191 – Who is Ultimately Responsible for Your Org’s Volunteer Culture?

December 4, 2025

Episode #191: Who is Ultimately Responsible for Your Org’s Volunteer Culture?

In this episode of Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi Johnson breaks down a common misconception in the nonprofit world: Who is ultimately responsible for shaping your organization’s volunteer culture?

After receiving pushback from a newsletter statement, Tobi walks us through the deeper nuance of volunteer culture, how it forms, why it goes wrong, and most importantly, why the CEO, not the volunteer manager, is the true culture owner.

Whether you’re a leader of volunteers or a senior executive, this episode will give you clarity, relief, and a roadmap for healthier culture-building moving forward!

Volunteer Culture  – Episode Highlights 

• [02:00] – Why “Vision” = Culture
• [03:00] – What Is Volunteer Culture?
• [05:00] – The “Emotional Brand” of Your Organization
• [07:00] – How Culture Is Formed (Often Invisibly)
• [09:00] – Unintentional Culture Builders
• [11:00] – Why You Need a Culture Audit
• [12:00] – 7 Signs Your Volunteer Culture Is in Trouble
• [14:00] – When the Loudest or Most Overwhelmed Person Is Driving Culture
• [17:00] – Who is Ultimately Responsible for Volunteer Culture?
• [18:00] – Role of Senior Leadership & Department Heads
• [20:00] – Role of Volunteer Managers & Direct Supervisors
• [22:00] – Role of Volunteers Themselves
• [23:00] – What Happens When the Wrong Person Is Steering Culture
• [25:00] – Why Volunteer Managers Can’t Shoulder Culture Alone

Volunteer Culture – Quotes from the Episode 

“Volunteer culture is built over time by a mix of intentional choices and unfortunately, unintentional habits. We must take a cultural audit from time to time and see where we’re at, because we’ve got to figure out how our volunteer culture is doing and how to improve it.”   

“If culture flows from the wrong person, it becomes inconsistent, inequitable, sometimes unsafe, and very difficult for people to follow because that person generally does not walk the talk. They generally do not move with integrity either because they don’t want to or because their role is structured in a way that it’s impossible to have the information or get the information they need to work with integrity.” 

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• VolunteerPro Impact Lab  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #168: Note to Nonprofit Execs – Supporting Volunteers is Everyone’s Job 

Contact Us

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

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Episode #191 Transcript: Who is Ultimately Responsible for Your Org’s Volunteer Culture? 

Tobi: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson. And I’d like to get into it today and ask the question, who is ultimately responsible for your organization’s volunteer culture? Now, where did this come from? This is partly inspired by a response I received from an email promoting our Vision Week 2026 strategic Planning Bootcamp. 

In that email, I note that even a well-crafted volunteer program can stall without it. Organizational buy-in. Without support from leadership, your ideas may be sidelined, and volunteers may feel undervalued. Here’s what we’re hearing, quote. Our biggest challenge is having the organization invested in volunteers. 

There is no clear vision for volunteer engagement at the top. Many of our departments work very siloed and do not consider volunteers as essential for their success. Even the departments that are currently managing volunteers in their area. And then I respond to that underneath that quote, I, that’s a quote we collected in our volunteer management progress report. 

Wrong or right, it’s up to you to develop a vision for volunteerism that people can follow at your organization. And then I go on in the email to talk about how Vision Week and strategic planning can help you be a better internal advocate and really help shape the vision for volunteering at your organization. 

And the person who responded to me didn’t like the way I posted that, didn’t like the way I framed that. And technically speaking, it isn’t an accurate statement to say that wrong or right. It’s up to you to develop a vision for volunteerism that people can follow. There’s some nuance here that I want to explore in this episode around culture, because when we talk about a vision for volunteerism, it partly has to do with your organization’s culture. 

I wanted to spend a little bit of time in this episode, really flushing this out a little bit. So, we’re going to tackle a topic that is shaped. Everything about your volunteer program, your volunteer culture, who builds it? Who owns it? What happens when the wrong person ends up steering it? So, culture doesn’t just happen; it’s created, reinforced, and sometimes unintentionally undermined. 

So, I want to talk about this idea of volunteer culture, what we mean by it, how is it formed? Who has responsibility for what? Some signs that your volunteer culture may be in trouble, and give you a, maybe an action step to take around your volunteer culture. So, if you’re up for it, you may want to check out a pen and paper. 

