138 – Building Community in an Uncertain (and Sometimes Scary) World

November 28, 2024

Episode #138: Building Community in an Uncertain (and Sometimes Scary) World  

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast, Tobi Johnson shares an insightful discussion from a recent VolunteerPro membership coaching call. The episode dives deep into ways to create safe, inclusive spaces for volunteers, particularly in uncertain times marked by social and political divisions.  

Tobi emphasizes the importance of building community and acknowledging the non-profit sector’s expertise in this area. She highlights how reinforcing norms, establishing rituals, and offering spaces for emotional debriefing can foster a sense of safety and belonging. The episode also includes bonus tips from members on celebrating positive team culture, acknowledging strides in inclusivity, and staying mission focused.  

Building Community – Episode Highlights

• [00:25] – A Different Approach: Sharing a Coaching Call 
• [01:16] – The Importance of Building Community 
• [03:09] – Creating Safe Spaces in Volunteering 
• [04:56] – Behind the Scenes of Volunteer Pro Membership 
• [06:58] – Addressing Safety and Emotional Well-being 
• [12:21] – Facilitating Conversations and Building Trust 
• [20:47] – Practical Tips for Community Building 
• [33:18] – Bonus Tips from Volunteer Pro Members 

Helpful Links

• 2025 Volunteer Management Progress Report Survey Link 
• Volunteer Management Progress Report 
• Become a Distribution Partner 
• Contact us: wecare@volpro.net 
• VolunteerPro Membership Community 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #122: Rethinking Community Involvement with Ruth Leonard 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #127: Volunteer Centric, Community Centric, Organization Centric: What’s the Difference? 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #136: Getting Back to Neighboring with Breauna Dorelus

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #138 Transcript: Building Community in an Uncertain (and Sometimes Scary) World 

Tobi: Hey there, it’s Tobi from the volunteer nation podcast. And. Today I’m going to do something completely different. I’m going to share a clip from one of our recent Volunteer Pro membership coaching calls. We’ve been doing what we call huddles in the recent few months, trying them out, seeing how they work. 

They’re a little bit more flexible or informal than our usual seminars and workshops where I’m presenting content. A little bit freer and easier. People sometimes come up with questions, and we get into discussions about what folks are working on, off or on the fly coaching. It’s a very relaxed kind of environment and they’re turning out to be fun. 

I’m enjoying them a lot. Sometimes on a huddle I will, I’m not going to say it’s a rant because I’m not angry and it’s not a rant, but I do get enthusiastic or passionate about a topic that’s very timely. And in this huddle, the passion was around our recent presidential election and the feelings of safety or lack thereof in our communities, in, for some people, not for everybody, some people, and my passion about building community and our responsibility or our opportunity as a community, a non-profit sector and particularly volunteer sector that we have an opportunity as experts in community and you’ll hear as I talk about in the clip about why I think we’re experts in community and it’s something we don’t usually acknowledge. I don’t think, I don’t think we really realize how expert we are, but I will talk about it. 

And this idea of building community has been a topic we’ve been exploring a lot recently on the pod in the last few months. We did episode 122 with Ruth Leonard about rethinking community involvement, episode 127 where I explain the differences between volunteer centric, community centric and organization centric types of engagement and communication, episode 136 where we talk about getting back to neighboring with Breauna Dorels, so just all kinds of conversation about community building and it is something that people are really interested in lately. I thought I would open the vault and share this replay recording with you. So, I believe that when people work in a community, it can be a powerful force for change. 

But I also want to admit that for some people, they don’t always feel safe working in community with others completely, especially after a highly divisive election and in a world filled with aggressive messaging and behavior, frankly, that degrades trust. And so, we’re in a really dicey time right now, and it could impact our volunteer involvement. 

Now, luckily during this coaching call, the members that attended shared with me some of the wonderful things that are happening in spite of, or maybe even because of, the division that’s happening elsewhere. People are craving community and when there’s an opportunity to work with diverse people, people are really embracing that. 

I mean, volunteers at core really understand what community is all about because that’s what they do, right? But when folks don’t feel safe, they start to react or retract and retreat. They’re not always taking full part. They’re not sharing their full authentic selves. And this is antithetical to the spirit of volunteerism, which is really based on collective effort. 

