Episode #062: 10 Ways to Create an Exceptional Volunteer Experience
Hey, welcome to the Volunteer Nation podcast, bringing you practical tips and big ideas on how to build, grow, and scale volunteer talent. I’m your host, Toby Johnson, and if you rely on volunteers to fuel your charity cause, membership, or movement, I made this podcast just for you. Well, hey there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I am your host, Tobi Johnson, and today I’d like to talk about volunteer experience. How do we create an exceptional volunteer experience? What goes into it? What are the different aspects of it? What does the research say? Want to talk about all that? And what got me started on this was a conversation that was started inside our Facebook group, the VolunteerPro Insiders group on Facebook. And I’ll put a link in the show notes if you’re interested in joining us there. It’s free and it’s active.
It’s a very active group. People are asking questions. People are answering. It’s good stuff. And someone had posted that they had completed their strategic plan for five years, their organization, and one of their strategic goals was to become a world class volunteer organization. So she was asking the group, what does it mean? Where should I get started? And there were lots of suggestions, a lot of them, about the organization programming itself, getting certified, doing this, that, and the other. And it was really about the organization.
And I thought, you know what? What about a different lens on this instead of it being about the organization or what makes a world class volunteer organization? And I think what makes a world class volunteer organization is an exceptional volunteer experience. If we look at the volunteer experience rather than the organization’s sort of credentials, I think we end up with a better result because the better the volunteer experience, obviously then you become a world class volunteer organization, but you also become a world class volunteer magnet, right? Because people are enjoying their experiences. They’re staying around, they’re telling others, you have great word of mouth marketing, and people are more productive when they’re happy. I think what makes a world class volunteer organization is an exceptional volunteer experience. Now, given that, I’m wondering, what does that mean right? There’s some fantastic research. I love this research that NCVO did right before the pandemic. This was released in like, 2019. It’s a study called Time Well Spent, a national survey of the volunteer experience.
And I share this research a lot because it’s such a great study. And hats off to NCVO for their work on this. And they’ve done a few other spin off studies off of this. But the main one, really, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. But it’s a phenomenal look at the volunteer experience from the volunteers eyes. So they interviewed and surveyed over 10,000 volunteers and asked them, tell us about yourself, tell us about how you get involved, what makes you keep volunteering, what makes you stop volunteering, all that good stuff. And they came up with a number of key features of pillars of an exceptional volunteer experience. So I thought I’d share these with you.
But if you really want to read in more detail and really look at the data, I really recommend that you go check that study out. And again, I’ll link to it in the show notes, but there’s several and then I’m going to give you my list and which happened to overlap quite a bit. So I’m glad that the ways that I think about the volunteer experience are research based, right? But let’s start with what NCVO says. So they say meaningful, exceptional volunteer experience is inclusive. So it’s welcoming volunteers from all walks of life. It’s flexible. So it’s offering volunteers different avenues towards contributing time and talent. It’s impactful.
So volunteers really do want to make a difference. Unless licking envelopes directly relates to your mission. Then they want to do something a little more impactful than that. Connected. They want to feel connected and social with one another balanced. Some people are starting to feel like volunteering is too much like paid work. And they found in this study, it’s the folks that are your super volunteers who are volunteering coming in every week. We’re starting to feel like volunteering feels too much like paid work and that’s not a good thing.
Enjoyable people need to have fun voluntary. So volunteering is not an exceptional you can’t have an exceptional volunteer experience if people are being volunteered to come. So compulsory volunteering does not feel that great to people and then meaningful needs to have personal meaning to us as people on this planet making a difference with causes we care about. So I really like these elements. Some of them are more as they note in their research, some of these elements are more relevant than others depending on the journey of the volunteer, the lifecycle of the volunteer. But these are the features that make up a quality experience. So as I read those off, were there any that you thought we could do better in that department? So important things to think about. Because I think if you can create an exceptional volunteer experience, a lot of your job, the rest of your job gets done for you.