So, let’s kick it off by quote unquote volunteer culture. So, volunteer culture is. The shared attitudes, values, norms, and behaviors that shape how volunteers are welcomed, treated, supported, supervised, and appreciated. It’s sort of your special sauce, whatever that is. It’s how volunteers feel when they interact with your organization. 

It’s sort of like your emotional brand, and if you’ve ever been in certain stores, especially those that you like to go shopping, whether it’s online or in person, usually it’s more of an in-person feel. You know what I mean by emotional brands? There are organizations or companies out there that have. Done a lot to create a particular emotional brand. 

For example, I’m from the Pacific Northwest and Nordstrom department stores come from our area and the emotional brand there is of luxury. It’s of high-touch customer service. It’s a feeling that you are taken care of. That is their emotional brand. That is their culture and their company culture. And they do specific things to support that company culture. 

For example, at Nordstrom, the folks, although I don’t shop a lot at Nordstrom, I know from the past and from learning about Nordstrom’s customer service. Activities that, for example, reinforce their culture. They have their sales reps come from out, from behind the counter of the cash register and hand the customer their bag, their shopping bag. 

So that’s a way of reinforcing that culture of caring. Right, and you can probably think of other places that you like to go. Restaurants you like to frequent experiences, hotels, chains, they all have a type of culture, and your organization has a volunteer culture, whether intentional or unintentional. So, it includes your communications tone, expectations, and boundaries of folks, volunteers, and non-volunteers. 

Role clarity. What do employees do? What do volunteers do? Recognition practices and power dynamics. Do volunteers have a say? When do they staff volunteer relationships? Are they close? Are they tense? Your reputation in the community has an impact on your culture. Whether intentional or not, every organization has a volunteer culture, doesn’t mean that it’s a good one, but it’s there. 

And so how is culture formed? There are specific forces that shape your volunteer culture. They’re mostly invisible and they’re often unmanaged. A couple weeks ago, I did a Volunteer Pro or Volunteer Nation, episode 168. Note to nonprofit execs supporting volunteers is everyone’s job. Well, that’s partly true, and all of us have a part to play in. 

Creating that culture of volunteer engagement. I also talked about in episode 190, I talked about the principles for an unforgettable volunteer experience. That was only a few episodes up ago. That also when you design a volunteer experience that also has something to do with creating your culture, and so I’ll link to that one as well. 

So, there’s lots that go into culture. It’s not something that we think that we don’t have a volunteer culture. Well, you do. You have a, it’s sort of like folks in the Pacific Northwest; we think we don’t have an accent. Well, if you live in the south, you definitely have an accent because it sounds different than the way everybody else talks. 

Everybody has a volunteer culture, whether you see it or not. So how is it formed? So again, forces that shape volunteer culture is mostly invisible and often unmanaged. So leadership behaviors, what leaders prioritize, ignore, celebrate, or tolerate in terms of, in terms of behavior. Or in terms of situations in an organization that helps form a culture. 

So, for example, if volunteerism is not prioritized with budget, then that starts to form a specific kind of culture, right? Systems and structures. Help with culture, recruitment practices, onboarding processes, communications channels, reporting, and feedback systems. If those systems are disorganized or not there at all, or not intentional, that creates a certain type of culture. 

Staff and volunteer interactions, day-to-day supervision, tone of communication. So, whether it’s a bureaucratic tone. Laissez-Faire tone, a supportive and inspiring tone. Those all create a type of culture of responsiveness. So, when a volunteer applies for a potential role at your organization and they don’t hear back for three weeks, that is a kind of culture that creates or contributes to the culture reporting TLC versus task driven environment. So, are people given good TLC, tender loving care, good customer service, good support, or is it mostly task driven? Get this done. We’re all machines, we’re all cogs in the wheel. Let’s just get it done. So, what is that culture? Informal norms and rituals. It’s basically the way things are done around here, the way we do it. 

I’ve heard organizations that I’ve worked with, they call themselves; we’re like a family here. Great. As long as it’s not a dysfunctional one. Right? Who gets included or excluded at certain meetings or certain events, how conflict is managed or not, right? Or whether volunteers have a say. Decisions and how they are, the impact is shared with them. 

Those are all things that can impact culture, history, and legacy of the organization can also impact culture, past successes, or failures. Sometimes our organizations have past traumas that we’re trying to work through and that impact our culture, for example. If an organization had a challenge with a volunteer and it was a big one, it may make that organization very risk averse and that plays out in their culture in the way that they onboard the level of background checks, all of that, so. 