It always has been, and it always will be. And so, to counteract that, I really think we must actively and purposefully build community through our unique positions, uh, of expertise in what it means to be in community with one another. We need to remain self-reflective about this. We need to grow around this. 

So, for this episode, I really thought I’d do something different. Again, take you behind the scenes of a recent volunteer pro membership monthly huddle. So, you may wonder what goes on inside that volunteer pro membership community that we always hear about on every single podcast. What happens there? 

What do they do? Um, what kind of conversations do they have? Well, you’ll hear it firsthand in this episode, where again, I’m not really ranting. What I am is being passionate. And I really talk about and share some of the keyways that I think we can build community. And I talk about and especially reduce bias. 

This feeling of dis-ease or being unsafe. So, I talked about building safety, three keys, and I was just riffing, gang. I just got a call. I didn’t even plan it. I’m like, you know what, I’m going to talk about safety. So, I did, but the other thing is part of the call. I also, after I did my riff on safety, building safety and building community. 

I also opened the floor to our members to share what’s going on at their programs right now and what’s going on with their volunteers. And I did not include this recording because we have a private community, and people are sharing private things. And so I didn’t want to share that as part of the recording, but what I did do is pull out four or five bonus tips community building tips that our members shared during that call, which were so inspirational and so smart around building community that I thought you would benefit from those as well. So, I pulled those out. So, after the promotional break, you’ll hear that as well. So, it’s not just me and my passionate talk about creating safe spaces. 

It’s also wonderful smart things that our members had to say that I’ll share with you after the break. Okay. So, enjoy it and I’ll talk to you a bit. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere. All right, everybody. 

Welcome to our huddle, our, our huddle for November, we have been testing out these fantastic gatherings are usually quite intimate, and we are usually actually a lot of value comes from them. 

We used to have good conversations. So, and I preface this earlier this week with we’ve had an election week. It’s been either you’re elated, or you’re devastated. I don’t think I don’t know very many people who are in between. And when we all, there’s, there was a lot at stake, and it seems different than past elections to me. 

I was on the, and the level of safety, uh, physical, spiritual, emotional that people feel or don’t feel is very real. I don’t think we can ignore that. And because we’re in the people business. We’ve really got to start to strategize how we can help our people feel safe, at least in the, in the spaces that we own and operate. 

And in the spaces that we are inviting people to collaborate. Because it’s very rare to have a volunteer team that agrees on everything and that votes the same way. I mean, I’m on a volunteer team. I can guarantee you we don’t, we don’t all vote the same way. But I feel a hundred and ten percent safe with my volunteer Master Gardener volunteers on my team. 

We have, we’ve even had conversations about deep issues like reproductive rights, for example. And we’ve come out unscathed from those conversations. It didn’t impact the level of our connection at all. In fact, it probably strengthened it because we were able to have Mutually respectful conversations. 

I’m not saying you need to facilitate conversations like that with your volunteers, but I think we do need to talk about how both we’re helping facilitate a safe space for everybody and that we are also taking care of ourselves. Because this being air traffic, emotional air traffic control, as Megan Vixie said to me once, or one of our former members, is a challenging job in an emotional environment. 

Emotionally, and it’s very emotionally charged right now. I was, on the phone last night for about, well, a Zoom call with one of my best friends from high school. We were on a Zoom for about three hours just chatting, just catching up because we didn’t really get to see each other while I was here. 

She, she and her partner live here in the Northwest, and we didn’t get to see each other in person, but we’ve been friends since we were, I think about 16 years old. And she’s a woman of color. Her family is descent, is Japanese descent. And she has, has ancestors, and not that far ago, during World War II, who were in Hiroshima. 

She also has family members who were put in internment camps. in Puyallup, Washington, which is outside of Tacoma, where I grew up in World War II. And so, her, and we were talking, we weren’t talking about that last night, but so her family has a lot of history, some majorly traumatic events. So we were, we were talking a lot about how we felt, whether we felt safe, where, where people at, whether, whether people were ready to move on and not, or not, or how, how these, how these conversations. 

I say this because while we were talking, we also kind of reflected back in, we’re women of a certain age, we’re 60, 61. And we remember the way back when, when there were contentious elections, you know, in the 80s and 90s. There were contentious elections back then as well. But there was never a time, I mean, we might emerge from an election and feel angry, or not like the policies of the incoming administration, and we would get to work organizing and doing what we needed to do, but we never felt unsafe. 