And here’s what I mean by that. If you have an exceptional volunteer experience, as I said before, happy volunteers want to tell friends, they want to bring friends, they want to be ambassadors for you because they can’t help but talk about it because it’s so great, right? The other thing is, if you think about it, volunteers who are having a really good experience are more likely to volunteer more. So with those two things, greater word of mouth marketing and volunteers work, contributing more or even being more productive while they’re on the job, that means you have to recruit less. So already your life is getting easier when you have an exceptional volunteer experience. Now let’s talk about relationships and supervision and teamwork and productivity and all that. If you think about supervising volunteers and reducing the amount of refereeing or conflict or coaching that you need to do, when volunteers are happy and they’re having a great experience, they’re more likely to get along better and they’re more likely to be in sync with the organization. So that’s creating an easier time for you, right? Because you’re not having to put out fires and you’re not having to negotiate between folks who are in conflict. So that’s pretty cool.
That’s another reason to have a great volunteer experience. The other reason to have a great volunteer experience is just because it’s the right thing to do. People are contributing themselves, their souls, their expertise, their lived experience, their connections to your organization. Don’t they deserve a great volunteer experience? And in fact, many people sacrifice to volunteer. They’re spending time on the weekends, for example, when they could be spending that time with family or in the nighttime when they could be resting from work and instead they’re coming down to your organization or they’re jumping online and they’re spending their time with you. And I think we have to acknowledge that that takes a little sacrifice and often it costs a little bit for people. They spend more money in gas, they may have to pay for parking, they may have to get childcare, all that stuff. So don’t they deserve a really exceptional volunteer experience? I think so.
So those are just some reasons why it’s important to have a great volunteer experience. I also want to go through what might go into and some suggestions so you can kind of tick these off and think through what are the areas that you might want to improve. The first thing is it’s important to create a sense of belonging, connection and meaning. These are core human needs, connection, belonging and meaning. And we also want to progress. Meaning is about progression and moving forward in our lives. Connection is about our social connections with one another. Meaning is about being part of something bigger than who we are, bigger than ourselves, I guess.
So overarching of all your experience, the volunteer experience and improving it, just make sure that you’re creating a sense of belonging, connection and meaning for your volunteers. If you do that, that’s meeting some very core human needs that we have. Every human being on the planet has these needs. Doesn’t matter what language they speak, doesn’t matter what country they come from, doesn’t matter what neighborhood, what faith, does not matter. We all have these needs. So overarching, those are things. But let’s go through some other I have ten things that you can do to improve the volunteer experience. So let’s look at number one.
Number one, one of my favorites and I get to do this summer some volunteer journey mapping with a team who wants to create an stellar volunteer experience at their organization, which is so exceptional already to hear that that’s their goal. So I’m going to go and help them do this journey mapping process. So the first one is become an architect of the volunteer experience. And the way to do that is to purposefully consider the informational and emotional needs of volunteers at every step of their journey so that they’re having a better experience. So informational needs and emotional needs. So informational needs are where can I park when I show up and is parking free? Emotional needs are am I going to feel anxious in a room of people I don’t know when I go to my first orientation training? Those are completely different, right? And we need to at every step of the journey, map it out and figure out what are these informational and emotional needs and then make improvements based on those. And that’s something I’m going to do with this group. I’m really excited about it.
Second thing, to truly understand the current needs and challenges, you can do your journey mapping. But it also helps to get some feedback directly from your current volunteers either through surveys and or so survey questionnaires and or listening sessions or individual interviews or combination of all to get a real sense of what volunteers are thinking because there may be blind spots that you’re experiencing. So I’m a huge fan of surveying your volunteers. And in fact, if you’re a volunteer pro member, this summer, we’re going to do a whole half day training on survey design and analysis. So volunteer feedback surveys. So if you’re a volunteer pro member, you’re going to get access to that live half day event as part of your membership. So if you’re not a member yet, you might want to think about it. All right.
