Episode #092 – How to Mobilize Volunteers by the Thousands with Dr. Chris Lambert
Tobi: 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, Tobi Johnson, and if you rely on volunteers to fuel your charity, cause, membership, or movement, I made this podcast just for you.
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I am your host, Tobi Johnson and gang, we’re going to talk about mobilizing, not hundreds, but thousands of volunteers. And we’ve got a guest. Our guest is Dr. Chris Lambert. I’m going to introduce him in a minute.
Gang folks are having trouble engaging communities in their work. And I think part of it has to do with how we are structuring our opportunities. If they’re so rigid and require folks to sign their life away, it’s really difficult for people to make that commitment nowadays. It’s just hard. We’re building back from a pandemic, people are exhausted, people are working more jobs lately, people have family to take care of.
There’s a lot of pressure on our volunteers. If you’re feeling any pressure in your life, then definitely those pressures are also happening to your volunteers. And so, as organizations, we’ve got to continually innovate around how we engage volunteers, the different ways we do it.
And that’s why I’m so excited to welcome Dr. Chris Lambert here today, because he’s been very successful. His organization has helped thousands of people and as engaged tens of thousands of people in helping others in their community. So I think we’re going to learn a lot.
Before we get going, I want to introduce Dr. Chris Lambert He’s the CEO of life Remodeled. He originally pursued a degree in marketing at Indiana university with the hope of attending law school and launching a career as a real estate developer, but that the world had different ideas for you Chris, right?
A spiritual awakening during his junior year led to a passion to follow Jesus, and Chris eventually followed a call to Fuller and Gordon Conwell seminaries, where he earned his MD Div, which is divinity, and doctorate in preaching. Moving to Liberia in 2007, he and his wife helped a village raise the necessary resources for a well, farm animals, and a new school building. So, you took community development in a new direction is what I’m seeing, right?
Chris: Yeah, it’s been quite an adventure and, Tobi, it’s such a pleasure to be with you today. By the way, please feel free just to call me Chris or even just Lambert. That’s what a lot of people call me here in the Detroit area.
Tobi: So, Chris, after returning back to the US, you founded a church called Ecclesia and in 2010, you started Life Remodeled where he and his dream team built and launched next level nonprofit. So you’ve been on TEDx stages. You’ve been on Crane’s 40 Under 40, you’ve built been on building design and construction, 40 Under 40 Smart Business Deal Maker, you’ve got a lot of kudos here, but it’s the journey ahead and the people he’s asked to help lead the way that excites him most. So welcome to the pod, Chris!
Chris: So great to be with you, Tobi.
Tobi: So tell us a little bit about yourself. I introduced you and talked a little bit about your journey, but how did you make the transition and decide what was the moment in your life where you said, you know what, I’m going to work in nonprofit work? I’m going to make this happen!
Chris: So that spiritual encounter you allude to in my bio took place my junior year of college. I went to Indiana university. I was studying business. I was getting ready to go to law school and become a real estate developer because at the time I thought that was a great way to make all the amount of money that I thought that I wanted to fund the lifestyle that I was passionate about at that time.
But while my junior year was taking place, I decided to move to Australia for six months to “study.” And I’m going to put that in air quotes. There wasn’t a lot of studying going on overseas. And while I was in Australia, I ended up experiencing what I would call this radical encounter with God that changed the entire trajectory of my life. And the biggest thing that came out of that experience was prior to that experience, I loved my family, my friends, people in my little bubble, but I really couldn’t care less about people outside my little world. I wasn’t a bully, but I just wasn’t paying attention.
And immediately after this experience and continuing on to this day, I began to be filled with what I would call this deep sense of curiosity where I’d want to just connect with people that I meet. And long story short, my life took a totally different trajectory.
I moved back to Indiana University for my senior year. Before I left IU, there wasn’t a single Jesus follower or Christian in this entire fraternity of 180 guys. Before I got back, this had nothing to do with me. My three best friends in the fraternity also had these radical encounters with God, plus my drug dealer, who was an atheist before I left, I came back.
They said, what the heck happened to Lambert? I said, what the heck happened to you guys? And we got this Bible study going on the frat. We started leading all these dudes to Jesus. Long story short. I realized I didn’t want my life to be about money and power. I want it to be about connecting people with God.
And so that’s what led me to cancel law school, move out to Los Angeles, study at a seminary out there. But even that journey was about going into church ministry and being a pastor. And I, my wife and I, started a church in 2007 in the Detroit area. We thought we were going to do that forever.