Organizational trauma can impact our culture. I’ve seen this in organizations that are highly risk averse, and I’ll say, why are, has anything happened in the past that makes your organization so risk averse? And they’ll say, yeah. I go, when did that happen? Usually, decades ago. Probably time to let that go and heal from that trauma, don’t you think? 

Previous leadership decisions. Sometimes a leader who’s long been gone from the organization created some type of legacy that is continuing to impact your culture and the stories that volunteers tell the stories they tell new recruits about the experience, the organization, et cetera. If a bunch of volunteers are kibitzing all the time, that creates a type of culture. 

So, the culture isn’t. Just promoted by and created and formed by staff. It can also be created and formed by volunteers themselves. And so volunteer culture is built over time by a mix of intentional choices and unfortunately unintentional habits. And so, we’ve really got to take a cultural audit from time to time and see where we’re at. 

Because we’ve got to figure out how our volunteer culture is doing and how to improve it. So, let’s see, and I’ll give you some signs on your volunteer culture and give you seven signs that your volunteer culture may be in trouble. And after the break, I promise I will answer the question, who is ultimately responsible for your volunteer culture? 

I’d love to hear your opinion, but I’m going to give you mine. Before we even get to who’s responsible for making sure it’s a positive culture, let’s figure out if it is in trouble. The first red flag that signals your volunteer culture is being shaped by the wrong forces or the wrong person who is trying to shape those. 

And again, we’ll talk about that after the break but do volunteer dissatisfaction or confusion. So, complaints about clarity, support, supervision, and communication. We talked a lot about this when I talked. In episode 190 about the volunteer experience, we talked a lot about what are the key to user experience, what are the key principles of a good user experience? 

So, if there’s complaints about those key areas of a user experience, then we know that there may be a problem with our volunteer culture, high turnover or low retention brought. If volunteers are dropping off quickly, especially after onboarding, or you’ve had a big wave of volunteers to leave, then you know that there may be a volunteer culture problem, gatekeeping behavior. 

So, if a longtime volunteer or a single staff member act like they own the program, that may be a cultural issue. One person controls the information access or decision making, so someone’s hoarding the power. That could be an issue around volunteer culture. Another area staff resentment or burnout. If staff feel overwhelmed, unsupported, or afraid to enforce boundaries with volunteers and each other, there may be a problem with volunteer culture. 

Another area is lack of alignment with mission or values. If volunteers are not seeing their contribution as meaningful to the organization’s overall mission and goals, there might be a problem with culture if the culture feels transactional instead of relational. There’s probably a cultural problem because in the world of volunteerism, we know it’s relational more than transactional. 

When it comes to volunteers, if we’re not walking our talk, we’re saying one thing about what we believe in, and we’re saying another about what we do. That is a, may create a cultural friction or cultural issue, silence or disengagement. People quiet, quitting volunteers don’t offer feedback or don’t believe feedback would matter, so they just don’t say anything nor do staff. 

That could be a cultural issue and reputation. Red flags. So, if word of mouth referrals declines, or if you’re getting fewer referrals or if you’re getting negative reviews online or in the community or complaints. That may be a problem in your culture. If the volunteer culture is being driven primarily by the loudest volunteer or the Squeakiest Wheel, or the O Most Overwhelmed staff member, it is probably already off course. 

So, it’s time to make an adjustment. So after the break, I want to talk about more about volunteer culture, but I want to really dig into who’s ultimately responsible and who else supports and how, and what are all the responsibilities around the volunteer culture, establishing it, maintaining it, fixing it, et cetera. So don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.  

VOLUNTEER PRO IMPACT LAB 

Hey, are you looking to upgrade and modernize your volunteer program? Or maybe you’re building one from scratch, and you’re just not sure where to start? If so, we’ve got the perfect resource for you. The Volunteer Pro Impact Lab, having built several direct service programs from the ground up, I know that it doesn’t happen by accident. 

It’s a clear process that takes careful attention with a focus on impact. In the end, you need assist system in place that’s clear, standardized, efficient, and that gets results. In addition, and maybe this is the most important, you need a volunteer program design that directly contributes to your organization’s most critical goals. 

That’s where the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab comes in. When it comes to effective volunteer engagement, our bespoke volunteer strategy success path model, which is the heart of our resources and strategic advising, will help you transform your volunteer strategy from fundamental to a fully mature what’s working now approach and all in less time. 

