Episode #008: Where Should Volunteer Services Live at Your Nonprofit
Welcome to the Volunteer Nation Podcast, bringing you practical tips and advice on how to build, grow, and scale volunteer talent. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson. And if you rely on volunteers to fuel your charity, cause, or movement, stay tuned. I made this podcast just for you.
My husband and I are huge fans of premier league football, or soccer as it’s known here in the U S. It’s a wonderful bonding experience between the two of us, even though we root for different teams. We both played soccer in the past, and little-known fact, I used to play soccer in college.
And every weekend we hunker down and catch up on the latest matches. We’re getting down to late May when I’m recording, or mid-May when I’m recording, and matches are about to be completed and we’ll have to wait until the fall for World Cup. So we’re a little bit sad.
One of the things that becomes clear in sports is that different players do differently on different teams. So, a player might struggle or be benched on one team, and then they’re traded to another team and they suddenly become the lead goal scorer. It happens all the time.
So what about you? Have you ever felt like you’re on the wrong team, that the vibe isn’t good, that you struggled to be understood, or that your work simply isn’t valued? It could be that if you switch teams, you might get better traction.
That’s what this week’s episode is all about. More specifically, it will help you answer the question: what team should the volunteer manager or volunteer services department be on? In other words, where should volunteer services live on your org chart?
So in this week’s episode, I offer six options. I also cover the pros and cons for each. If you’re wondering why your volunteer strategy isn’t getting traction, or you’re struggling to get buy-in, maybe it’s because you’re in the wrong place.
If you’re a nonprofit executive, you might also consider whether your volunteer services department should be a stand-alone team or part of an existing work group. I break it all down in this episode.
And by the way, if you’re wondering how to resource volunteer services, you might also be interested in episode three of this podcast, “Moving From a Scarcity Mindset to Abundance.” If you want to give a listen, you can go to TobiJohnson.com/003.
So, let’s continue with six options for where you can locate volunteer services on your org chart. Let’s start with option one. Option one is a stand-alone department that reports to the Executive Vice President or the Director of Human Resources.
There’s a lot of pros to this approach. It communicates that volunteers’ involvement is part of a primary strategic importance to the agency. It shows that volunteers are recognized as a vital element of mission delivery. It seats volunteer engagement at the executive leadership table thus increasing firsthand knowledge of volunteer program processes and needs.
You know, if volunteering and volunteerism expands across your organization, then it may be important for the Director of Volunteers to be on that leadership team, since their work touches every corner of the organization’s larger work.
Another pro is that there’s better coordination with paid staff, human resources systems. So for example, if you are purchasing volunteer background checks for volunteers and then background checks for paid staff on the other side, it might be a good way to have efficiencies of scale if that is done within the same department and with the same company,
There’s some cons as well though, to having a stand-alone department for volunteer services that reports to human resources. First of all, it isolates volunteer services from other activities within the organization.
There’s a risk of becoming siloed and reducing agents who wide ownership of that volunteer strategy. Staff may feel that volunteers belong to the department and are not the responsibility of other staff, other staff that are meant to supervise volunteers. It may reduce levels of collaboration and trust in sharing concerns and needs. So, because of that siloing people may, may impact communication.
Volunteer management staff may be diverted to other work unrelated to volunteers if there’s a crunch or a need for extra pair of hands. Volunteer involvement needs creative resource management, but paid staff models often generally have set budgets, and there may be a tension between the creativity that’s needed for volunteer engagement and the general, more strict or more focused budget management.
So that’s one option: stand-alone department reporting to the Executive VP of Human Resources.
Second option is to house volunteer services within the development department, reporting to the Director of Development. There are some pros to this approach as well. There’s better coordination of supporter communication and resource cultivation, because you can combine your list building.
You can coordinate when you’re making asks, so you’re not making asks for volunteer support as well as financial support at the same time. There can be better collaboration around outreach, partnership development, specifically donors and corporate outreach. You know, employee volunteer programs and corporate sponsorships often go hand in hand.
It encourages acknowledging the reality of volunteers as donors, because we know through the research that volunteers are donors and donors are volunteers. So, the development department and volunteer services are often communicating to the same group of people.
There’s a better likelihood of accurate tracking of in-kind support because within a development department, the culture is to track all kinds of support, right? And in a volunteer services department, when it’s not within the development department, sometimes that falls by the wayside.
And there are increased efficiencies if a software system is shared. For example, an email service provider or a customer relationship management system, or a fundraising system that has an add-on volunteer component. There’s a way to make that work very well. So, there are many, many pros for housing volunteer services within the development department.