And there’s a lot going on in the world. I’m not saying it’s just from this election. We have school shootings that when we were kids, we didn’t do like active shooter drills. We didn’t do that in our schools. And we have an increasing space of a lot of information coming in that we don’t even trust. We don’t know which information to trust. 

And there’s, you know, a lot of drama on social media. And, and so I’m not going to say that, that our environment of distrust is only from this election. I’m going to say it’s; it’s a milieu we live in now. And as organizations, This is something that can impact whether or not our volunteers show up, and all it takes is one big argument, and people don’t come back anymore, either because they were the perpetrator of the argument, and they don’t want to support anybody else anymore, or were involved in the argument or other people don’t want to have the drama in their life because they have enough already. And so, I want to talk a little bit about this. I also want to make sure that we understand that even in our volunteer pro membership, we may have people who voted differently.  

It is the foundation of our democracy that we’re able to have conversation and debate, healthy debate about the, where our country’s headed. It’s our right. It’s our birthright. Our founding fathers and a few mothers back then too, they don’t talk about the founding mothers, but there were women back there doing things that we fought for. And whether we may feel different about what we’re fighting for and that’s okay.  

My dad and I don’t vote the same at all, like, and have not ever voted the same. However, I have had interesting conversations with my father, especially recently, where we find we have a tremendous amount of common ground. There’s a lot we agree on. Sometimes it shocks me. Because he’ll say something about a policy or a value he has, because I’ll ask questions when I’m having conversations with him. 

Well, what do you think about this? Or do you think blah, blah, blah? And I find that when I ask questions, then we have great conversations. And so, if people are willing and have a stage where they can do this in a place that’s safe, you can start to uncover how we are more alike than different. 

And in volunteer organizations and people working in community, we are the people who know this best. We are experts on community. I, you know, Corporate America is not an expert on community. Government agencies, unless they’re working in community directly, are not experts on community. The media is not an expert on community. 

There is no institution except for the non-profit sector that I can think of, and maybe I’m missing something, that is an expert on community, but non-profit organizations are, because it is what we do. It is what we do. We understand complex stakeholder relationships. Our stakeholders are so complex. The wide range of people who care about our work and who we interface with is way wider range than a corporation would have. 

Corporations are basically our customers and our, our shareholders. That’s who we need to, and, and anybody who regulates us. That’s it. That’s all we’ve got to worry about. But we have so much more complex fabric to work within, and a tapestry of people that we need to negotiate relationships with. So, I will say to you, that you have a skill set that you may not even recognize is far and above in terms of working in community, that is far and above what most people have in their toolkit. 

And so, you know, when we’re ready, I’m not saying, you know, I’m not giving people a call to action like today, go out and like start building community, but when you’re ready. And if you feel like you can, start to think about how you can transfer those community building skills and expand them. in your communities? 

How can you bring people together? And maybe it’s starting small within your volunteers. Now I’m not saying you need to have like, okay, we’re going to have listened sessions and we’re all going to debate issues. Not necessarily. It could be starting with having a conversation and bringing your volunteers together and just saying, hey, how can we, how can we strengthen our sense of community? 

Amongst our volunteer team and leave a wide-open question like that. Get flip charts on the wall, get people talking. You can also ask people what’s standing in the way of us building community? And that’s where people can start to talk about maybe a lack of trust or feeling fearful. And you can start to surface. 

If you ask the right questions, you can start to surface a really good conversation because here’s the deal. People are craving volunteers, for sure, because they do community. That’s what they do. And they understand, in a way, volunteers understand intimately, and maybe subconsciously, how powerful community is. 

And, and they are satisfying their need for community and working with others through volunteering. And people may not voice that. They may voice it, they may not. People may not. reflect on that. But if you think about it, one of the key kind of motivators of volunteering is to be social and to interact with others. 

So, for volunteers, they kind of understand at a gut level that being in community is good for us. But we don’t, not everybody understands that. Some people think division is the way to go, and I’m like, well, actually, if you talk to enough people, you will find a theme of connection and belonging as a craving, as a deep human need, this has been researched time and time again, so we don’t even need to say this is just like our opinion, this is research, safety, belonging, connection, those are, those are key human needs, and right now people have a craving for that. 