But then in 2010, I got this vision to start Life Remodeled, which I’d never sat on a nonprofit board before, I’d never led in a nonprofit. Of course, the church world is a nonprofit, but it’s very distinct. So that was the beginning of the journey.
Tobi: So you have engaged lots, as we said, tens of thousands of volunteers in your work, not all nonprofits start out thinking, Oh, and not only are we going to help the community, we’re going to engage the community and helping the community. Not everybody thinks that most people are out there raising money to try to hire staff and maybe they’ll have a few volunteers and they’ll have, of course, their volunteer board.
Was it a vision for you early on to say, you know what, we’re going to engage the community in this effort as volunteers? Or did that come later? And why do you think engaging so many volunteers in your mission is so important? Besides, I know folks think about, Oh, it’s nice to not have to spend budget on, on staff. Is there more to it than that?
Chris: Let me back up and start with why whenever anyone wants to know about Life Remodeled, it’s very important for me to start with why and I would actually recommend all of us as organizational leaders do so because it’s the driving force behind everything that we’re doing and the reason why Life Remodeled exists.
It’s because we’re absolutely convinced Detroiters have all the talent they need, but many don’t have access to all the opportunities they deserve. And so, the main work that we do is we repurpose large vacant school buildings in Detroit into what we call one stop hubs of opportunity for entire families to thrive.
And we fill these buildings with the best and brightest nonprofits who are moving the needle in three particular areas. That would be 1) educational youth programs, 2) to workforce development initiatives, 3) health and human services. Then we help them collaborate together to create far greater impact than they would ever create alone.
What leads us to the volunteerism of the caliber that you’re talking about is one of our programs. It’s called our six-day project, and there’s nothing too fancy about the name. We literally just called it exactly what it is. It’s every year, six straight days where we mobilized thousands and thousands of volunteers.
Pre-COVID, it was 10 to 12,000 volunteers in six weeks. In a post covid world, it’s more like 5,000. And what those volunteers are doing is they’re beautifying areas of Detroit where there’s large amounts of vacant property. So, Detroit had 1.8 million people in the eighties. We now have about 650,000. And so, these volunteers, we arm them with weed whackers, lawn mowers, they’re picking up overgrown, they’re picking up trash, illegal dumping on vacant properties.
They’re mowing the lawns of veterans and seniors. And so, the answer to your question is some volunteer efforts lend themselves to the ability to mobilize thousands of people, most do not.
And so, we didn’t set out to say, Oh, Hey, how can we create a project that has thousands and thousands of volunteers? We really started with what is the problem? What can we do about it? And then that led to the creation of programs and initiatives that are very effective, engaging volunteers.
Tobi: Got it. Before we get in a little bit more into Life Remodeled and maybe some more detail about how you just logistics of bringing on that many people, you also wrote a book called Next Level Nonprofit. Tell us a little bit about that book. How did that come about? And was it from work collaborating and working with other nonprofits and watching what was happening? Or was it your own learning as you were developing and growing as your own nonprofit? How did that come about?
Chris: I started Life Remodeled in 2010, and our first four years were really messy. Then we hit our stride, and over the next nine years, we invested 51 million into Detroit neighborhoods, renovated four school buildings, mobilized 82,000 volunteers, and beautified over 2,300 city blocks.
And we get asked all the time, how did you do that? And that’s what this book is. This book is what we would call an organizational operating system. No, it’s not a software, but it’s a series of simple, timeless principles that ensure all of us can build the dream teams that we’re longing for, and that certainly includes great volunteers and that we can serve more people and serve them more effectively.
Tobi: Awesome. And part of that book, is there a principle you want to share that you think, in particular, relates to engaging the community and volunteers?
Chris: So, there are four key components to an organizational operating system. Number one and most important is team unity. Next would be compelling vision. Third would be a right strategy. And then fourth would be discipline execution.
So, I just want to talk about team since volunteers are such a big part of our team. We have a saying that we believe is essential and it’s “who is always greater than how.” And, so getting the right people in the right seats and becoming a united team of one is the most important thing we can do as organizations.
For instance, we can have the most compelling vision in the world or even the best strategy. But if we don’t have the right people in the right places in the right seats, who are truly united as one, we’re always going to be hitting our heads up against the wall and struggling to solve challenges. Whereas instead of just asking, how do we do this? It’s about who right people, right seats, and the united team.
Tobi: You know, if volunteers are only working on short term projects, how do you quickly build team unity and a sense of cohesiveness?