Third, wow them with exceptional service. So exceptional service is all about anticipating a customer’s needs. And if you think about it, one area that volunteers, you might anticipate some challenges for volunteers where you could meet a need would be with technology, right? You could set up a tech concierge for your volunteers if they’re getting ready to join and they may have some problems logging in, you can have a help desk specifically for volunteers. And maybe it’s not just tech, maybe it’s a volunteer concierge. And their job is to welcome volunteers. Their job is to be the support desk, to pick up the phone to answer questions. And you could even have that be on a specific cell phone and a specific email address. And you could have volunteers staffing it.
What about that? And you hand off the phone. And so people at any time in their volunteering experience, they can text or call or email someone and get immediate assistance. How’s that for that is the Ritz Carlton right there of customer service for our volunteers. So that would be a wow experience in my mind. Number four of an idea for improving the volunteer experience. Create a culture of learning and incorporate training and programs that help volunteers not only learn, but assess their skills and interests so they know where they’re starting from and they can see where they’re going, so they feel empowered and motivated. So that’s a really interesting way of creating meaning in someone’s life when they can actually see themselves improving and growing around a specific understanding of the world. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve worked with volunteers who have been so excited about learning like they would come.
In fact, one of my first jobs working with volunteers was training volunteers, doing update training every month. And I would travel around my region in the state and do update trainings in person with volunteers. And people showed up month after month after month because we had great training and they wanted to learn. They were interested in learning. They were lifelong learners. And so for those lifelong learners, you can offer things that pique that interest. All right, number five of an idea for improving the volunteer experience. This one’s important right now because there are folks in the world who are not being valued as much as they should, I think.
And some people are starting to feel either ignored or worse, they feel like people are coming at them. And in the volunteer world, we have an ethical standard of making sure and it’s global ethical principles and standards. They’re carried by or shepherded or I guess the custodian would be the best word for it, by the Council for Certification and Volunteer Administration. And I’ll link to that in the show notes as well. One of our ethical standards as a field is to ensure that there is equity and inclusion, that volunteers from all walks of life feel welcomed into the enterprise of volunteerism. And so we want to make sure that we are not creating any barriers for people and that people know volunteering is for all, for one and all. And so one of the things you can do to improve the volunteer experience and make sure everybody feels welcome, they’re not marginalized, they’re not ignored, they’re not invisible. Everybody needs to be seen completely.
And so we need to think about valuing our volunteers lived experiences and encouraging them to bring those experiences to their role. So that lived experience, so an exceptional volunteer experience that would be exceptional for everyone is that everyone comes to your door and goes, wow, you see me. You see all of the variety, the wide tapestry of lived experience I have, and you’re asking me about these things and you want to know because most of the time volunteers are not sharing with you very much about their lived experience. If you think about it, I mean, people have all kinds of experiences in school, in their families, in their faith communities, in their neighborhoods. And some of those lived experiences are fantastic and some of them are traumatic and they are all part of the tapestry and the journey of life we’re on. And so if you can think about ways of incorporating storytelling, of sitting and listening and asking and finding ways for every single volunteer to shine, I think that would be fabulous. So for me that’s an exceptional volunteer experience. An experience where people come to an organization and they are seen and heard and accepted for who they are.
So those are five. I have five more after the break. So let’s take a pause for a quick break from our discussion of an ideas for creating an exceptional volunteer experience. I hope this is getting your brain going and bubbling up ideas, but we will be right back after this. If you enjoyed this week’s episode of Volunteer Nation, we invite you to check out the Volunteer Pro Premium Membership. This community is the most comprehensive resource for attracting, engaging, and supporting dedicated, high impact volunteer talent for your good cause. Volunteer Pro Premium Membership helps you build or renovate an effective what’s working now volunteer program with less stress and more joy so that you can ditch the overwhelm and confidently carry your vision forward. It is the only implementation of its kind that helps your organization build maturity across five phases of our proprietary system, the Volunteer Strategy Success Path.