And so, if you can surface a conversation about how we build community inside our teams, I think people will lean into that. And, and, and when you bring it down to base values and ask, why do you want to be in community with one another? What, what does it do for us as individuals, as organizations, et cetera? 

That’s another great question to ask a group of volunteers. Because they really start to think like, wow. And here’s the bottom line on facilitating these types of conversations. What happens is people that are different than one another begin to, they begin to realize that they’re more alike than different and someone that they may think is super different than them. 

They realize, oh, well, you know what? My grandmother did XYZ as well, and my grandmother taught me to work in the community as well. Or, yeah, you know what? Yes, I’ve been feeling lonely and isolated too. Wow, that’s interesting. We feel the same way. So, but you can’t, these connections and understanding can’t be surfaced. 

unless we are in conversation with one another. If all we’re doing is checking people in and getting them to work in our volunteer teams and jobs and roles, and we’re just head down working, which sometimes we need to do, that can be very efficient, but in the end it could be to your detriment and the detriment of your team. 

If you have not created space for this kind of conversation and the conversation can happen online, it can happen in rooms. It can happen in a conversational thread, although yes, we can build community in, and we do inside our VolunteerPro community, right? We’re, we’re sharing compassion and caring with one another and ideas and inspiration and all that, but it’s much, it’s like a hundred percent more effective if we’re doing it face to face because we can read body language, we can have sidebars with people, we can disclose things that we weren’t, or were not comfortable disclosing online. 

And so, if you can do, you know, and I know Christine, you, you work in a re, you know, an entire state. If you can do this regionally, if there’s a way to do it, even with just paid staff. One of the questions to paid staff I might ask is what’s our role in creating community? What should our role be as an organization, as an individual working in this organization? 

Great conversation to have with people. And so, we’re not doing training with people to be working in community, we’re asking people to talk about and explore how they can better work in community. Because that’s what we do, right? So, I just wanted to Kind of preface that a little bit. I also want to reinforce that there are ways that you can make people feel safe or safer. 

Now we don’t have control over everything. Nobody does like that’s nobody has control. Not even the person in the white house has control over everything. Nobody does. That’s a myth. There is no one with omnipotent power on this earth. So, we can control our environment. And so, when we think about our environment in our nonprofit, there’s a few different ways we can control or not control, but, but set the stage for a more trusting and emotionally safe environment. 

There are a few different ways you can do that. One. is by reinforcing your norms. So, your norms are, one of my favorite norms is step up, step back. So, one person talks, make sure when we’re in meetings that that person, that you step back and let other people step up or process over people. I like to remind people that a lot of times when things are broken or not working well, it’s the process itself that needs to be redesigned, not the person who needs to be fixed. 

And so, we get out of the blame game in our meetings. That’s another good one. In today’s world, I think some. Norms around civil discourse and we’re not yelling at each other. We’re not calling people names. We’re not threatening We’re not doing any of that anything that’s aggressive behavior Violent behavior because it doesn’t someone doesn’t have to put hands on somebody for it to feel violent There’s aggression and there’s microaggression, right? 

There’s like big and little and both can be traumatic for people. And so being clear about what your organization’s norms are and expectations are, you can help people feel a little bit safe, but also, you’re reinforcing them. So, like maybe every time you start training or every time you start a shift, or I’ll just remind you of one of our norms today, you don’t have to do all of them but just call it out. 

Just remember everybody do, do, do, do. If you can create a list of norms that everybody agrees to, to abide by. Now you can create them yourself. Or you can create them in community with others. Like, during these community conversations, you could say, and what behaviors, this is another question you could ask in a community building conversation, what are the norms, or what are the behaviors that are going to foster a feeling of emotional safety? 

What norms should we all agree to? And part of your norm’s conversation is also that we are mutually responsible for holding each other accountable to these norms. There’s nobody who’s like the school mom who’s going to wag her finger or his finger. When they, or their finger, when somebody’s breaking a norm, that there’s not a single person that’s accountable or responsible for that, for making sure we’re all accountable. 

It’s everyone. So, if we see someone transgressing a norm, we, we should feel like we can gently address that and go, you know that it feels like you’re, you’re working against this norm. What do you think about that? And you will have to lead the way in calling out when norms are transgressed. 