Chris: And I love that you pointed that out about short term projects because we have a variety of on ramps for volunteer engagement. We have volunteers that volunteer year-round in leadership capacities. We’ve had quite a few people make this transition that a guy named Bob Buford wrote about in a book called Halftime, Moving from Success to Significance. And quite a few people who’ve retired have joined Life Remodeled in long-term capacities, whether it’s project management, whether it was helping us connect with others in the community and prospective donors, prospective corporate volunteer groups.
But certainly, when you talk about mobilizing thousands of volunteers that is once a year for us. That is short-term and we’ll take anybody at that point. For the most part, we’re not choosy. Our only requirements are that you have to be at least 14 years of age or older. That’s really the only requirement and our insurance requires that. So that’s the only reason we do that.
Tobi: Let’s talk about these large volunteer projects. How do you go about them? I don’t think your team is super huge. How do you go about mobilizing that many people? What are the logistical things? What are the tips you could give other organizations that are trying to do the same thing, whether it’s for an arts and culture festival or community cleanup, or some type of advocacy work, those kinds of things?
Sometimes numbers matter in terms of significance. And it must be pretty amazing when in, in a six-day period, you’ve got vacant lots looking janky and all of a sudden transformation. And that must feel pretty good to the volunteers, but walk us through step-by-step. How, what, how, what are the logistics that go into this? You’ve done it a few times, so you’ve probably got a system in place now.
Chris: We do, one analogy I like to use is imagine you’re starting up a new restaurant, okay? And if the new restaurant, you start up opens up night, one and a hundred people come and you have impeccable service, the food tastes amazing. It all comes out the right time. The hospitality is engaging, the decor is beautiful, the restrooms are clean. Right. The people that eat there are going to leave that restaurant and they’re going to tell one to two people about their incredible experience.
On the other hand, let’s say you open that restaurant and people show up and they have to wait an hour to get to their seat, the service is slow. Hospitality is almost non-existent. The food’s a little cold. The restroom’s not clean. Those people who leave are going to tell seven to 10 people about what a terrible experience that was. And that’s just like typical human psychology on how we talk about good experiences and bad experiences. And so, delivering on the volunteer experience is absolutely essential.
People ask, how in the world did you grow to thousands and thousands of volunteers? And that is one of the most important ingredients we have done time in and time out. What volunteers often tell us is they say, Oh my gosh, for the first time, we were really utilized every minute from the moment we arrived to the moment we left.
We not only had something to do, but you just hit it on the head. We could see the fruit of our labor. It was fulfilling. It brought us together. The thing that people love the most, cause we bring people together from the city and the suburbs, our three main groups that, that volunteers come from.
If you think of them, think of them as three main buckets. All right. Not everyone fits into one of these three, but first and foremost would be the community members themselves in the neighborhoods where we’re serving the students and adults that are there. The largest bucket is corporations. the, And the third bucket would be faith-based organizations. Okay. And we have grown significantly in engaging all three of those buckets.
And it’s a different approach for each of those three. And so, delivering on the experience is non-negotiable. And then another piece is people give to people or people get involved with causes because of connections to people.
So, we have a very well run organization and we are highly relational. We spend a lot of time relationally connecting with leaders, with influencers. And when it comes to corporations, I’m going to speak about right now, because that’s where we engage the most volunteers, right? Corporations want to be associated with organizations that are doing well, that they can trust their brand with.
Because we got to remember we’re in an age right now where any associations that we have, if one of our partners that we’re associated with does something stupid or says something crazy on social media, we get implicated as a part of being a partner with that group. And it goes both ways. And so, when companies are looking at volunteering with your organization or with Life Remodeled, they’re looking at how well is this organization going to steward my brand.
And I don’t look at that as a selfish thing because look, that’s just reality. That’s a part of the business thinking that you have to think through the risk management of being associated with this organization. Well, not only do they want to do risk management, but they want to be associated with causes that are getting a lot of attention.
And so, it takes a lot of time to build up the kind of momentum that we have today, because success breeds success and people who have good experiences tell other people about it and it grows and it, and it flourishes. And so back to the corporate experience, what lends itself to large corporate engagement is the idea of collaboration among team members.
And I think especially in a post COVID environment where a lot of corporate employees haven’t even spent significant amount of time with as many people on their team as they used to in a pre-COVID world. And these volunteer projects are a great way to connect relationally. But again, it’s gotta be meaningful, right? And too many nonprofit volunteer experiences are not well thought through, not well organized, and people are standing around feeling useless.
Tobi: I love that you’re talking about the relational aspect. And I think it is interesting that in a post-COVID world, we are, a lot of people are working remotely, at least part time, there’s a craving for connection because people were on lockdown for so long.