If you’re interested in learning more, visit volpro.net/join. Okay, we’re back with our discussion about creating an exceptional volunteer experience. One of my favorite topics. I mean, come on, what’s not to like about making someone else’s life better? I mean, what’s not to like about that? I love it. So here’s number six, my number six idea for creating an exceptional volunteer experience. Flexibility. The more we can offer a variety of roles. So short term, long term, online, on land, admin, direct service, project based, team based, corporate.
The more we can create flexibility for our volunteers, the better. Co working, you name it. Team based, adoptive spots, you name it. We were doing some training on this actually a couple of weeks ago in the Volunteer Pro community about all the different ways you can do episodic or team based volunteering. And there’s just a variety of ways. We were talking about rethinking our volunteer roles and we have so many people come into our organizations lately that want episodic roles or they want to have a team based volunteer experience. And rather than have people paint your building for the 25th time, what are some of the other ways you can incorporate these volunteers in creative ways and still get your mission met? So we had a long conversation, did some training on that. So offering flexibility is a way of improving the volunteer experience because what you’re doing is you are understanding and appreciating and accepting that people have limitations in their lives and that they have other priorities.
And you’re okay with that? Yeah. And you’re okay with that. So flexibility, I think, is another way to improve the experience. Number seven is maximizing impact. So the impact of volunteers on others and the impact of volunteering on volunteers themselves in terms of their mental health, their wellness, their quality of life, et cetera. So we want our volunteer roles to be designed so that they can have the greatest impact possible, again, both on the volunteers themselves, but also on those they are trying to serve or work with or partner with, or the mission and the goals they’re trying to bring about. And we need to take care with this. It’s not just plunking somebody down in front of a computer or setting somebody at a reception desk.
It’s really designing the role so it has meaning for people. Remember belonging, connection, and meaning. So every role you develop, think about it and assess it. Is there belonging, connection, and meaning related to this role? And if not, and is there impact? And if not, if I can’t explain the impact this role has on the mission, is it a worthwhile role to recruit for? So that’s another aspect. Volunteers need to make sure their time is time well spent, right? Just like the NCVO study. All right, number eight strengthening the connections are the heart of volunteering. We know that volunteerism is also about social connection with others. Really creating more opportunities for volunteers to be social and interact with one another can help create a greater sense of community.
And you know what? That sense of community is a feel good in and of itself. It creates a sense of belonging, but it also creates dopamine and other hormones in the brain that feel good to folks. So when we feel like we’re very comfortable with a group and the group doesn’t have to be exactly like us, and we actually don’t need to agree on everything to feel a sense of community. Sometimes people think in today’s world that you have to be exactly like the other people around you to feel a sense of community. And I can tell you that’s simply not true. The volunteer team I’m on, I can tell you probably, as a matter of fact, that we all don’t vote the same. And you know what? We still love the what we do, which is going on our Facebook lives and talking about gardening. As master gardeners, we are very different people.
We come from very different backgrounds. But our mission together is to help to educate the community about home horticulture. And we love doing that, and we love that each of us contributes to it, and we have each other’s backs. And so we don’t have to be the same in every part of our lives to be part of a community. And I think that’s been lost. That’s really been lost lately. And it’s a shame because people think we’ve become so clan like that we think people have to be exactly like us. For us to work productively with them or to be in community with them.
And that’s just not the case. I know. Personal experience. Personal experience. So there are things that we accept about other people now. There are certain things we want to be treated in certain ways. Absolutely. We could not be in community as a volunteer team if we didn’t have a core set of values that grounded us.
