training is meaningful.
“With this shelter manager, he finally started telling a story about a woman who took one of the shelter dogs out for a walk, met somebody else out walking their dog, the dogs played and she came back with a serious infectious disease. Three dogs in the shelter died because of it. So all of a sudden, it's important to people walking dogs that they learn this. [...] So if you can show them exactly why it's important, they're more likely to be interested in it.” - Karen Knight
3. Make the training fun.
“What can you do to spice your training up? Use stories, make sure it's relevant, have interactive things, ask questions, play games. [...] Find ways to make the training itself a lot more interesting.” - Karen Knight
This is something we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast, and you might want to take a look at these past episodes on making training relevant, meaningful, and fun:
Episode 73: The Forgetting Curve: How to Make Your New Training More Memorable
Episode 63: 4 Ways to Use Humor and Storytelling in Your Nonprofit Training with Gita Kulkarni
Episode 36: How Nonprofit Learning and Development Leaders Can Use Play to Create Organizational Change with Acey Holmes
Episode 07: Do THIS and You Will Never Have a Boring Virtual Training Again with Melissa Dinwiddie
2. Combine training opportunities into a single event
“Training happens too often, or there's just too much of it.” - Karen Knight
Volunteers have limited time. So this makes so much sense to me.
“If you have things that get updated, unless it's a serious issue, like a safety thing that they need to know immediately, it's better to make an event of training and have one training every quarter, rather than half a day or half an hour here or an hour there at random times. Just make a big event, it makes it a lot easier, so they don't feel like they're always being trained.” - Karen Knight
3. Involve volunteers in the needs analysis process
The third thing Karen shares is involving volunteers in the needs analysis process to identify what their needs are, because they may be different than what we think they are.
“Quite often we will train people and whether it's volunteers or not, we train things on what we think they need to know. And yet they may be out there struggling with something completely different that we didn't realize was an issue. So talk to them. This is something in any part of volunteering, talk to your volunteers, find out what things are happening in their lives, and build a relationship with them.” - Karen Knight
That kind of co-creation period makes such a difference in the buy-in of the training.
4. Use a buddy system
“Assign a mentor, or a buddy, somebody who's been doing the role or a very similar role for quite a while. You bring a new volunteer in and you train them and you give them instruction. But as everybody knows, you don't remember everything. You can't remember everything.” - Karen Knight
Using a buddy system aligns so well with using wraparound supports, which I also talk a lot about in staff training.
It's one thing to go to a training and go back to your job. But what happens when you're back on the job? You need some additional wraparound support to really see behavior change, and a buddy system is a great way to do that for volunteers.
“You are in a leadership position, so it's less comfortable to come talk to you than it is to talk to a peer. So if you have someone you can assign, that makes a big difference. And that person can also teach them the unspoken rules and training of an organization. What the culture is like, who to talk to when something goes wrong, all the little things that aren't really able to be put into a lesson plan.” - Karen Knight
5. Connect with other volunteers
The last thing Karen shares is to encourage your volunteers to see what other organizations are doing so they can continuously learn and improve.
“If you are in, say, a suicide hotline, and there is a children's health hotline, encourage your volunteers to talk to the volunteers at that other place, and pick up things that work there. That way both organizations can actually improve the program altogether. A rising tide lifts all boats. The more we can share information, the better it is.” - Karen Knight
I love this. This is one of the benefits of the Nonprofit L&D Collective. You're able to connect with others who are creating training inside their nonprofits and associations and learn what they are doing.
To hear the full conversation I had with Karen Knight on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 87.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
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