Working with Virtual Volunteers

I was recently approached by Angela Palmier at Resource Etc in Illinois about my thoughts on virtual volunteering. She posted my thoughts almost in their entirely on her blog on Sunday [LINK]. In the article, I was trying to drive home the point that skilled consultants like myself are a different class of volunteer than the kind of people that you get to sit on your Board of Directors and was quoted as saying:

My time is valuable and all I ask in return is that you respect that. Don’t waste my time with unnecessary meetings or administrative details. Recognize that sometimes the only time I can work on your stuff is after my kids go to bed or on weekends.

This is the key of my message – respect that my time is valuable. I’m wired up twelve different ways to Sunday with e-mail, SMS, Twitter, LinkedIn and numerous IM platforms (not to mention available by phone all the time). Having me come and sit through a Board meeting where 90% of what you’re talking about is a complete waste of my time is not going to encourage me to come back for more.

In my mind, there are two core volunteers that every organization needs:

Evangalists

These are the advocates, the loudest voice in the room, the passionate and emotional champions for the cause. They are the institutional memory of the organization and often outlast executive directors. I meet these kinds of people all the time and am in awe with their drive and perseverance. Most non-profits need these people to help drive the organization forward. There is a limit to what these people can do, however.

It’s difficult, for example, to get someone who has been an angry parent for 30 years, railing against the public education system to think about how to frame their issue as a labour market development issue to leverage government funding. This requires taking the focus off their kids – the very reason they got involved in the first place. However, without the occasional re-framing of the issues, these types of volunteers run the risk of sounding like a broken record.

Subject Matter Experts

This is the camp that I am currently in. I volunteer for a number of different organizations and most years give between 200 and 300 hours of my time. When I do volunteer, I’m usually coming in as someone with a unique skill set to offer – not because I am looking to fight the good fight. I think what the evangelists are doing is necessary and important but I believe that it’s wasted effort without some applied knowledge as to how to channel that energy.

That’s why I believe that non-profit organizations should take advantage of virtual volunteer opportunities to make the best use of subject matter experts’ time. Let us do things for you via e-mail, over the phone or in short, focussed meetings. We care about what you are doing and we believe in you. We just don’t want to get stuck at your AGM.

Here’s my short list of things to consider as a non-profit when thinking about using subject matter experts:

1. Do you need them on your Board of Directors?

Your first instinct is likely to say “yes!” because a big Board makes you feel like you’re getting lots of stuff done. A big Board can be a liability if not everyone on the Board is 100% committed to driving the organization on every front. A specialist might be much better used on a committee focussed on a specific issue.

You also need to make sure that your committees run like clock work. Consider recruiting someone with a background in project management to the Board specifically to run your committees. Don’t just put whoever is most passionate about an issue in charge of a committee.

2. Are you helping them?

A lot of us would be much happier to donate our time if we get to work with interesting people from our industry or from industries that we want to work with. Make sure you create opportunities for your subject matter expert volunteers to meet interesting people that can help them.

Also make sure you give your subject matter experts an opportunity to bid on any contract work that you might be procuring. Nothing is a bigger slap in the face than when you use our time for free to plan out a project then hire some random to do the work. It’s not a conflict of interest to hire a volunteer to do some work if they’re not a Board member!

I’ve had this happen to me personally more times than I can count. I don’t expect a contract if I’m volunteering for you but to not even mention it to me – that’s a jerky thing to do.

3. Take an interest in what your volunteers are doing – not just what they can do for you

Too often, us subject matter expert volunteers feel like a tool that is being applied to a job and get the cold shoulder from the evangelist volunteers who have been with the organization for a decade. No, I’m not going to be with the organization for the next ten years but would it kill you to say “hello” to me after the meeting and ask me a few questions about myself?

Most meetings that I attend as a subject matter expert, I am treated like a social pariah after the meeting is done. That’s completely unnecessary and rude.