We’re trying to learn how to be together again. It’s difficult because some of our social cues, we lost skill. We didn’t realize it was a skillset that we were employing day in, day out. And when, all of a sudden, you’re not using your social skills, all of a sudden. Feels awkward.
So, I think people, and when people are engaged, there’s a box, a structure, a safe place that feels good for people to get something done together. I can see how that brings massive reward above and beyond the impact they’re making as volunteers in the community. So, I can see why that would be with corporate folks, a great team building activity.
Chris: You know, the other thing I meant to say, and I lost my train of thought, I got it back now, is volunteers from the suburbs, they love engaging with us because they know they’re going to connect with community members in the Detroit neighborhoods where we’re working. That’s also something that you may not experience regularly in a lot of volunteer engagements are the volunteers connecting with the people that the organization serves.
And again, I want to make sure I’m not saying this as like a must have or any kind of a maxim. And I don’t think that organizations should start with the idea of how do we engage a bunch of volunteers? How do we get them engaged with the community?
I really think it always starts with the people that you’re serving. What are the challenges that they’re facing? How can your work help them to overcome those challenges or thrive? And then what truly makes the most sense for you in your lane? And so, what I’m just speaking of is our story and our experiences.
Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. And we talk it on the pod and in our trainings about really goals to roles, right? So, you’re really taking the goals of your organization, the strategic objectives of your organization and aligning them with the volunteer effort. And if you can’t draw a straight line between a volunteer role and your organization’s ultimate aims then what’s the point of the role right now?
Of course, sometimes volunteers become donors and that’s fantastic. It’s a nice by product, but that’s not the reason for volunteerism. And sometimes it’s interesting cause we just finished our five-day Vision Week Bootcamp where we helped volunteer involving organizations and mostly volunteer coordinators develop strategic plans for 2024.
And one of the biggest challenges they have is just getting their hands on the organization’s strategic plan. And I’m like, wait a minute, your job is to develop human resources to help get that plan done. I’m not understanding. It just seems a little bit crazy, but I’m glad you mentioned that because it really does.
You know, you’re not doing this just to do big projects. I also think on the flip side, some organizations, corporate groups will approach them and want to do the same projects and there’s only so many times you can have the outside of your building painted. And so, there’s really, there’s a give and take, I think, between the organizations, the corporate folks and the nonprofit.
Tobi: Let’s take a quick break and we’ll jump back in and talk a little bit more about the nuts and bolts and logistical things because I think our listeners are probably going to want to hear a little bit about that step by step. So, we’ll be right back after this break with more on how to mobilize volunteers by the thousands with Dr. Chris Lambert. So don’t go anywhere.
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Okay. We’re back with our discussion with Dr. Chris Lambert on how his organization has mobilized volunteers by the tens of thousands, but also this relational focus, which I think is so important. It’s more about people than paperwork really when it comes to volunteerism. And I think organizations have gone a little bit overboard with the paperwork side, human resources processing, but it really is the emotions that we feel when we’re giving that make us want to give more and also is the reward for giving our time and talent.
So, talk me through a little bit more. Are there specific things you do before, during, and after an event to boost that, those relational connections between volunteer to volunteer, but also volunteer to some of your team members?
Chris: So, one of the core values of Life Remodeled is Community First, and that core value is embodied in the sense that we don’t do things to communities or for communities. We do them with communities in Detroit and that’s been one of the distinctions that’s really been very appealing to volunteers because especially when you think about a city like Detroit.
Tobi: Right.
Chris: That’s one point, I mean, that’s 650,000 people. It is the largest predominantly black city in America. 80 percent of residents are African American and many of the volunteers are white Americans coming from the suburbs, right?
We’re all very conscious now, thankfully, of this reality of White Saviorism and the posture that a volunteer potentially could bring into a community where it could be offensive. And so, one of the things that really draws volunteers to want to work with Life Remodeled and to trust Life Remodeled is the depth of our relationships with the community members that we serve.
And they know that the work that we’re doing actually was driven by the ideas, hopes, and dreams of the community. So, it doesn’t feel like a charity case, right? And so that relational connectivity with the community we serve spills over into their interest in engagement and being involved.
And then we spent a lot of time, like I mentioned earlier, relationally connecting with corporations and then the volunteer experience itself. We do a significant amount of planning leading up to the project. And then the week of the project, you’ll look at our team leaders and they will be super chill because we’ve already done all the thinking prior to the event.
I can’t stand it when I go to an event, a party. Let’s just say a party and the host is freaking out because so many logistical details are still trying to figure out. And I can’t connect with that person.