You must lead the way and do it in a gentle way. But you’ve got to get people’s buy in. And when you’re recruiting new volunteers, it’s a good time to share those norms. So, norms are one way to, and, and active. Management of norms, not we’ve got these norms, they’re in our volunteer handbook. That’s it. 

We trained them in training. We’re done talking about them. No, putting them on a post it, putting them in your chat in your uh, webinar, putting them on a flip chart, putting them in a frame. Put them wherever so that everybody gets it. Like this is how we do business here. This is how we go about our business. 

So, the other way you can help people feel really, safe or not really, I should, I shouldn’t say that it’s safer. I should say, because honestly, we don’t control the world, nor do we control other people’s feelings. We must remember that as well. But another way to help people feel more, feel safer, are rituals. 

I call them rituals. What they are, are your standard way of doing things, whatever they are. So here at the VolunteerPro community, you know, we have certain rituals. One of the rituals is that every Monday I send out the weekly member update, and that’s a ritual. It happens every Monday. You know to expect it. 

If you’ve been a member for five years, It’s the same thing we’ve been doing forever. So, there’s no, no, no pivoting, no trying to understand, no trying to navigate, no being confused. It’s like, oh yeah, there it is. There it is again. Now, whether you open it or read it is another story, but you know how to expect it and that you know that that’s where you can go on Mondays in your inbox to find information. 

Similarly, usually at the beginning of my calls, I talk about what’s coming up. Like, and at the end of the call, I ask people, what are your next steps? So, in our, in every and every training is the same slide design, right? That the graphics are the same. These are all rituals. They’re all ways that, that we keep consistency for our volunteers. 

So, whatever your rituals are, you think about people who are pop stars, if you see any documentaries about pop stars, they always bring their team together for a prayer right before they go on stage. All the dancers and the main singer and the backup singers and the musicians are all holding hands or putting arms around each other and they’re doing their prayer, whatever it is. 

They’re setting their intention for their show. That is their ritual, right? So think about your rituals and see if you can, and if you don’t have anything, if everything is constantly changing and chaotic, you’ve got to figure out what those rituals are, what you can give people that is consistent, so that every time they show up at, to volunteer, they know what to expect, that they can go, okay, I, or that when you’re sending out communications, They know, you know, on Wednesdays we get our volunteer info email, or first Friday, we all get together for a social, or whatever it is, right? 

So, rituals are important, helping people feel safe. like they can feel safer. The third thing is to give people a place to go talk about their feelings, what they’re experiencing, and to debrief. Now, I used to work, as you guys know, I used to work with homeless youth, and I’m going to take you through a little bit more of what the tutorial is going to look like. 

And um, so this is the, at the end of the video, we are going to show you the final version of the tutorial. Kids who were trying to battle AIDS and addiction and there’s just a lot going on for the young people we served. Some people were sleeping in Golden Gate Park and then coming to my job readiness class in the morning. 

So, they would do their homework sitting on a park bench. We had a variety of people going through things. But it also impacted staff, and we often put all our emotional energy towards the people we’re trying to serve, even if we work in arts and culture, towards our customers, towards what we want to get done. 

The work also impacts us individually, and it also impacts our volunteers emotionally as well. And so, we’ve got to have a place for people to go to debrief. So, whoever that person is, or those people are, you want to offer that up. We were lucky. When I worked for Larkin Street, we had very expert social workers. 

We had talented social workers that, you know, Master of Social Work that were good. And so, we were able to do, and when something traumatic happened, we had a facilitator come in and debrief when that youth committed suicide. We had one of our head social workers come through all our departments and facilitate an open discussion about our grieving. 

 So, you want to have an open-door policy. Now this doesn’t mean that folks are walking in your door every five minutes. And that you, you are interrupted constantly all day and, and that you are like sacrificing all your productivity. You can’t, you can’t do that. That’s not, not how it works. But you can have office hours, or you can use a calendar link for people to book time with you, like in 15-minute slots, for example. 

Or you can have people just have a way they can indicate to you. Whether it’s through text, et cetera, that they need to set up something that they need to talk about. Maybe you, it may be other of your, you know, if you work in a network and you have other volunteer coordinators, it may be them. It may be a volunteer who is really good at this. 

