197 – Behind the Scenes of 10 Years of Industry Research with Allison Russell – Part 2

January 15, 2026

Episode #197: Behind the Scenes of 10 Years of Industry Research with Allison Russell – Part 2 

In part 2 of our behind-the-scenes series on the Volunteer Management Progress Report, Tobi Johnson returns with Allison Russell, Assistant Professor of Public & Nonprofit Management at the University of Texas at Dallas, for a powerful conversation on practitioner research and what it can teach us about the volunteer engagement profession. 

Allison steps into the interviewer role again as they dig into what the VMPR revealed over a decade of surveying volunteer engagement leaders and how practitioner research can drive real-world improvements in training, leadership, and volunteer program strategy. 

You’ll hear what challenges consistently show up year after year, why response rates matter, and how turning research into action is what makes it truly valuable! 

Practitioner Research – Episode Highlights

• [02:06] – Diving into Volunteer Management Research 
• [03:51] – Key Themes in Volunteer Management 
• [05:30] – Challenges in Volunteer Recruitment 
• [06:49] – Respect and Influence in Volunteer Management 
• [08:43] – Using Research to Improve Practices 
• [22:50] – Survey Design and Response Rates 
• [30:33] – Understanding Research Participation 
• [33:50] – Advice for Conducting Survey Research 
• [37:18] – The Importance of Research Follow-Through 
• [38:49] – Challenges in Volunteer Management Research 
• [45:12] – Future Directions in Volunteer Research 
• [50:38] – What’s Next for Volunteer Pro 

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• VolunteerPro Impact Lab  
• Engage Journal  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #196 – Behind the Scenes of 10 Years of Industry Research with Pam Kappelides & Allison Russell 
• Find Allison on LinkedIn  
• Allison’s UT Dallas Profile  

Contact Us

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

Rate, Review, & Follow Us on Apple Podcasts

If you love the content Tobi shares on the Volunteer Nation podcast, consider rating and reviewing the show! This helps us reach more people – and help more good causes just like yours – successfully engage enthusiastic, dedicated volunteers with less stress and more joy.

Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars. Then, select “Write a Review” and let us know what you loved most about this episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast so you don’t miss a thing. Follow now!

Subscribe to ProNews: Our Weekly Resource Roundup

If you’d like to stay up to date on all new podcasts, blogs, freebies, and deals posted on our Tobi Johnson & Associates and VolunteerPro websites, subscribe to our weekly ProNews newsletter.

Every Wednesday, we’ll send you a digest of our freshest content, plus a bonus! Once you confirm your subscription, you’ll get our [Free eBook] The New Volunteer Manager: The First 90 Days.

Episode #197 Transcript: Behind the Scenes of 10 Years of Industry Research with Allison Russell – Part 2 

Tobi: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast. We are doing part two of our behind the scenes of 10 years of industry research with Pam Kappelides, and Allison Russell, although now it’s just me and Allison, Pam has had to go. We took a pause from our recording and now we’re getting into our second round of questions. 

So thanks for joining us again this week and learning more about the Volunteer Management Progress report, how we went about conducting this a. Industry research and how we’re going to, or how I’m going to share some of my best advice as well as a little bit more history or a little bit more about how the sausage got made. 

So, Allison, let me introduce you again. Welcome to the show. Now you can say you’ve been on the podcasttwice. It’s an honor. So, Allison. She’s like here twice. Allison Russell is assistant professor of Public and nonprofit management at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research and teaching focuses on the nonprofit and voluntary sector, including volunteerism and volunteer management, nonprofit ethics, cross-sector partnerships, and organizational responses to crisis and change. 

She’s published several papers in very high-profile academic journals. She co-authored the book “Ethics for Social Impact. She’s also the editor of Research to Practice at the Engaged Journal and International Practitioner focused journal for Leaders of Volunteer Engagement, and we will put a link to the engaged journal, encourage you all to join, and there will be a version of this interview was published in that journal as well. So, let’s get going on part two. Part one, we really sort of talked about the history, Pam shared her remembrances and how, how we all went about doing the research. Allison, what other questions do you have, Allison, in case you didn’t listen to the previous episode? 

Allison and I have switched seats, and she has now taken over the interviewing microphone, and she’s interviewing me. So, we’re doing a flip this week just like we did last week. So, Allison, take it away. I’m your interviewee. I’m your guest for today.  

Allison: It’s such a fun experience, honestly. So. I am just excited to be here, excited to be talking about this. I’ll just say, I think this is just a, a mini masterclass in what research can look like from the kind of practitioner and the industry perspective, and so I am here to learn as much as the listeners are because I as. Tobi mentioned, I’m based at a university. I have a a faculty position at the University of Texas at Dallas, but I have learned so much and continue to learn from all the people who are working on the ground in organizations doing various work in communities around the world with volunteers. 

And so, I’m really excited to be here. And last week we talked about the VMPR survey, and we talked about how there were different core questions in each year of the survey, or at least in the second kind of majority of them. And so, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what maybe some of those themes were or maybe what the most memorable theme was just to kind of get us going. What did that look like? And kind of walk us through some of those different themes.  

Tobi: Sure. SThe themes from the results, especially the biggest challenge question, were very, in some cases. Similar year to year and year for 10 years. And, and some of that is, I think, endemic to the profession and to the role of volunteer managers. So, first things first. Recruitment, recruitment, recruitment. Every year, at least 25 to 30, 35% of respondents mention that as their top challenge in the open-ended comments. Now what? Pam didn’t mention when we were talking about, we were talking about her qualitative research and my qual I, I would do some of the qualitative analysis. 