In our events, you can connect with our leaders like really deeply because we’re all just having fun this week. The hard work was already done long before this six-day project rolled around. I believe in organized and organic and the organized piece is actually where you talk about HR and policies like that.
I would take a very different approach on organizational structure that may be what some of us are used to. And anyway, having the right organizational approach sets you up for an organic relational experience that can truly crush it. And so, when that week comes around, we are engaging with people deeply. They have such a wonderful emotional experience that you’re right, emotion is the greatest driver.
I agree with you in giving financially and giving our time. People give to people, people get involved with causes that make them feel good, but it’s gotta be an authentic, healthy, feel good. Absolutely.
Tobi: Absolutely love the doing things with community, not for community, very much a grassroots to grass tops approach, which in the end, who knows best what your community needs, but the people who live there day in day out? And so, I think that’s fantastic.
And do you do things to help educate volunteers about that, or is it just your messaging already when you’re doing recruitment that helps people understand the differences? Because if people have been involved with more traditional quote, unquote, “charitable organizations,” they may have never experienced or understood this different alternate way of thinking about power sharing is this the way I look at it, right?
Chris: Yeah. One of my friends who was our vice president for four years, he’s an African American guy here in Detroit. And incredible. His name is Dwan Dandridge. He now is the CEO of another nonprofit he started called Black Leaders Detroit. And he said that often White individuals who come into the city are happy to share resources, but not so much to share power, and that really connected with me.
And we actually do have quite a few volunteers who come in with a mindset that is wrong. Some people take a deficit mindset approach when they look at a neighborhood like Detroit and they just, they think about everything. Oh, it’s so bad and so much crime and the education is so bad and they might label people in a way incorrectly.
Like, for instance, 92 percent of kids right now in Detroit schools in third grade are not able to read a grade level. And so, some volunteers are misinformed and they come up with the conclusion that, Oh, the main reason that is, is because the kids just don’t care as much about education or their parents don’t care, or maybe they’re not as smart as my kid.
And so, we go to great lengths to educate people on systemic root causes that actually create the environment for those gaps in opportunity. And it’s really a lack of access to opportunity, right? Talent is evenly distributed all over the world, but opportunity is not.
And okay, back to Detroit, right? We’ve all seen stories of Detroit in the news. Detroit in many years has led the country and murder rates and so on and so forth. Thankfully, we’re not number one in that category anymore. We’re actually about to have the 60 years this year. So, I’m very excited about that. But people still have that in their mind that if I go to Detroit neighborhood, I’m going to get shot or I’m going to get mugged or whatever.
And most suburban people will only go to like downtown Detroit. They’re not going to go into a neighborhood when we bring them in these neighborhoods and we bring them together with people from different walks of life, community members. We have actually found, and we have measured this, that over 80 percent of our volunteers say that the day they volunteer with us, they experience positive change in their thoughts or feelings about people of another race, religion, or political perspective.
Because, and we talk about this, where we talk about, look at all the various races that are here. Look at all the political perspectives that are here. And we all know how frustrating it is. In our country right now around tribalism, we like to throw out red meat and draw deep lines of division. If you’re this, then you’re that, and I have found that volunteerism in large groups is actually one of the most effective way to bridge divides.
Tobi: Yes.
Chris: When you’re doing an action-oriented project that everyone agrees on. So we have 5,000 volunteers. They don’t agree on politics. They don’t agree on religion. We, by the way, have people from all different religions. They don’t agree on racial matters, but they agree that blight is bad and that kids shouldn’t have to look at houses that are overgrown with brush and weeds and windows knocked out and where it literally makes the neighborhood more dangerous.
And so, they come together and, in the process, they began to realize. Wow, I actually like you, you’re different than I thought in a good way. And we also all put on the same t-shirts that helps too, right? Because you got CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and you got somebody in a neighborhood who’s maybe never met a CEO of a company like that, and they’re all working together and just, it’s just beautiful.
Tobi: So do you have facilitated conversation about this as you kick off or before the event about, Hey, let’s talk about how different we are and about how the same we are alike and different. I think if you talk to people about, and I absolutely agree. I’ve had this conversation many times with people, how volunteerism is one of the last places.
First of all, it’s non monetized. Second of all, it’s one of the last places that’s a safe space for people of different walks of life can come together and have their biases blown out of the water because a lot of times they don’t even realize some of the more subtle biases that they have in their minds about the other people. Oh, they don’t talk the way I thought they would talk.
Oh, we care about the same things. I think everybody, almost everybody, if you ask them, they care about their family. They want their kids to have the best, have better than they had. They want to spend quality time with their friends. Those are things that are universal.