There’s also a few reasons that you might not want to do that, some cons. There’s a danger of volunteers being viewed as an ancillary resource versus a revenue generator, and thus become unsupported. You know, in a department that is solely focused on generating financial support, it may just feel like as a “side hustle”, for lack of better term.
The department is not directly linked with service delivery but volunteers are, so in development department there may be a lack of understanding about how volunteers need to be trained and supported to deliver direct service.
There may be a risk of volunteer perception that volunteers become more valued for their financial contributions than their contributions of time and talent. So again, pros and cons for including volunteer services within the development department.
Let’s talk about another option right after this break. I’m going to take a pause for a quick break and after, I’m going to continue with four more options for where to locate your volunteer services department within your organization. So stick with me.
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Okay, we’re back. Before the break, I covered the pros and cons of setting up a stand-alone volunteer service department and locating volunteer services within your development department. Let’s continue with four other options that you might want to think through.
Option three: locating volunteer services within your marketing and communications department, reporting to the VP of Marketing/Communications. Lots of pros for this approach.
One is it sends the message that volunteers are the “face” of the organization, that they have a high profile. There can be better communication of email communications for social strategies and scheduling for both recruitment and recognition. So that type of communication around community engagement can be collectively worked on together.
In a marketing/communications department, that department probably has better relationships with reporters and the press. And so, when that volunteer services director or volunteer manager or a team needs to reach out to the press and the media, the marketing/communications folks can help out.
There could be better collaboration around outreach and partnership development, specifically for events, sponsors, and events. There might be faster updates of the website landing pages related to volunteers. I cannot tell you how many times I talked to people who say, “I’m sorry, we can’t change our volunteer recruitment page. It takes forever working with folks, takes weeks. We can’t be nimble with that. I’m sorry. We just can’t make that change.”
And unfortunately, that ends up really hindering the organization’s ability to work quickly and make changes that are, and optimize that web page to better recruit volunteers. So, we want to make sure that those landing pages are getting updated regularly.
Working within a communications and marketing department, you can better coordinate search engine optimization or SEO strategy to raise the agency’s organic search rankings for volunteer terms or search keywords that are related to volunteerism. And these are important, so that when folks in your community are typing into Google, “Hey, I’m looking for a volunteer opportunity with a local animal shelter,” for example, that your organization comes up on the first page, or “I want to find a teen volunteering opportunity,“ then your organization shows up first on Google.
The way that happens really is through SEO work and your marketing and communications department will know how to make that happen. When you put volunteer services inside marketing and communications, you can also get help designing professionally branded volunteer application materials, training materials, and get help with effective copywriting because your mark/comms folks, that’s what they do for a living. And so, you can tap that talent and that help easily and quickly,
And then finally, increased efficiencies in the contact database and communication software. So again, your email service provider, if you’re sharing it, you can share the list. You can coordinate how you’re communicating with that list, how you’re segmenting that list as you cultivate volunteers into specific roles in your organization.
And then there are also cons. In every one of these options, there’s a pro and a con. So, you have to kind of decide where you want to take advantage and build opportunity, and what you’re willing to put up with in terms of a downside.
So the cons for locating volunteer services within your mark/comms department is that there is a risk of focusing primarily on volunteer program branding and recruitment versus management and retention.
You know, volunteer recruitment is the front side of the house. It is the marketing side of the house. And so, if you’re in the marketing department, you may spend more time working on that and less time on retention. And, you know, retention when you can enjoy high volunteer retention rates, makes your recruitment side a lot easier.
It could appear that volunteers are for show only, versus a mission-critical element of the agency’s operations because they’re siloed off in the mark/comms department, in the department that is most responsible for creating a brand image for the organization rather than embedded in direct services.
Other staff may lack understanding of the unique messaging required for the volunteer audience. So it may be that once you start working in that mark/comms department, that the general agency messaging is you are required to use that messaging. And sometimes that messaging doesn’t work well when you’re trying to communicate with volunteers.
And then there’s a danger of a lack of attention and resources in a busy department where ticket sales, donations, et cetera, are more important and have priority over volunteers. Now, that could happen in any department, but I’m kind of calling it out in this one in particular,
Let’s look at option number four, which if you have a community development office or an office that is responsible for community partnerships, this is in addition, a place where you might house volunteer services and report to the VP or program director.