With our online assessment, you’ll quickly gain clarity on precisely where to focus your efforts and we’ll provide recommendations for the exact. Steps needed for sustainable growth regardless of how large or small your organization is or what your cause impact area or focus is. Our program development and implementation support model will help you build a strong foundation so volunteerism can thrive at your good cause. 

If you are interested in learning more, go to volpro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved. 

Okay, we’re back with our conversation about volunteer culture, and I want to talk about who is ultimately responsible for your organization’s culture, who shapes it, who’s responsible for it? Who is going to make it happen? All those good things. So, let’s go through step by step, basically down the org chart. What do you say? So, who is responsible for creating a positive volunteer culture? And I want to break these down very clearly because I see them a lot of times that the wrong people think they’re ultimately responsible and accountable. So, let’s break it down. So, who is actually responsible? Who is ultimately responsible? It is the chief executive. So, your executive director, maybe your CEO. They are, you may call them the CEO. They are culture leaders, whether they realize it or not. 

They are the cultural leaders for the organization, including the volunteer culture. Their job is to set organizational values and priorities to allocate resources and authority. To model expectations for staff behavior, to set the tone for how volunteers are viewed as strategic partners versus free labor to remove barriers when cultural problems emerge, and to ensure volunteer involvement is aligned with the mission. 

The CEO owns the vision for volunteer culture and ensures the organization walks its talk. So, when I talked before the break, when I introduced this episode, and I said, right or wrong, you need to provide a compelling vision; it wasn’t completely accurate, and I want to own that it wasn’t completely accurate. 

That it is actually your chief executive that owns the mission or owns the vision for volunteer culture Now. I’ll talk a little bit more, and we’re going to parse this and I’m going to talk about the leader of volunteer’s role as well. But let’s get into other roles as well around volunteer culture. So, the CEO is ultimately responsible for all things culture, including volunteer culture, senior leadership and department heads translate that CEO’s vision into operational practices. They build internal alignment. They support staff who supervise volunteers, and reinforce expectations around communication, responsiveness, and respect. 

In other words. Senior leaders cascade the volunteer culture throughout the organization. They take the cue from the CEO. The CEO gives them direction and tells them what the vision and operational practices need to roll up into. That’s the senior leadership and department heads. So, when we are talking about staff not having buy-in. 

It is the department head that is responsible for ensuring that BA staff have buy-in around the volunteer culture, which in turn is the responsibility of the chief executive. So, you see where I’m going with this. A lot of complaints around the lack of volunteer culture, a positive volunteer culture, lack of buy-in, and staff and leaders of volunteers are often trying to figure out ways to make this buy-in happen and in reality, that’s not their job.  

So, think about that. I do a lot of training on buy-in and change management and influence, but we are maybe we’re trying to work with the wrong people, right? Maybe we’re trying as leaders of volunteers trying to work with the wrong people. And if you’re a senior leader at the organization, I hope this is resonating with you and it’s helping you understand who’s responsible for what. 

Okay. What about those volunteer managers and direct supervisors, their jobs? Are to shape the daily volunteer experience, provide training, support, role clarity, and recognition to both volunteers and. Staff who supervise volunteers. So, I’m talking about volunteer managers and direct supervisors of volunteers to reinforce boundaries, policies, and norms to function as cultural translators between leadership and volunteers. 

So, they should be funneling up what they’re hearing on the ground level. Supervisors are the frontline architects of volunteer culture. Now, what’s the difference between the direct supervisor of volunteers and the volunteer manager who is coordinating the volunteer program throughout the organization and insourcing volunteers into departments to work with direct supervisors? 

There is some subtlety here, and with the volunteer managers, their job is to help design and become an architect of the volunteer experience and set up the policies and procedures following the lead. From the direct supervisors and from this, the culture that has been set by the CEO. And the volunteer manager should be an internal consultant around volunteer engagement. 

And so not everybody understands volunteer engagement. So, you can be an advisor to others. So, you are the frontline architect of volunteer culture. And the direct supervisors are also enacting those policies and procedures. Now, I don’t want to forget to volunteer for themselves. Many of your organizations, most of the work is done by volunteers. 

So, volunteers bring their expectations, their habits, and their personalities. They can influence peer norms, model inclusion, respect, and collaboration, and contribute to the culture. Should not be the sole drivers or gatekeepers unless they’re performing a role as volunteer manager, direct supervisor of other volunteers as senior leadership or department head as an unpaid staff in those cases. 