Last year’s report, I did the qualitative analysis. I’ve had staff do the qualitative analysis, but we have a particular categorization of categories and so when that. Qualitative research when people would give their answers. And what I mean by qualitative, I mean open-ended comments that we would take. 

The very first challenge they mentioned was that some people would mention multiple challenges, but we would assume as researchers that the first thing they mentioned was the top challenge because it’s a thing that came to mind first. So, we didn’t like to parse things out. We got very like clear about this is how we’re going to code these questions. 

Every year that, number one, whether they mentioned a lot of challenges or one challenge, was always volunteer recruitment. Not always, but in a large majority, 25 to 30 up to a third of the respondents. So that was a no brainer for me. That didn’t surprise me, except for the year of, as I mentioned last week in the middle of COVID, it was about supervision and supervising remote volunteers. 

And keeping them engaged when they, we were all working from home and under lockdown. So the second area theme that I find comes up a lot and it’s, it goes up and down in terms of whether or not it’s a, it’s really a high, high challenge for people, or it’s a lower challenge, but it seems to, it seems to come up every year. 

And that was in respect, buy-in influence, et cetera. And part of me that big like ball of wax, so, or, or ball of twine I should say. So, it feels to me like part of that is because of the nature of. Volunteer managers, they’re middle managers, so they’re influencing up, they’re influencing laterally, they’re influencing down. 

So, influence is a huge part of what they do, and it’s difficult, being a middle manager in any organization is a difficult job. And so, if you spoke with the marcoms people, they would tell you the same thing. Nobody follows our protocols; we don’t get like anybody helping us, giving us stories. We don’t. 

Nobody will do this and that. So, if you talk to anybody in a middle management in a nonprofit sector, you’ll hear similar complaints. That said, there’s also an over overall, I think overarching undervalue and misunderstanding about both volunteers and what goes into leading volunteers, which is a very complex job and. 

The domains of the work are so much, so much more varied than most jobs in the sector. So, people, nonprofit managers are doing like HR, they’re doing data management, they’re doing technology, they’re, and it’s always in this sort of siloed department of one rather than integrated throughout the organization. 

So not everywhere, but for many, that’s the case. So, I think part of the reason is that, and what saddens me a little bit is that that never seemed to improve as the decade went on, like after 10 years. It’s still huge, after all the work we’ve done to advocate after all the work we’ve done to improve, to pr, to show evidence, to change our messaging, to grow our change management skills. 

This, this. So, people we’re still struggling as a sector, but I will say that from these comments I developed and honed. More helpful curriculum for folks that are students of our, of the Volunteer Pro Fundamentals course, as well as our Impact lab members. And I have seen changes in them in their leadership style and the impact they’re having in their organizations and the places they’re invited and the, the things they’re afforded, the resources they’re given that come from their growing skillset around leadership and influence. 

So, I know it can change. It’s just if people are willing to do the work to make a change and can learn how to make a change, it’s a skill. It’s influence. It’s a skill.  

Allison: Yeah. I love what you just said, and I want to just highlight the I that this is why the VNPR is considered applied research, right? 

Because you just said that you took the insights that you gleaned from these responses and you actually then turned it into improvements in your curriculum and the way that you’re teaching and the way that you’re imparting these, this, these ideas and best practices or just new ideas for people to try in their work to your students. 

Right. And. This is what, this is kind of like. What we try to do also in academia is that you don’t want the research to just gather dust on the shelf, but you want it to be a living document and something that has real world implications. And so, the fact that you’re talking about taking these findings and then and then using them to improve the way that you’re helping others train in the field, I think, is important. 

And I just want to draw attention to that because that is what the goal should ultimately be, right? Is that you want there to be a practical purpose and you want there to be learning. That comes out of research. Yes. Whether it’s learning for your own organization or learning for the field, or learning for students, learning is key. 

Tobi: And interestingly, I had team members as I hire, hire folks to work with me, for example, marketing folks to do marketing. Or folks to do community management, I would say. Okay, to get to know our audience, I’d like you to read the, this, these answers to this biggest challenge question. The open-ended answers, I think it will give you a huge I insight into where our audience is struggling because that’s our job. 

Our job is to help people get unstuck. That’s what we do. We help people get unstuck and feel good and feel great about their jobs and bring as many volunteers as possible into their organizations to help and. I would also preface this with when I would give it to folks, I would say, now just one thing I wanna note. 

Note, because it’s going to feel, it’s going to depress you a little bit, but remember the question is, what’s your biggest challenge? Your number one biggest challenge. So, we are asking people to complain, and so you’re going to read over a thousand complaints, but that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to take away. 

Pain and figure out solutions for folks. And a lot of times as I would read the questions, I’d be like, oh yeah, I know the, I know the, I can see the diagnosis, I can see what’s behind the question or behind the complaint sometimes. Well, the real reason this is happening is probably this, and therefore, you know the diagnosis and here’s the solution or the recipe or the remedy for this thing. 

Usually if I sat with them, when I read through these and code them, if I sit with them for a while, I realize, okay, there’s a diagnosis of a larger systemic thing that’s going on that needs some addressing. So sometimes that stuff makes it into this podcast. Sometimes it makes it into a blog post. Used to, we’re not writing a lot of new blog posts right now. 

We do podcasts instead. But a lot into the membership community and I’m just about to revamp our fundamentals course and a lot’s going to go into that as well. So yes, it’s absolutely used. Every person, and I’ll just point this out to everybody, anybody who’s listening, who has filled out at least one of these surveys, thank you. 