There’s some pros in this as well. It acknowledges that volunteers are a valued community partner and that they are viable service providers. So there’s, there’s something in the way that if volunteer services is included in a department like this, that they are an essential part of building community in your community building efforts.
It appropriately sits at the nexus between the organization and the community. So, if you’re in this department and this department is sort of the interface between the organization and the rest of the community, that makes sense to put a volunteer services department there.
There might be more focus on corporate social responsibility and employee volunteering opportunities, because your folks who are developing community partnerships are also probably developing corporate partnerships.
It also promotes ongoing partnership development and maintenance, which is a key tactic for diversifying your volunteer base. In order to reach out to new communities, you have to go out and meet with people and build relationships. And if you’re embedded in a department that already does that on a daily basis, that might make it easier for you.
It also reduces duplication through better alignment of strategic partnership goals and community engagement plans, because that type of work is already happening in that department. And it might help you with better solicitation of in-kind support from the community if that department is tasked with soliciting in-kind support, and that in-kind support might also support volunteers.
Now, of course, as I said before, every one of these categories or every, every one of these options has pros and cons. Let’s talk through the cons of locating volunteer services inside your outreach and community partnership or community development department.
One of the cons is there may not be sufficient room for volunteer services in a smaller department without the capacity to focus resources and support. Usually a community engagement department is fairly small within a nonprofit. So it may be that folks get lost in the shuffle.
It could be the department is not directly linked with service delivery, but the volunteers are. And so, there’s a tension because people aren’t speaking the same language or have the same priorities. Risk of becoming siloed and reducing agency-wide ownership of the volunteer strategy. That is pretty much an issue, no matter where you locate volunteer services, unless volunteer services is stand-alone and reports directly to executive leadership.
When that happens and executive leadership takes ownership for communicating the priority and value of volunteers and the importance of volunteers to reaching overall agency goals, then you can start to reduce that siloing. It’s important to think about that.
There’s a risk of focusing primarily on partnerships and recruitment versus management and retention. It’s sort of similar to some of the other options we talked about earlier. And then there’s a danger of prioritizing partner needs over a nonprofit volunteer program needs to maintain external relationships.
Consider if you had a powerful partnership with a local business and they sent few volunteers and that really, that relationship wasn’t working out well, but that relationship was working out great in other respects, then it creates tension within the department. So that could happen.
Let’s talk about option number five. You could locate volunteers in your guest or client services department If you have one, and reporting to the VP or program director. So your guest or client services department, if anything, and you may not call that call it that at your organization, but whatever department is sort of in charge of taking care of your customers or your patrons or your clients. That’s the department I’m speaking of.
So there’s some pros. It recognizes volunteers as a key element of the customer or client experience. This department and volunteer services can better coordinate customer service and recovery standards across paid and unpaid teams. So if there is a customer service standard or way of managing complaints and issues, it become standard across both your paid employees and your unpaid volunteers,
You can more quickly address customer issues and address potential burnout in volunteers by finding people to back up, sometimes, the volunteer work when it’s about improving or maintaining the customer experience. So that customer service interaction could be backed up by paid staff. And you can coach volunteers on the fly at close quarters.
Let’s say you are running a crisis line and you have that as your client services department is a crisis line. If a volunteer or a group of volunteers is helping out and they have a question, they can ask it right then and there, they can get help from experienced staff. So, there are some big pros to this.
There are also some cons. So it focuses primarily on volunteers as direct service help versus a broad range of roles. So you might pigeonhole your volunteer support into one type of category of role.
Volunteers may become hidden in this department or endanger the opportunity for widespread integration. As I said, across the organization of volunteer roles in this type of situation, it may be more prone to blurring of roles between paid staff and volunteers.
And the more that paid employees assume volunteer roles – I’ve seen this so many times in organizations – the more that paid staff assume volunteer roles, the less and less and less volunteers participate and pretty soon you start to see a downward decline in volunteer participation. And then at some point, staff are left doing it all and being very overwhelmed and burned out because they started to assume all of the responsibility.
When you blur paid staff and volunteer roles, it becomes a real issue in terms of nonprofit sustainability, and then paid staff may irrationally fear that volunteers will usurp their roles and be less supportive if the roles are very similar in terms of serving customers. And the reason I say irrationally is because for the most part, most volunteers are not interested in taking the staff’s roles. So that fear is really for the most part unfounded.
Okay, final option. Option number six, placing the volunteer services department within the special events department, reporting to the VP or program director. Now, not all organizations have a special events department. Sometimes that role or function is inside the development department, but there are, if you have a special events department, there are major pros for this.