There are universal human traits and human needs. And human, we all want safety. They all want connection. We all want to strive to be something better. And so when this is happening, are these just light bulb moments going off? Are you facilitating conversation about it?
Chris: More of the light bulbs going off that week. And I’ll explain why we take that approach. And there are Detroit residents that have told me stories, African American Detroit residents, that they had such a good experience with the volunteer on their block, invited them in their house. They gave them a glass of lemonade or a glass of tea. And they arrived at the conclusion, like you’re the first white person that’s ever stepped foot in my house.
So, it’s going all different ways, right? It’s not a one-sided educational experience. It’s part of the reason we call it Life Remodeled, because we’re all on this journey of growing and evolving, if we so choose.
Back to your question about, Hey, do we take a lot of time to educate people? So, we try to not give people too much in any one particular place. We are trying to engage people on a journey. So yes, the majority of our volunteers, they’re only going to be with us one day. We may not see them again until next year. That’s great. And they do help, right? We definitely take a funnel approach where I’m looking for, and we’re looking for the people who want to go deeper, who want to get engaged in a more meaningful way beyond a one-day volunteer experience. And those are the individuals that go on the educational journey with us.
And so, we do create a video that everyone needs to watch before they volunteer, which is really about the logistics of the day, but we work in a few pieces in there educationally without it becoming like a public service announcement type of a deal or a seminar. And so. we take the long game approach for those who truly want it, because look, not everybody wants to go that deep and that’s okay. Sure.
Tobi: Yeah. I love when you said the funnel approach for folks who don’t know what that means in marketing, when we look at the funnel, we look at it, you know, at the top, lots of people go in the funnel, but only a few people where, where it’s the right offer for them end up at the bottom in the small of the V.
Chris: In your mind, it’s like, look, we’ll attract as many people as we can. And for folks who want dip their toe baby toe in for a day, do a day event. And it may or may not float their boat or their life circumstances change. They move out of town, and they have a kid, or they have to take care of an elderly parent, or they change jobs. There are many reasons why people can and can’t volunteer. And then some, for some of those folks, the light bulb goes off in a big way, keep doing this.
Tobi: This is, this speaks to me, and I love the fact that, and I’ve always been an advocate of this. Why not have folks in the community? Why not even have folks who benefit from your services have the opportunity, not the requirement to volunteer, the opportunity.
We had a conversation about community court ordered community service and I said, that’s not volunteering is that’s all it being volun-told as a different, and people are asking, how can we get people who are doing service learning or court or community service, anything where they’re being volun-told where it’s a requirement, how can we get them to keep volunteering? I’m like, you don’t, the deal has been struck already. The deal is they will give you their time because they’ve been required to, and you’re going to give them a meaningful opportunity. And that’s it. When the deal’s done, the deal’s done. It’s not really volunteerism if we want to think of it in a more, uh, I don’t know, I don’t want to say pure, but in a more, a sense of people giving time without being compelled to do just being asked and taking that opportunity.
So I love that folks are coming together, that it’s grassroots to grass tops. I think people, whether they realize it or not, power sharing can feel really good to people. It can feel like the right thing, right? And regardless of if you’re a person who’s had power or not had power, when power sharing happens, it can feel good for everybody.
So, I think people don’t often don’t talk about that either. Working and in harmony with people is very satisfying. I’ve had this experience in my own life when I’ve run volunteer programs and run organizations and set up programs where when you’re working in sync and in flow, especially with people who are different than you. There’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction in that, I think.
Chris: Agreed. Yeah, absolutely.
Tobi: Talk to me a little bit more about your team leaders. Are you engaging volunteers as leaders? How do you prepare them? You’re having a six-day event. You’re having groups come and support only one day. Or do you have some groups that say, no, we’re taking all six days.
Chris: So let me give an example. There was a year where General Motors sent 3,700 people to us over five straight days. They’ll have a thousand that’ll come, and they’ll do them all in one particular day. So, some companies spread their volunteers amount over multiple days, but it’s usually different people who are coming each day.
And then we do have quite a few people who take off the entire week every year as a part of their vacation for a company. And they come as volunteer leaders. So we have various levels of leadership in this role in this six day project. On one hand, it’s the logistics of what are you registration, when everyone shows up the busing, getting everybody on buses, driving them out to the command centers or where all the tools and equipment are. And then they’re out of the neighborhood.
So, we have one volunteer leader for every 10 volunteers. Now those, what we call them red shirt leaders, because they’re literally wearing a red Life Remodeled t-shirt where everyone else is wearing a black Life Remodeled t-shirt. Those individuals are, they don’t need any previous experience with Life Remodeled. We train them in a 10 minute video that they watch before they come.