Because that’s where this stuff comes from, it is out of your mouths at off your keyboards. That’s how we understand what the struggles are. So, I feel like we have a very intimate understanding of the field and what goes on and where people are struggling. Because people are pretty, I would say they are very blunt. 

Mm-hmm. Sometimes blunt with us, like they won’t like the way we ask a certain question. And then, is there anything else you’d like to those that open ended? The final open-ended question, which I recommend everybody includes a final open-ended question in every survey that if you’re doing surveying by questionnaire. 

It shows respect to your audience. It’s how I was trained to do surveying, and I will get some folks who have problems with my survey there.  

Allison: I mean, as somebody who has used that comment box to say something about questions in a survey, I, I can’t really criticize them because, uh, well,  

Tobi: One of the biggest is our demographic questions. It’s either, why don’t you want to ask, why do you want to ask? Why does it matter what the ethnic or racial makeup of volunteer managers is like? Why do you care? Why are you asking this question? When I would present the report, I’d talk about why, and then I’d present the and when we do our annual webinar, where we’d only invite the folks who signed up via the survey who took the survey. 

So, that was their perk, is to hear the results first, that I would talk about that. Then I knew I had to educate my audience about why diversity matters. Okay, we’re going to talk about diversity. Then I would also have people complain about the categories. And I’d say, yeah, every year I update the categories and try to keep pace with but try to create categories that work globally. It’s very challenging.  

Allison: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, as once you start to go into kind of that cross national studies, you really can run into, yeah. Quickly run into different challenges around. How to phrase questions in ways that Yeah, will make sense and resonate with different audiences and be relevant to those different audiences. 

And I think that it’s hard to do everything perfectly, but you know, you try to do the best you can. And, and I think you mentioned maybe in the pre, in the first part of this. That you engage with different people in the kind of question development phase. So, you have that opportunity to kind of run it past different audiences and, and get feedback and find out if, if the ways questions are being asked are, are they, do they make sense first of all, but also are they. Maybe culturally sensitive or just appropriate for different audiences that you’re trying to reach. Yeah.  

Tobi: Yeah. And you won’t get it right all the time. Mm-hmm. And somebody will be grumpy. You’ve got to develop thick skin; people will be grumpy. And I’m like, look, you’ve got to ask yourself, is this a legitimate concern, number one? 

Number two, is there a way I can make a difference next year with this input number three. How long should I carry this? With me as guilt or shame or whatever you want to carry it as. And I always think to myself, what’s the comparison of this mistake or this error or this? Sometimes it’s just a, it’s, well, no, I like to do it this way, and this is. 

The way I think is the best. It’s not always. Sometimes it’s just a conflict of values per se, it’s just a conflict of approach. But also like, you know what, hey, if, if this is the only thing that’s wrong with this survey, that helps thousands of people make the case for more resources or make the case for a change in their organization, I’ll take that hit. Because it is worth it.  

Allison: Mm-hmm. Yeah.  

Tobi: So, and sometimes there’s some people who are just grumpy, and they’ve had a bad day, and they just want to take it out on you. And I’m always like, okay, fine. Like it is going to hate, I’m like, what am I going to say there? So sometimes there are legitimate concerns like when gender has really evolved the way we asked about gender in surveys. 

And so, I had evolved. Then last, last year, I just didn’t ask about diversity because, and demographics, because the same answer came up year after year. We are majority of volunteer managers, at least in of our respondent pool, and granted many are from the US and Canada for the most part. Mm-hmm. Are white educated women. 

So, what can I say that hasn’t changed, and why should I continue to track? It’s somebody else’s job now, and I think it in; it did inspire. And there are other surveys like CCC VA has done some wonderful work with the Adobe study, some practitioner based or research. With Mark Hager in Arizona. Done wonderful research around technology, around diversity. 

Oh, so there’s lots of other things going on as well. And folks also want our survey to be the be all, end all. How come you don’t ask, didn’t you ask about salary this year? Well, because I asked about salary last year and it doesn’t change that much. Or so and so why didn’t you ask about so-and-so? 

Because ask about such and such. Well, because so and so are doing such and such, I don’t need to, I don’t need to copy what they’re doing. Let’s, since there’s only a few research studies that are this broad, let’s not try to copy each other. Let’s try to offer different things now. As Pam was making the point last week in academia, we want to duplicate surveys and duplicate research because we want to continue to show that it’s applicable across contexts. 

So, if this, this recruitment strategy is shown to be effective and we, that was tried in a different organization, do the same research, duplicate it and see if it still holds true. This type of industry research is a little bit different. And I feel like diversity is our strength in our research inquiry. 

It’s better to have different studies going on because there’s a lot of aspects that aren’t getting any coverage right now. So, that’s my perspective on that. Anyway.  

Allison: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Completely. And even in, in the academic and kind of scientific community, right? Replication is important for being able to see if the results kind of hold in, in different populations or different contexts and, and things like that. 

And also, just to check, kind of check each other’s work and, and make sure that it’s. It’s sound, right? And so that’s really important and I, but I also agree with you that on the industry side, that it’s, it is important to also have people asking different questions and, and focusing on different aspects because all, you’re also drawing on people’s finite time when you’re asking these questions. 

And so, if people are going to answer a couple of different surveys in a year about their work as a volunteer engagement leader, have it been. Surveys ask different questions, right? So, they can kind of share those different perspectives. And we kind of know that there’s, there’s those, those people probably who are listening to this podcast, who will be the ones that always will say yes and answer the survey, right? 