One is there’s faster response to upcoming event recruitment needs. If volunteers are staffing your biggest events, then that coordination can happen really quickly. It recognizes volunteers as a key element of risk management and customer safety if you decide to utilize volunteers in that way at your event.
You can better coordinate safety and security standards for events across paid and unpaid teams because they’re working within the same department. You can quickly update volunteers on security upgrades and policy changes because again, you’re working within the same department.
It’s easy for volunteers to access and understand the upcoming event schedule. Sometimes within an event department, some of the plans aren’t made public until later, but if you have volunteers working within, they can start to set aside time on their calendars to help out.
And then there’s ability to build camaraderie amongst episodic event volunteers through a single department structure. And so if volunteers are within the department, but they are episodic and only volunteering for certain episodic events once in a while, they can still build connections with the team.
They can still start to feel like they are a continual consistent part of that team, even though they’re coming to each event to help out once in a while. They start to know the paid staff in that department, so creates that connection and may improve volunteer retention over time.
So those are some pros. There’s also some cons of locating your volunteer services department within your special events department. One of them is becoming siloed again and reducing that agency-wide ownership of the volunteer strategy.
Again, folks start to think of volunteers as only event help. Volunteers may become hidden in this department and endanger the opportunity for widespread integration. This is, again, this is a similar theme you’ve probably heard. You’ve definitely heard me talk about over the past five options, and even into this option.
It can appear that volunteers are more one-off event help or a security team rather than an integrated agency resource. And so we definitely want to make sure that if we do house our volunteers in our events department, that we’re also expanding the reach of where volunteers are being deployed throughout the agency.
Then some volunteers may be reluctant to perform security or event tasks. Maybe they’re like, “Look, I don’t want to be an event volunteer. I want to do something else around here.” So you may lose potential volunteers because they’re seeing it only as this one limited opportunity.
It focuses primarily on volunteers as event staff, as we’ve talked before, versus a broad range of roles. I think we’ve kind of covered that. And then it may be easy to get lost in a large department with high paced daily production needs.
Now this depends on the type of organization you run. If you’re a once-a-year festival, that’s going to be completely different than if you are a round-the-clock, multimedia performing arts organization. Then you have events going on every week, and volunteers might get lost in the shuffle when things are so high paced and there are so many deadlines.
And it may be, if volunteer services is placed in special events department. And if there’s no connection with the human resources side of volunteerism, it’s more about volunteers being a pair of hands versus all of the other relational things that need to go on to keep our volunteers coming back and happy.
So those are our six options and there are others, but I thought we’d get kicked off with six and get your mind thinking.
If things aren’t working out where your volunteer services department is now, it might be worth a conversation about whether or not it’s on, you know, that team is on the right team, in the right department.
So to recap, there are options you have on the table:
Option 1: Aa stand-alone volunteer services department, reporting to Human Resources or to the Executive Director
Option 2: The development department, reporting to the Director of Development.
Option 3: In the marketing/communications department, reporting to the VP of Marketing and Communications
Option 4: Working in the outreach and community partnerships or community development department reporting to the VP or program director
Option 5: Embedded in the guest or client services department reporting to VP or program director, and
Option 6: Working in the special events department, reporting to the VP or program director
in the end, there really isn’t a one size fits all solution. There’s no perfect solution of where volunteer services should be placed within an organization structure.
There are always going to be trade-offs, but I hope that this rundown has helped you think through what would work best at your organization and make the case for change if it’s needed.
Finally, one more thing I want to mention to keep in mind. While a single department may be accountable for volunteer services, it really should be made clear that all teams and staff are responsible and expected to champion volunteer programs and efforts.
It really is everybody’s job. Supporting volunteers, whether it’s from the front desk to the executive office, everyone has a part to play in helping volunteers make a difference.
For a more in-depth article on this topic, check out “Where Should Volunteer Services Department Live in Your Org Chart.” I go through this in much more detail. I’ve linked to it in the show notes, and you can find it at TobiJohnson.com.
So that’s our show for this week. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Volunteer Nation. If you enjoyed it, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. I also hope you’ll rate, review, and subscribe so that you won’t miss a thing.
I hope to see you next time, same time, same place, for another episode of Volunteer Nation.
Volunteer Nation is produced by Thick Skin Media. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more tips and notes from the show, check us out at Tobijohnson.com. We hope to see you next week for another episode of Volunteer Nation.