Tobi: Wow! So, a lot of people want to step up to that challenge to be a red-shirt leader. And to train someone in 10 minutes means that you have to have an extremely clear, simple process. And again, some volunteer efforts lend themselves to more simple experiences than others.
Chris: When you’re in a city that has so much vacancy and blight, you can keep people working for a very long period of time. And it’s easy to move them from one area to the next because it’s pretty easy to discern where’s the blight, right? What do I go to? Where do I go next? But yes, we do create a wide variety of leadership roles and experiences.
And obviously the people who are most involved in the planning are more aligned with our organization. We’ve vet them more significantly. Then we do someone who’s just showing up to be a red-shirt leader.
We get a project, but you know, what I want to say is I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of nonprofits, and in my experience, most of us are so focused on serving those outwardly. That we’re really not investing enough time, talent and resources on our inward internal systems, which would actually ensure far greater reach and greater impact. And as a result, we’re not achieving the level of impact we know we’re capable of.
And as much as these experiences we’re talking about are quite exciting. It is the structure and the foundation behind it that creates the possibility for this to ever even happen at this level of excellence.
Tobi: You’re talking my language. I talk to lots of volunteer coordinators who want to level up their skill set because we do training, we have a community, we, we can coach folks, we can help people improve because I tell people engaging volunteers actually is rocket science because it is a lot about human relationships. It’s about understanding human psychology.
You’ve got all that human side, but you also have the organizational side because like you said, people need to show up. And be able to get to work right away. They need to see the results. So, there’s design elements going on of these roles and these experiences.
How are you an architect of this experience? And then there’s all the data and the risk management, all that. Then there’s the outreach and marketing and all of that developing relationships with like-minded stakeholders in your community, whether it be corporate, faith based, whatever, it’s a complicated job.
And folks are like, Hey, guess what? You’re going to be, you’re going to manage volunteers. And by the way, you’re going to do all these other things too. Cause you’re going to need to wear many hats because we don’t have enough money. And I always think that’s such a scarcity mindset. If you invest in your people, you will, the money will come.
The resources will come from the community because they’re better at making those relationships happen and they’re more efficient. They’re less burnout. They’re more excited. I think enthusiasm is under is underrated. Like when people are burnt out, they can’t really be that enthusiast. They’re head down getting the work done, but they can’t share their joy with others, which is an automatic attractor to people to come help.
What are your thoughts on specifically preparing that kind of team member, a team member, whether they’re a volunteer coordinator or they’re outbuilding community relationships, et cetera. Are there some specific things that you think people could do better at?
Chris: I’m going to touch on what you talked about, this scarcity mentality. And I honestly think this is what we’re taught day in and day out in the nonprofit sector, that the pie is only so big. And we’ve been taught for years that donors don’t want us to spend money on overhead. Overhead is bad, right? That is shifting to where donors and volunteers, they are passionate about impact even more passionate about impact than they are your overhead. And that is a wonderful change in the nonprofit sector.
And so many of us though, as nonprofit leaders have never worked for thriving for-profit companies. Now I used to say, and I don’t say this anymore. I used to say, I want to invite nonprofits to operate more like businesses. But then I learned over the years, that’s actually not good enough because if you take two organizations, one’s a for-profit, the other is a nonprofit, let’s say they’re about the same size and annual revenue and staff running the nonprofit is far more complex in the for-profit world.
Their customers are paying market value for their goods or services. If they satisfy enough customers, they generate profit, they win. Right. In the nonprofit world, our customers or our clients are not paying market value for our goods or services. And so, we need to satisfy not only them, but our donors and our volunteers and our board members, and all of them have vastly different perspectives.
We have two bottom lines, a financial bottom line. Yes, but more importantly, measurable social impact. We’re not supposed to pay our staff members the same size salaries that the for-profits can pay. And we’re all making tremendous emotional investments in the people that we serve.
Now I say all that to say not to be doom and gloom, but, and actually, I think there’s a very simple pathway to organizational excellence and structure to where you painted that scenario of a staff member who’s wearing all these hats. Oh my gosh. That’s a massive problem. That’s non-negotiable. That, we can’t even talk about how you can do a volunteer project until we can talk about how you’re going to stop doing that. Not you, but the listener who’s doing that. And that’s how I used to run the organization.
The reality is all of us are uniquely gifted. We all have things that we’re really good at, and we love doing that is the alignment of our superpower. That is where our team members need to be active. Now, before we even choose team members, we need to discern what structure does our organization truly need? Do we even need a volunteer coordinator or is it, what role is it?