Yeah. And who will participate in this type of research, and thank you to those people because, so like you said, so much of what you share, it really does add value. And it goes into the future research; it goes into teaching and learning and all of those. Things. But I also find it funny, Tobi, that it seems like you kind of went through like live peer review to some degree with people giving you feedback in real time. 

Yeah. And everything you’re saying about how people were always asking like, why didn’t you do this and why didn’t you do that? I mean, when we do blind peer review for academic journals, we submit manuscripts and they take our names off, and they send them out to at least a few of our peers in the field to read and basically critique. 

There’s always. The reviewer, we usually call it reviewer two who ask, who’s like, why didn’t you do like a completely different study? And it’s like, because that’s, we just didn’t, sorry. Right. Like they’re the person you’re not going to please. Yeah. But then there’s the people that do give the constructive feedback and, and that is the stuff that gets in the next year or the way in. 

In academic side, that’s the stuff that gets us thinking about the next study. Mm-hmm. How can we answer this question next time? And, you know, I’ll, I’ll give you one  

Tobi: example that my, I was so disappointed in myself. I made this mistake. So, one year I was asking about demographics, race, ethnicity, and it was my full intention to include. 

Boxes versus radio dials. And what that means in a survey software platform is radio dials. You can only pick one box. You can pick as many as you want. And usually when I ask race ethnicity, I say check as many as apply because I have friends who are mixed race. I’m like, how would they answer this question? It creates conflict and my survey, I’m not here to make people uncomfortable. I’m just here to try to figure out how we’re doing it as a group.  

Allison: Yeah. You’re not here to make them choose which parent they like more. Yeah,  

Tobi: Exactly. So, I didn’t do it, and then somebody complained and I was early in, you know, I would, I always look at the early res, early results that are coming in to see if there’s an error or something. 

Even though I’d had people review it, test it, nobody called it out. Somebody mentioned, I’m like, oh, crap. So, then I went back to the survey and I, it took me literally like five seconds to change that. And I just was mortified, like, ugh. Because we must respect our survey respondents. They are people that are taking time out. 

This survey takes 10 minutes to fill out. It takes time out of your day. So, you must respect the folks that you’re asking. If you’re doing practitioner research, it’s. As a local Volunteer manager in association, you want to learn something about your members or about the community, or you’re doing practitioner research inside your organization. 

You want to understand your volunteers better. You want to understand your co-workers perception of volunteers. You want to understand your customers or your clients or service beneficiaries, and experience with volunteers. There’s lots of different ways you want to always make sure that you’re respecting the best of your ability, the people who are taking your survey. 

Allison: Right?  

Tobi: Definitely.  

Allison: Yeah. And I think this kind of segues nicely into something I wanted to ask you about, which is. You know, you’ve kind of alluded to different challenges that you’ve encountered or difficulties or snags right in the process, but I was just hoping you could share some of the major challenges that you experienced in doing the VMPR survey and what you did to kind of overcome those and maybe share some lessons learned that you think would be valuable to the listeners. 

Tobi: Sure. So, I talked about survey design and always. First, educating yourself, making sure you have training on survey design really helps if you’re a volunteer pro member, an impact. Lab member. We have survey design and survey analysis training right inside the community. In fact, I’m going to repurpose it into a certificate course I think, because there’s some, there’s stuff to it. 

There’s some tips and tricks to it. But there’s also the right ethical approach. Even though I don’t have, I’m not an academic, so I don’t have human subject research, I don’t have people overseeing my research. I’m still an ethical PR practitioner and I want to make sure that my practitioner research is above board. So, there’s that holding yourself to that accountability and understanding the ethics of it and how to do it well, and how to get the answers to the questions you want. Yes, because early on I didn’t run reports. I wouldn’t test my survey by answering, putting data in and then running the report. 

So sometimes the report wouldn’t give me the data I wanted. So, one thing, a big takeaway is to get some dummy data in there and download a report and see if it’s answering the questions that you want to answer. Is it giving you the data and the way you want it? Now, I also would do cross tabbing and things, comparing data sets, filtering data to figure out the deeper story being told. 

So, that’s an important thing. Know your stuff and then, secondly, test your stuff, especially in the output. Yeah. Not only that the survey works and that people understand it, but also that the output is working. So those are a couple of things. The other big challenge I think, for anybody doing practitioner research is just response rates. 

Yeah. Getting, and if you only have a small group of, if you, you can go online and check statistically relevant, valid sample sizes. If you have a small group of volunteers, like a hundred or less volunteers, you’re surveying; you’re going to need almost all of them to fill out your survey for it to be statistically relevant. 

Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t do it, but you also caveat it with, look, this is like we want 95% plus or minus 5% error. That’s the standard for perception surveys. So that’s what I was going for. So, I would need over a thousand people. If we consider them only in the US and there’s this many nonprofits, we can kind of say that this gives us this level of certainty that anytime we dipped our coffee cup into a bucket of water, anytime that water would taste the same. 

So anytime that data came out, it would be similar data. Right? And the smaller your response set, the less reliable your data. Yeah. So, we always did a big push on how are we going to get over a thousand, 1400, 1500 respondents, and then some of those folks only answer part of the survey. So the way we dealt with that, the advice I always give is do it in coalition with others but also keep beating the drum. 

You have to keep people thinking it’s a one and done. I send everybody, if you’re doing practitioner research, oh, I sent all the volunteers an email. Well. Yeah, and you’ve got to keep, and we gave an incentive, but not the kind of incentive that was transactional. It was right. Transformational. Our incentive is that you get invited at the end of the survey. 

There’s a link and you can sign up for our free webinar next year where we provide the results first to you and the report first to you and our distribution partners. That’s transformational. Intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. Everybody’s like, what about a gift card? What about I, I’m so against that. 

