How do non-profits hold volunteers accountable?
You could try rotating the “co-ordinator” role among some of the long standing volunteers. Creating better communication amongst the volunteers can create more peer pressure, more commitment, more incidental reminders to do the job, and more opportunities for volunteers to ask questions that they are slightly embarrassed about having to ask, but that are crucial to getting the job done properly. So (if applicable) you could try organising social events for the volunteers or trips to places that are relevant to the job. Communicating publically about how you personally are doing with your workload, the problems you are having and the solutions you have found may make other people more inclined to chime in. Keep track of the volunteers that don’t pull their weight and politely tell them that it’s understandable that they have other commitments and you won’t be assigning them more work unless they let you know they are able to do it.
I’ve found that matching the volunteer’s motivation for donating their time to the demands of the particular position is really important. Some people volunteer because they’re lonely; don’t give them a job that works in solitude, for instance. Someone who wants to develop skills to put on a resume may have a totally different focus. Spending effort to meet the volunteer’s needs while you fulfill the needs of the organization will really pay off in the long run. As mentioned in other posts, this really can only be accomplished by a volunteer coordinator of some type. If the coordinator position is designed as a facilitator/troubleshooter to assist the volunteers to get what they really want out of their respective positions as well as to meet the needs of the organization, they’ll be much more likely to be accepted by the current volunteers. Expect resistance from some of the volunteers who escape responsibility under the current rules; you’ll probably lose them as a result of this pro
At a non-profit I worked for we tackled this problem with a combination of the things mentioned above and a couple of additional things. We had a dedicated volunteer co-ordinator (this was combined with a fund raising role, wit the understanding the first thing they would seek would be funding for their own job), this person then created job descriptions for the various volunteer roles. We then created a policy of interviewing volunteers for these roles — this enabled us to find out what people wanted from volunteering, what commitment they could give etc. It also enabled us to reject people who we didn’t think were suitable. It’s a common mistake you feel you have to take on people because they are willing to volunteer. This had created problems for the organization in the past, in particular with the demands of people’s mental health issues we weren’t equipped to deal with. The interview process was good for getting people to come up with a realistic view of their commitment, and whe