And that core set of values is all about taking care of one another, about stepping up and following through on commitments, about having fun, about loving nature in whatever ways. Right. So strengthening those connections and making sure volunteers have social time to build new friendships, very, very important. And all part of the exceptional volunteer experience. Okay, two more nine. Making the experience enjoyable. This is sort of a no brainer, and I probably shouldn’t say it, but I’m going to say it anyway.
Making sure it’s enjoyable, it’s crucial. And it starts with how you describe your opportunity. You’re starting to set people up for fun if you’re describing how fun it is. Right. And you’re helping people become more excited about their role, confident about their role. So the fun part actually starts on day one.
The first time someone comes to your website and checks out your volunteer opportunities. Your web page should be fun. People should be smiling. You should be posting on social and having fun. It should feel like a party because, you know, it’s been pretty hard the last few years and people are looking for alternatives. And I’m going to tell you right now, if your volunteering feels like a party, people are going to keep coming back. So make it fun. Final way to make the volunteer experience more enjoyable and just more meaningful to folks is and you’ve noticed I haven’t talked about volunteer recognition yet.
I wanted to save this point till the last because I think it’s important that we really need to start thinking beyond plaques and pins. Really need to start thinking beyond that. Creating an exceptional volunteer experience goes beyond just giving folks a certificate. That just doesn’t cut it. Sure, it’s a nice perk, but the pins are nice if they mean something like it’s a certain amount of dates. It’s interesting. In our Master Gardener name tags, we have a start date. And that start date is the date since whatever year it is.
And I started to be a master gardener in 2019. I’m sorry, 2016, I believe so. It says since 2016. Master gardener. Toby Johnson, master gardener since 2016. And I’ll tell you, that name badge is meaningful to me. Not because of the number of hours or number of years I’m sorry. Not because I have an engraved name badge.
Whereas when you start as an intern, you have a paper temporary name badge. And when you get your real name badge, it means you’re part of the clan, part of the tribe. Part of the club. But what it really means is sometimes I like to see some of my other fellow Master gardeners who started with my class and I’ll, oh, you started in 2016 as well? Wow. We were part of the same class, right? Or, oh, you started the year after us. So it becomes a moniker of or a signifier of belonging. First of all, belonging, that if you have an engraved name tag, it means you’ve been certified as a Master Gardener, but also what class you were in, where you belong in the pecking order. Not really pecking order, I shouldn’t say, but how long you’ve been around, right? So think beyond plaques and pins and think about, as I said before, continuing education, promoting volunteers to leadership roles, providing more in service training, providing mentoring opportunities.
People. You think about the love languages. If anybody’s read that book on Love Languages, it’s kind of interesting. There’s also a Love Languages for the workplace, and I’ll link to that in the show notes as well, where get to know what the Love Languages are. Some of the Love Languages are, yes, giving gifts, but some of the Love Languages are things like quality time or acts of service, these kinds of things. So find out what the Love Languages are of your volunteers. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be like plaques and pins. It might be, but I think there’s more to it.
And, you know, the best volunteer appreciation is a well run program that is absolutely, hands down, the best volunteer appreciation is a well run program where volunteers are making a difference every day and they know it and they feel it, and they’re having fun doing it, full stop. So I hope this has inspired you. I hope that you’ve come up with at least one idea where you’re like, you know what, I’m going to run with that. That’s something we could do. Why don’t we all aspire to become a world class volunteer organization? And why don’t we do so by creating an exceptional volunteer experience at our nonprofits? I’m just going to challenge you with that. So thanks for joining me. I’ll leave you now with that challenge. Thanks for joining me this week.
I will be here next week, same time, same place here on The Volunteer Nation. And if you would, don’t forget to rate and subscribe. Drop us a line, give us a review, and please share us with anyone you think could use a little bit of inspiration. All right, gang, I will see you next time. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe, rate and review so we can reach people like you who want to improve the impact of their good cause. For more tips and notes from the show, check us out at tobyjohnson.com.
We’ll see you next week for another installment of Volunteer Nation.