I’m like, that’s just people. Then people take your survey, and they’ll give you the wrong data just to get through it and get the gift card. I’m not a fan of incentives like that myself. That’s just my 2 cents. So, you’ve got to really think, how am I going to get enough responses? And I would report like, Hey, we’ve gotten so many responses. 

Report to distribution partners. Hey, here, we’re X percent to gold, and keep everybody moving forward. So that’s a big one that I think folks people conducting practitioner research struggle with this. How do I get enough responses?  

Allison: Yeah, that’s a great point. And we struggle with that in academic research. Also, response rates, especially in social science research where we’re trying to do maybe like a large-scale survey. Those response rates are generally pretty low, and we try to get them as high as possible, but resources and time are finite. And so at some point you can only get some, you, you try to reach your goal. 

But I think also with respect to what you just said that you also need to know your audience. And understand how to incentivize them to participate and to communicate again what that value is for them in participating. Because, and it’s not, it’s not to be coercive because obviously we’re here to be ethical researchers, but it’s about them understanding that what you’re doing will help to provide insights to the field. 

That it can be useful to advocate for yourself, as you’ve mentioned. A way to move the whole field forward. And I think with respect to people looking to do research or just collect data from their volunteers or other stakeholders in their organization, think about if you feel like, oh, I can’t do that because I can’t offer them. 

Like a monetary incentive? I mean, what is the intangible benefit to them? I think a lot of the time it’s they have the opportunity to educate the people who make the decisions about their experience and to help make those people make more informed choices about what programs we keep, how we utilize volunteers, what this needs to look like, how can we improve the volunteer experience. 

Right. Those are the things that will then benefit those individuals in the long run.  

Tobi: Yeah. There’s a couple of, there’s also designing things you do. I’ll give you one tip we do. We dive deeper into this inside the impact lab, but I’ll give you one hot tip that I started doing that made a difference. 

And that is, we do 40 questions. I mean, we did some branching, but mostly everybody got asked the same questions, but. At the top of each section and people tab through, they tab through; they don’t scroll forever, right? That’s a basic survey design 101. But also, I would put a little statement at the top about why these questions were valuable. 

The questions in this section help us understand, do, do, do, do, do, do next. Que the questions in this help will help us understand, do. And then people are like, oh, okay, I understand the value with this. Oh, I want to understand that too. Not many people do that. It’s a hack. It’s a, it’s a, I don’t, I’m not big on tips and tricks, but that is a really good one. 

Allison: Yeah, totally. I a hundred percent agree, and I think that people think when they hear the word research that it’s this like top out thing where, where it’s. This sort of black box that some smart person with some advanced degree or whatever is asking this question, and they’re doing this complicated methodology behind the scenes, and you’re just sort of providing the information. 

But that’s it. I think that these types of studies and even research I’ve done, I look at it as. Participatory and I look at all of the people responding as my collaborators. Mm. And that this would not happen without these people. And so, you can be transparent about why you’re doing something unless you’re doing some type of experimental research where you need people to. You need some level of deception, and you can justify that ethically. 

And then you debrief them in the end. But for most of us, we’re not doing that. No, we don’t need that. And so being transparent upfront giving people the. The story about why the justification demonstrates that you view them as partners and that you are kind of bringing them along with you and not just telling them how it should be or hoping they’ll answer the way you want them to. It’s really that collaboration that comes through in that way.  

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. And we would say add your voice. And that our messaging would be, add your voice to this. She’s a survey. It is a collaborative approach. Yeah, absolutely. 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 a 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’re interested in learning more, go to volpro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved. 

Allison: So this is. I think, I know you just said you’re not super big on tips and tricks, but I, and I think it is hard to distill these things into tips and tricks, and a lot of it is you have to kind of learn it as you go and all of that, but. If you could give a piece of advice to people that are listening who are interested in maybe conducting some type of survey research, whether that’s at the industry level or the organizational level, what would that be? What would you want to share with them?  

Tobi: Yeah. Aside from the tips and tricks I’ve already shared, this one’s not a; I hate it. I wish I could give it to people like that. Like, well, that the thing, the tip I just gave you is a quick tip, it takes a little bit of good copywriting. A little bit of thinking and you’re going to improve your, you’re going to improve your response rates, how much people complete the whole survey participation, et cetera. 

But I would say the only, the one other one that I would say, it’s not really tip or trick, it’s just a solid research methodology, and that is to just write up a quick research plan. And at the end of the day, a lot of people, oh, let’s survey our volunteers. 

Well, for what reason? Alright. And you’ve got to be able to explain that reason to your survey participants. And when we used to survey our volunteers, we would do net promoter scores. Like would they recommend us? Oh, give us feedback. I would give feedback to the volunteers like, hey gang. Because I was surveying long before I was a consultant. 

I’d say, hey everybody, this is what we learned. Here’s what we’re going to do with it. The information. Here’s what we can do right away. Here’s what we can do later. Here’s what can’t be done. And as a leader, it was a great way to have a feedback loop for my volunteers and to our audience. But I couldn’t do that unless I did foundational, just, what’s the research plan? 

What do I want to know? Who’s the audience, who’s not in the audience? Sometimes we’re choosing who’s going to be in the audience and really understand what we want to know at the end of the day, and then looking at our questions and looking at the results that we get out of our dummy data and say, does, does this data actually answer this question or not? 

Because it’s sometimes we do a whole long, and this could be. We survey our volunteer pro members every six months on what projects are they working on? What would they like us to provide them to help them save time? What do they want to learn? What skills do they want to build? Would they recommend us all? 