Maybe they are a therapist in their work life or, or, or worked in human resources in the past or have some skillset where they are listening, just active listening. This is not therapy. It’s not mental health counseling, but what it is, is active listening and giving a safe space for people. You can also create a safe space in groups as well, but you need to be an active facilitator and remember, go back to your norms. 

So, those are three ways to create safe space. in terms of where we’re at now. One, setting norms. Two, rituals. Rituals, right. Thank you. Oh, my goodness, you guys. So those are three things. that you can do to create safety. I hope you enjoyed that clip from our recent coaching call, our member huddle. I hope it gave you some things to think about in terms of creating safe spaces and understanding and being compassionate that some people, even though they might look like they’re feeling safe, may not be feeling safe inside. 

So, we really do need to check in with folks and really have a compassionate ear to the ground to make sure. that we understand where people are so we can support them in the best way possible. So, we’re going to take a quick break from building community in an uncertain and sometimes scary world. 

But when we come back, I’m going to share some of the key and so wise bonus tips from our members that we had that they shared in our discussion after my introduction to the huddle. So, we’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.  

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Okay, everybody, we are back before the break. I took you behind the scenes of the volunteer pro community here and listen in on a particularly relevant coaching call for today’s times, focused on community building and building a sense of safety for our volunteers, making sure that we are able to engage in community and continue to proactively and purposefully build connections with one another. 

So important in today’s times. At this point, I want to share a few more insights that our members shared during our call. Again, I’d like to keep their comments private. So, I’m sharing some general key takeaways rather than the actual recording of our discussions. So, our members come from all kinds of organizations. 

They’re all sizes. all cause impact areas. But one thing is for certain, they are smart cookies. So, you will see with these tips, they share their ideas freely. It’s a generous community and it is full of people on the move. And so, I wanted to share some of these ideas with you as you think about building community. 

So, bonus community building tip number one that some of our members shared or one of our members shared during this member huddle was to celebrate your positive team culture and shared sense of purpose. Reflect on what makes your team great and do this out loud. So, in their organization this week, election week in the United States, it’s been a rough time for a lot of people. 

Some people are elated, some people are devastated, and some people are in the middle. But she was reflecting on her team. And it’s inclusive culture, which makes their organization quite resilient, even in times of political division and social division. And so, she related that in her organization, they have a wide range of volunteers from different backgrounds, and they tend to work well together. 

And they had come on election night. And the work they do has nothing to do with politics or elections, has to do with helping kids. And so, they did volunteer training the next day, and they just had some of the best turnout they’ve had recently. So, it is still possible, and gives us a lot of hope and inspiration, that volunteers know that the cause is more important than being right. 

Or having everybody on your side. So, I think it’s important. And I think if you have that culture, you should be celebrating it out loud. And part of it is all about, hey, isn’t this amazing that we can do this together? Celebrate it. Congratulate people. The second thing, the second bonus community building tip is that another member shared was to acknowledge the strides you’ve made forward, even if you’ve had to overcome team challenges. 

So, we had another member on who’s from Canada. So, their experience isn’t the same. They’re kind of watching from across the border, looking at what we’re doing. There’s a little bit of concern that Canada may be influenced, but you know, Canada is a kinder, gentler nation. This is my opinion. 

I’m sharing it right now. I’ve been to Canada a lot. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so spent a lot of time in Vancouver and Whistler, going skiing and hanging out up there and being a punk rocker all the way up and down the West coast, including British Columbia. And I always found Canadians to be the kinder and gentler folk. 

But her organization had gone through a major transition in the last year or two, and they had to do a lot of work rebuilding their culture so that it was more inclusive. And they are on the other end now. Even if we’re not talking about an election week, we can talk about, like I said on our call, community building is an evergreen activity. 

It’s not something we have to wait till division happens, or wait till there’s a crisis, or wait till people are at odds or there’s conflict. Community building is something we should be doing all the time. It’s a core part of what we do as volunteers involving organizations. If you started in a place that wasn’t so great and you’re making strides forward, it’s something to acknowledge and celebrate as well. 

So, that’s a second community bonus community building tip that one of our members shared. Another one of our bonus community building tips is to double down on your mission and reinforce your plans to stay the course, so that the work continues no matter what. Now, this member has been a longtime member who is actually an executive director of her small nonprofit and they serve kids. 