Once we define it, then we need to search for that person that truly is what they love doing most and their best at right. And then we need to keep them in that lane because every time they’re using their energy on other things that aren’t in that sweet spot, sure they can do them, but they’re not going to do them with the highest level of excellence and they’re going to take away, that’s going to take away from what their best at.
So again, this seems as we talk about it, because so many of us just didn’t experience it and thriving for-profit companies have these principles down all day long. Now, not every, not every company, right? A lot of companies are exploitative and doing bad things and whatnot, but I have worked very difficult, very diligently to distill the most difficult concepts into the simplest form, and that’s what’s in this book, Next Level Nonprofit.
It’s going to, it’s a blueprint that someone could self-implement anywhere in the world. In fact, hundreds of organizations are doing it right now. And we just started earlier this year on it, but often we want a quick fix in the nonprofit world, Hey, tell me how to get 10,000 volunteers. Sorry. There is no magic wands, no magic wands.
But I love what you’re doing, Tobi, and that you are freely sharing gold and diamonds of information. And, and so many of us are afraid to do that because we think that it’s a competition. It’s not a competition and the world is moving toward collaboration, thankfully. And we all want your organization to be stronger because the world needs you to be at your best.
Yeah. And with, that’s a great way to end this conversation. It’s been fantastic. I’m hearing your passion coming through. I hope folks are really thinking about this and pick up your book Next Level Nonprofit because even if you’re a volunteer coordinator, you’re not the person making all the decisions, it can help you think about your own internal organization as the volunteer services department, even if you’re a department of one, you think about your zone of genius.
If your zone of genius is relational and you’re working with, you’re just best at people to people building relationships, but you’re not the best at, for example, digital marketing, then maybe it’s your marketing and communications folks who need to take responsibility for setting up a recruitment plan to get the word out about your volunteer opportunities. I think volunteer managers have been put in a silo and every time there’s new stuff, now we do training on how to do all of this, but there’s a point where the job becomes too big for one person. And not everybody’s a Swiss army knife that has every single tool in their tool belt. In fact, those people are pretty rare.
Chris: Really?
Tobi: And as you said, it’s not just about your skillset. It’s about what you love to do because you’re going to maintain flow and energy when you’re doing things that you love to do and you’re, it’s going to deplete your energy when you’re doing things you hate to do.
It’s not that we can have the perfect job where every moment of every day is like fairy dust and perfect. Believe me, having worked 25 years in nonprofits, I can tell you that. Not the case, but when the majority of your job is focused on your own values, your own mission, your own skillset, the things you love to do, you’re going to be better. And everybody, if everybody’s doing that in your organization, you become, as you said, that Next Level Nonprofit.
So, I think that’s fantastic. Let me ask you two more questions before we wrap up. One is what are you most excited about in the year ahead?
Chris: We have just purchased a new vacant school building on the east side of Detroit that we’re about to repurpose, and this model has been proven to be game changing. In fact, Gallup Research recently came into Detroit and did a study and they found out that the neighborhood where we just created one of these hubs scored the second highest in the entire city in their perception of their ability to thrive. Right. So they’re, so pretty excited about this.
Tobi: Fantastic. That’s an amazing feat. Mindset is everything. And the minute people have hope, things can change.
Chris: I agree. People won’t take action if they don’t have hope, but if they do, then they’ll start to take risks, start to take steps forward because they can see what’s at the end of the rainbow. That’s fantastic.
Tobi: I agree. Last question. Where can people reach you? Where can they learn more about your nonprofit, but also where can they grab your book? Life Remodeled is, liferemodeled.org and the book is available on Amazon and anywhere audiobooks are distributed. It’s on every platform. It’s called Next Level Nonprofit and the Next Level Nonprofit website is nlncoaching.org.
Tobi: Awesome. And we will put all of that in the show notes gang. Check it out. Thank you, Chris, for joining me. Happy holidays and best of luck with your new building and your new hub.
Chris: I think it’s going to be fantastic. Tobi, it was such a pleasure to meet you and just hear our like-minded passions and convictions. So, God bless you and everything you’re doing.
Tobi: Thank you so much. And thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. It has been such a joy to have this conversation that yes, you can have a nonprofit of excellence. Yes, you can make changes. Yes, you can succeed and. Dr. Chris Lambert has laid it out for us and has it in his book.
And, gang if you’ve enjoyed this episode I hope you’ll share it with a friend and be sure to rate and review us. It’s how people find us on the interwebs. And we will be here next week, same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Bye everybody.
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 Tobijohnson.com. We’ll see you next week for another installment of Volunteer Nation.