And that goes into our, how we decide what curriculum we’re going to offer and what we’re going to develop comes straight from our impact lab members. Yeah. So, they know that. And when I, when I present. A webinar or a seminar, I’ll say, hey, by the way, this came directly from this survey. So the clarity around the research project itself, whether it’s three or four questions or a 25-question survey, doesn’t matter. 

You still need to know what at core, what it is you want to learn. And then explain it to everybody. And then when it’s done and you’re making decisions, because usually it’s a decision-making tool, it’s informing you to make a decision. Then you need, when the decision’s made, you need to funnel that back to your audience and say, here’s why we made the decision. Because, you all told us that you wanted this. So that’s, those are my kind of tips around that.  

Allison: Yeah. And I think that’s, that communication piece is so important. Follow through on the other side, right? The implementation piece, that’s the part that often gets forgotten. Mm-hmm. Especially on the academic side. 

Mm-hmm. But even in the organizational context, you know, we get pressure to do these like beautiful strategic plans that kind of is like, here’s what we’re going to do for the next three to five years, or whatever it is. And then it’s sort of like the implementation. There’s no real plan for that, or there’s no real follow through, or it gets to that point, and people are a little lost. 

About where to go now. And so, I think that that follow through piece on the other side of it, that taking what we found and saying, here are the things that we’re going to do. And I love that you said, here’s what we can do in the short term, the longer term. And then here are things that we learned, but we. 

Either can’t do it now or aren’t yet sure how to do, or maybe they’re just outside of our scope. Right? But I think that those things and communicating that are so important, and I think it’s important for research kind of in general, whether you’re doing it in the organ, an organization, or industry, or whether you’re doing it as an academic. 

I’ll just put the plug in for the, any academics listening too. I think that is important, is understanding that follow through and we call that the implications piece of it. For academics, more academics speak. Right. But yes, that is the piece that we need to really kind of lean into and be able to develop and say like, here are the takeaways. 

Tobi: Yeah. And like the difference between practitioner research and academic research, the result often looks very different. Like the volunteer management progress report would never be, that’s not an academic paper. Academic papers have a specific one. Structure and those of us who are practitioners reading academic papers, we’ll go; we’ll read the abstract at the beginning. 

We’ll glance through the data. We’ll kind of took, what did they do exactly? What’s the methodology, and then we’ll jump all the way down to implications and go, okay, how does this relate to me? My life. Exactly. And sometimes I think some academics really get that and they’ll, like you said, lean into it, others don’t. 

Others are like, you figure it out. And we’re like, well; we’re not; we don’t know. We can’t read your numbers. They don’t make sense to us. Your words don’t make sense like that. And we tried for a while in the Impact Lab, there’s a section or impact lab where I did some research to practice briefs. And after a while I abandoned them. Because I was just like, I cannot spend my life translating academic research into a practitioner. I just can’t do it. So bless you for doing that for the Engaged journal. Because it isn’t easy to stop. That’s what I was gone say. 

Allison: If you want more of that, if you want shameless plug. Subscribe to Engage. 

Tobi: Engage. 

Allison: Yeah,  

Tobi: exactly.  

Tobi: We’ll absolutely include that link. Again, I can’t recommend enough the journal. I subscribe to it myself, so it’s fantastic.  

Allison: Yeah, and before I was the editor for Research to Practice Lori MOOC from Arizona State was doing that for many years before me and doing an amazing job also of translating the research, academic research into. 

Practical takeaways for our readers and really demystifying like, what is this even saying, what is, what does it mean for me? And so not all academics are good at that. And you know what though? I think part of what’s great about any type of research is that you can do it collaboratively and you can work with people who maybe are compensate for some of your weaknesses and you know who, who complement each other well. 

And so some of us may be better at seeing that bigger picture of what is the implications of this and how do we then translate this research into practical insights? And others may be good at crunching the numbers and doing the analysis piece. And it’s great to team up with those people. And that’s what I think. 

One thing I really enjoy learning more about the VMPR is just all of the different collaborations that you engaged with, with Pam, obviously, but also just with different partners in the field as you developed and iterated on the survey over the 10 years that you did it.  

Tobi: Yeah, and I would say the other thing that was great and it, we didn’t talk about this when Pam was on, but Pam and I also wrote a, an academic paper based on one year of the research. One or two years I think it was. And that paper, I’m gonna link to it. I don’t know if you’ll be able to get access to it Because it’s behind a paywall for academic. If you’re an academic, you can get access to it. But I’m trying to remember what the title was. Oh, a Heavy Load Challenges and Current Practices for volunteer managers in the us, Australia, and Canada. 

And it was in the Journal of Nonprofit and Public Sector Marketing. And so far we’ve gotten 17 citations and that may not sound like a lot. My husband is an academic, and I know, and so Pam was telling me before we jumped on that in soc, social sciences, most papers get cited, but in general, academic research, only about 10% get any citations at all. 

So I felt really validated by that in some strange way that Pam and Mice worked together, was able to also inform academics and that they found it valuable and that it was. Valid enough to be accepted in a peer reviewed journal. So I thought, you know what? And I wish I had more time. That’s part of the reason this collaboration is very difficult between practitioners and academics because the things that we each need to do to maintain standards in our field are very different. 

And so it may, unless there’s funding that comes in, helps us do this, it’s, it’s very difficult. I felt an obligation to Pam. To help her generate a research paper based on everything she had done to, to volunteer and contribute time to the work. I felt like we had to do something that would benefit her and her career. 