Her organization involves not hundreds of volunteers, but a smaller group and sometimes in individual volunteering roles. So, their sense of team is different than a big team working together. But the way that she’s been messaging through this whole week and, and around this time is really about the work that they’re doing for the kids. 

When we talked about this on the call, you don’t need to be talking about the election if you’re not, if that’s not your cause. If you’re not a political organization, you don’t necessarily need to talk about the election, but you can talk about the mission. Sometimes in an election, often when there’s a big change of leadership, whether it’s at an organization or at the top of a country, people start to worry about what the future is going to bring. 

Are we going to have funding? Are we going to have these contracts? Are we going to be sustainable? And these are not insignificant questions to ask. I think they’re smart questions to ask, but it’s also not a time to panic. And the way that she’s communicating with her volunteers is to talk about the things that they’re already doing, the grants that they’re applying for, the grants that they are fulfilling, the work they’re doing in the community, the way that they’re growing. 

And so, she keeps her eyes on the prize and she’s helping everybody else do so as well. In the end, our work continues no matter what. Our work is going to continue no matter what. The issues that we’re tackling, whether it is an, you’re an arts and culture organization that’s trying to build awareness and appreciation for the arts and bring joy to people’s lives, or you are an organization that is engaged in helping women recover from domestic violence. 

It doesn’t matter what your cause is. The challenges and the joy and the transformation that you’re trying to bring about in the community are still there. That the rocks that you’re trying to move are still there. And so, our work needs to continue. And so, her messaging to our volunteers is just that, right? 

Stay, let’s stay focused on the kids because they’re our most important priority right now, which I think is fantastic. And the final bonus community building tip I want to share that one of our members shared was start by building a sense of belonging within your paid staff team so that they can take this spirit into their work with volunteers. 

Now, this member runs a statewide network of state parks and there are hundreds of state parks in her, her state. And so, she is working at the, the, the main office, the HQ, the central HQ. And so, she is working mostly with staff, not volunteers. And so, her job is to help staff work together and feel like family. 

They characterize their team as a family. They want to create that sense within their painting staff. So that also flows out to their volunteers as well. So, we don’t just focus, you know, community building is an evergreen activity. It’s something we do in the community. It’s something we do within our volunteer ranks, but it’s also something we do within our paid staff teams. 

  

We need to think about community building across. different domains of our lives at work. And so, she reminded us of that and talked about some of the ways that they do that. So, it was really another reminder of the ways that we can build community. I hope you enjoyed this episode and my passionate discussion around safety and keeping things safe. 

I must admit, I’m one of those people who doesn’t always feel safe. And I know there are listeners out there that are like me. I also know there’s listeners that aren’t. that feel totally fine with where we’re at and don’t feel unsafe. I think it’s important when we’re working with, in a people profession and working with volunteers to not assume That everybody’s thinking the same way. 

We know that most people aren’t voting the same way. I mean, I, I volunteer with volunteers that don’t feel the same way with them as I do, and I still feel very close to them. We’re still friends. It’s okay. But we also want to make sure we don’t assume that everyone’s okay. So, we’ve got to check in with people, not in an overdramatic way, but just asking people, hey, how you doing? 

How is everything going? If you have any concerns, please feel free. Come talk to me. And then to engage in these discussions about building community, asking and crafting good questions and having those team conversations, it will make you stronger because you will uncover hidden similarities, hidden values, hidden passions between people. 

And when we recognize ourselves in other people. We tend to feel closer to them. We tend to feel more committed to them. Human beings are a little bit narcissistic. We like people like us. And sometimes when we look at other people, we don’t think they’re like us at all. But when we have conversation, we realize, oh, wow. 

I didn’t know that about you. I feel that way too. Let’s make sure that all our volunteers can be their full authentic selves at our organizations, that all our volunteers feel a sense of safety and feel a sense of community and feel a sense of belonging when they’re with us. We don’t control the world, but we certainly can take responsibility for the context within We engage people in service. 

So I hope you like this episode today. If you liked it, share it with a friend, rate and review us. We love five stars. Give us comments and join us next week. Same time, same place on the volunteer nation. Take care everybody.