Those volunteers actually have dual roles, both the roles of the volunteer, but also the roles of the position. So, for the smaller organization, it’s really important, both for the small and the large organization. I think it’s important to understand who is responsible for what, when it comes to creating a volunteer, a positive volunteer culture. 

Now the chief executive, again, is ultimately responsible. They own the vision for volunteer culture and ensure the organization walks its talk, but they’re not doing all the work, right? They’re asking for feedback, they’re giving direction, they’re inspiring others, and you, if you’re the leader of volunteers, then you are funneling your information back up, right? 

But when folks reach out and say, I’m trying to create a culture. Well, you’ve got to talk to your executive because they’re ultimately responsible. And that’s a tough conversation if they’re not doing their job right. And for those of you who are executive directors and CEOs who are listening, take this to heart. 

This is part of your job. Yeah. Now, what happens if we have the wrong person in the seat leading culture? And there are some wrong people who should not be in the seat of a leading culture. I’ll give you some examples. A longtime volunteer, a legacy volunteer who’s has a, we’ve always done it this way, attitude that is not going to be positive for your volunteer culture. 

A strong-willed board member who just wants it their way. No, they are the wrong people to lead culture because they’re not. They don’t have their antennas out. A staff member with poor boundaries, someone who’s not able to set and maintain boundaries, well, they are not a good person to lead your cult volunteer culture or a siloed role with no oversight over anything, and no one ever talks to them. 

Now, that may feel like you as the leader of volunteers sometimes. You’ve got to break through those silos. If culture flows from the wrong person, it becomes inconsistent, inequitable, sometimes unsafe, and very difficult for people to follow because that person generally does not walk the talk. They generally do not move with integrity either because they don’t want to or because their role is structured in a way that it’s impossible to have the information or get the information they need to work with integrity. 

The issue in this case, and the reason I wanted to bring this up in a podcast episode is that we need to make sure. That the volunteer manager, the leader of volunteers, the volunteer director is not shouldering a hundred percent of the responsibility and accountability for. The volunteer culture at our organization, if that is the case, is a recipe for disaster. 

It just can’t work because they simply don’t have the power to reinforce, nor is it aligned across the organization. You become very siloed and you’re trying to create a culture. Nobody can do it all alone. So, I hope this is helpful. I want you to think about one high impact takeaway. And, if you’re an executive who’s listening, check out Volunteer Nation episode 168 – Note to nonprofit execs supporting volunteers is everyone’s job. I talk about the issue beyond buy-in. That’s around. It’s really about employee performance rather than people buying in. So, I will talk about that. I talk about the four pillars of employee performance around volunteers, and the bottom line for that episode is that the need for clear expectations and accountability are so essential from leadership and from the role that you sit in. 

I think it’ll be helpful to you as the leader of the organization. So, for our closing action step. Try this. Try to do a cultural ownership exercise. Ask who currently shapes our volunteer culture the most; who currently shapes our volunteer culture the most? Then ask who should be shaping it? 

And then identify one shift. Leadership can make policy, communication, resource allocation, or supervision to regain alignment. Encourage you, encourage you and your team to audit whether your volunteer culture is intentional or accidental. Have a conversation with your leadership. You, if you’re a leader of volunteers. 

You can start to advocate for actions to realign or regain alignment to have a positive impact on volunteer culture; you can internally advise and hope that they will, will take your advice as a, an executive. Level person, you can think about whether your culture right now, your volunteer culture is intentional or accidental. 

And think through and say to yourself, if it’s accidental right now, what can we do to be more intentional? So, remember that volunteer culture is basically everything. It’s the feeling that volunteers feel when they come into your organization. It can happen intentionally. Or accidentally, if it’s not intentional, we often ignore it. 

And remember that the person who holds true responsibility is the CEO at the top, supported by leaders and supervisors to cascade that vision and that culture throughout the organization. So, I hope this is helpful. I hope if you’re, if you’ve been taking this on as your ultimately responsibility, and it’s not in your job responsibility, based on what I’ve talked about today, it’s time to have a conversation, an honest conversation about who’s supposed to be doing what. 

If you liked it, I hope you’ll share it with a friend or colleague. We always love our ratings and reviews if you’d like to give us a rating or review. We love to have that five-star rating. It helps more organizations hear our messages. It. And if you’re really interested in what we’re doing, we’re going to continue to produce the podcast every week. So be here next week, same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Have a fantastic holiday and New Year’s season. Take care everybody.