So I was happy to be able to do that. But yeah, it was, it is interesting, the two worlds. Yeah. And I think, and people are under pressure. They’re under, they gotta publish, they gotta teach, they gotta bring in grant money. There’s just like a lot going on, you know? Yeah.  

Allison: I do think though, that. Part of this is the bla, I mean, not to play the blame game, but in the academic side we, we get told things like, oh yeah, translate research translation, meaning basically how you translate scientific findings from whatever field it is, whether social science or like the hard sciences. 

To practice or to policy or to just general audiences of, of like the average person. That is an important part of scientific research in the scientific community. That is what we are told and how we’re trained. The problem is then when we go into what we call like the tenure track jobs at universities, that it is, the emphasis is placed on just how many papers can you publish in order to get tenure and it, and in doing that, you kind of lose time to actually then. 

Go out and talk about or even promote what you found and find those ways to really make those connections. And so the system itself is kind of flawed in that way. And I will happily stand here and say that and, and put a plugin for academics who are maybe earlier on in their career pushing back on that if you can. 

And even more seasoned people pushing back on that. And, and again, reiterating that part of our, our value here and what we’re doing in research. Is to be able to make those practical connections and translate that to general audiences because otherwise what are we really doing it for? Right? I mean, that’s my opinion, but I think it’s really important to have that practical piece. 

Tobi: 110%. Yeah,  

Allison: 110%. We agree on so much. It’s amazing. Yeah. Imagine we, this is why this, this conversation has been so fun, I think because it’s coming from these different perspectives, but really, and these different backgrounds, but sharing these perspectives on what research can do and, and why it’s important, and I think. 

One of the things that I wanted to ask you about, and I know we’re kind of nearing the end of our time, but it’s been 10 years, so it’s been 10 years of the VNPR and you’re taking a, a step back from it right now. But what are the questions or topics that you would like to see maybe other people take up? 

And explore in their own way through, through research in the field and, and for, for volunteer engagement? Leadership. Oh, so many.  

Tobi: A few things. One, I think I mentioned when we talked with Pam, I would love to see more field-based research. And I know it’s hard. It needs, it takes more time and. But I’d love to see, can we do quote unquote experiments? 

Can we figure out what’s happening in management practices and is there a correlation between certain ways, even if they’re qualitative case studies, they can bring a lot of, they don’t have to be necessarily, we’re proving that this management method. Is the best management. ’cause it, it’s never the best because it’s, our contexts are different for different organizations. 

So that’s an area that, when I was a member of a Nova, I was constantly, when I would go to the annual conference, I would go to different sessions and just try to find somebody who was. Not taking, A lot of people would take that giant data set from the census, supplement the data that goes into volunteering in civic life in America, and they would take that data and crunch it and munch it and all that, and I’m like, all right. 

All right. I think we’ve heard, I think we know enough about that. Let’s learn about some other things. So like, like participating, patient rates of volunteers or volunteer motivations. Those have been researched and I think we know a fair amount about those things. I think the areas that we need to know about are management practices and which are the most effective. 

And I know that sounds really easy to research and it sounds very clear the way I explain it, but it’s not easy to research like which management practices are the most effective. Now Jeff Freddy did do work in this area and he does have work around this, but so that’s an area I also would love for us to have more courage. 

It engage in research that is truth telling. So we talked earlier about demographics of volunteer managers, and at some point it was just like, okay, we’re, we’re more alike than different. We’re all educated white women, 90% of us. And not to say that there’s any value in that, because I think diversity is actually a strength, and if we have a lack of diversity in our volunteer core, then it raises questions about who’s invited to belong and who isn’t. 

Mm. So those are the kinds of questions that I am so interested in around the truth telling of our organizations. I’ve done, I did a podcast on bias, volunteer bias. So bias against volunteers and about volunteers in the way we think about volunteers. I think there are definite biases in our culture and also inside our organizations. 

So I would like to see us take that up a little bit and really start to look at not only the effectiveness of management practices, but also how are we making space for all kinds of people and how can we help make people feel like they belong to a community? Because I think right now there is a shift going on. 

That organizations that understand this shift are gonna thrive and those that don’t won’t. And that is that volunteering is really about building community. Yeah. And if your practices don’t take that lens of is this building or breaking community? Every step of the way are we building or breaking community? 

And when we break community, we break connection with our volunteers. So I wanna see research that gets into that courageous storytelling around those things that are happening in our organizations because it’s not always pretty gang. Just be honest, I worked, I worked for 25 years in. Private charities, grassroots organizations, and government, both federal and state level. 

I’ve seen, I’ve worked in many different cause impact areas, from senior services to employment and training to youth, to homelessness. You name it, I’ve worked in it Advocacy. Activism and there are some things in our sector that need changing, and I would like to see in the volunteer side us do the research to advocate for those changes. 

Allison: I love that. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I think that’s super important to consider and the idea that sometimes we have to be uncomfortable and lean into that in order to really see. Progress be made or that, see the changes that we wanna see. And I think that’s really a powerful thing. So thanks for sharing that insight. 

So as you kind of move on to. The next thing I guess, I mean, what is on the horizon? Like what’s next for you in terms of the projects you’re working on now that you’re kind of putting a pause on VMPR? Yeah,  

Tobi: and I will say it’s a pause. I’m not sure if we’re gonna start it up again. I  

Allison: know I’ve been very careful to say pause because I don’t wanna, uh, so I’m gonna just put that in the universe that it’s a pause  

Tobi: reached out and hey, can we help fund it? 

Can we help out with it? Can we take it over? Can we do this? And I just, first of all, I didn’t never wanted anybody to sponsor it because I didn’t want it to appear biased. And unless I had a coalition of sponsors. I wasn’t gonna do it, and I didn’t have the time to generate sponsorship, so that’s why that didn’t go that route. 

We may resurrect it. I don’t know. We’ll see. We may do other kinds of research. I don’t know. We’ll see. For this coming year, we’re focusing a lot in the Volunteer Pro community on expanding the diversity of voices that are advisors in our group. It’s been me for a while. For a long time and I’m, I love training and I love coaching and all that, but I also think that our students and members and folks that follow us could also benefit from some of the up and coming and also more established folk that aren’t here. 

There’s folks all over the world that are doing this kind of work that I’d like to feature. Under the Volunteer Pro umbrella, and so we’re gonna start doing that. We are constantly also thinking about ways to level up the Impact lab, so there’s solutions inside. We’ve been using ai, we’ve had an AI widget inside the Impact Lab for a couple years now, so people can search and get ideas and information. 

They can even write, volunteer thank you notes using our AI widget that although our like structure of thank you notes, that’s awesome. It could go, how do I use social media, do recruitment. I mean, it just does everything. It’s amazing. Mm-hmm. But there are now AI agents, there’s more you can do to guide learning. 

So we’re really looking forward to every time there’s new tech out that can enhance our members’ experience. I like to. See what I can bring on board. So, so that’ll, there’ll be some analysis of that. Like what can we bring on board to continue to help our members learn. We’re gonna revamp our volunteer management fundamentals course because it’s ready, it’s, it needs it. 

There’s new stuff out there. It, AI is one. We’ve been doing training on how to leverage ai, but there’s other things. Things evolve. So those are things I’m gonna be working on this year. In January I’ll be in New Zealand and I’m gonna be doing, leading a workshop there. Hopefully I’ll be, hopefully I’ll have it when this airs. 

I’ll probably be done. So, um, with that, so, so there’s some travel involved as well. I may be going back to the UK to do another day long recruitment workshop. Like I did a couple years ago. So it’s amazing. This field is such a great connection and network of people. One of the things we learned from research, I’ll say before we close up, is the one thing I’ve learned overall that is just lovely about our field is that we’re more like than different. 

And it doesn’t matter where I go in the world. The people I talk to are struggling with the same things. Pam and I found this when we were doing our research together and we were writing our paper. That’s why we said in the USA Canada and Australia, because we were, we, our point in the, one of the points in the paper was the challenges were more like the different, even when there’s different type of in infrastructure in Australia, there are peak bodies. 

There’s lots of, there’s not lots I would say relative to the us. There’s more government funding for tourism and to structure and support volunteer managers and volunteer organizations than in the us. So it’s just interesting, but again, you get back to the core of the work and it’s we’re more alike than different, which is very cool. 

And probably the biggest takeaway from the volunteer management progress report is that, yeah, we’re a global network and it’s very wonderful group of people to be part of.  

Allison: Awesome. I love that, and I couldn’t agree more. I’m honored to be a small part of this and able to network with such amazing people as I’ve been able to meet through just. 

Studying, volunteerism and volunteer management and learning from all of these amazing people, including yourself. So, Aw, that’s been great.  

Tobi: Well, Allison, I’m gonna, I’m gonna take the mic back now. Yeah. Ask. Go for it. My favorite question to ask my guest, and that is, what are you most excited about in the year ahead? 

Allison: Yeah, I mean, I think professionally I am excited. Also a little scared in a way, I guess, about some of the changes that are going on in higher ed and just what the future of higher ed is. I think it’s a little bit daunting, but it’s also, I think. Opportunity. And so I’m excited for finding ways to take this kind of moment and use it as a catalyst to help myself continue to grow as a researcher, grow as an instructor, and help try to reimagine kind of. 

New ways or better ways, or just different ways of doing things in the profession I’ve chosen, which is to be an academic and a faculty member at a university. And so I’m excited to try to take what is this, sort of a little bit chaotic, but just really open-ended moment of uncertainty and. Use it as a way to say, how might I change, or how might I do things differently? 

Or how might I just ensure that what I am doing again is adding value, that my students are getting what they need to get from the classes I’m teaching and also the. The research I’m doing has impact beyond just whether or not I’ll get tenure, right? But whether it has impact in the real world for our communities and for people that work within organizations. 

And that’s, that’s the goal. I think. So for me, that’s what I’m most excited about that and just spending time with family. I have two young sons who are four and two, and so. It’s just a, honestly just always such a wonderful experience to be a parent and to see them grow and change so much in such a short amount of time. 

And so. I’m excited to kind of, to continue doing that, continue being on that journey as well. Awesome.  

Tobi: Allison. She’s doing it. Yes, she is. She’s doing it. Love it. I’m trying fake it till you make it. I love that. That’s a great, that’s a great piece. Advice. Well, this is fantastic. Thank you for taking the reigns, Allison, for part one and part two, where we talked about practitioner research. 

This in part two and part one we talked about industry research. We introduced the volunteer Management Progress report. I hope it’s inspired you all to take on your own research project. No matter how big or small, and you only learn by doing, you have to have a bias towards taking action. And you’ll make mistakes and you’ll learn from them. 

And everything will be fantastic as you keep going. And you’ll have people who are grumpy about it. And you know what? If the people are grumpy about it, let them do their own survey. Hey Hala, that’s what I like to say. What do your oven, you? Hey, ring world. Well, as much as it can be anyway. So if you like this episode, I just want to thank everybody for tuning in. 

If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. Be sure to check out part one and join us next week. Same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.