200 – 10 Lessons from 200 Episodes – The Volunteer Nation Through the Years

February 5, 2026

Episode #200: 10 Lessons from 200 Episodes – The Volunteer Nation Through the Years

The 200th episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast marks a major milestone. 

After four years, hundreds of conversations, and insights from volunteer leaders around the world, Tobi Johnson takes a step back to reflect on what has changed in volunteer engagement and what today’s organizations must do differently to build stronger, more sustainable volunteer programs. 

From strategy and systems to recruitment, retention, and leadership influence, this episode distills the most important lessons learned across 200 episodes into ten clear, actionable takeaways. 

Whether you’re a seasoned leader of volunteers or building a program from the ground up, this conversation offers both perspective and practical guidance for the future of the field. 

Volunteer Nation – Episode Highlights 

• [01:51] – Reflecting on 200 Episodes 
• [04:19] – The Evolution of Volunteer Engagement 
• [06:16] – Key Lessons from 200 Episodes 
• [11:01] – Volunteer Engagement as Strategy 
• [14:15] – Addressing Capacity Problems 
• [21:46] – The Importance of Meaning in Recruitment 
• [26:45] – Retention Starts Early 
• [30:02] – Empowering Volunteer Managers 
• [30:29] – Building Influence as a Volunteer Manager 
• [32:00] – Supporting Volunteer Leaders in Nonprofits 
• [33:56] – The Evolution of Volunteer Roles 
• [34:30] – Flexible and Team-Based Volunteering 
• [40:29] – Community as a Retention Strategy 
• [44:23] – The Importance of Data in Volunteer Management 
• [50:13] – Challenges and Resilience of Volunteer Leaders 
• [53:49] – The Brave Future of Volunteerism 

Volunteer Nation – Quotes from the Episode 

“Volunteer engagement isn’t extra help — it’s a strategy to drive community impact.” 

“People don’t show up because you marketed better. They show up because the work feels meaningful.” 

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report
• VolunteerPro Impact Lab
• Volunteer Nation Episode #198 – The Future of Volunteerism – Trends & Predictions Part 1
• Volunteer Nation Episode #199 – The Future of Volunteerism – Trends & Predictions Part 2

Contact Us

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

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Episode #200 Transcript: 10 Lessons from 200 Episodes – The Volunteer Nation Through the Years 

Tobi: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson. I am. Back from New Zealand. I am a little bit jet lagged. I’m not gonna lie. It’s a long flight, long series of flights I should say. But I had so much fun and just thank you to the folks at volunteering New Zealand and all the folks I met there.

We’ll be having an upcoming interview episode with them to talk about. My adventures. There are workshop and what we learned from participants, so it was a really good time. Just really reinforced my long held belief that we’re more alike than different around the world. But today I wanna switch gears a little bit and talk about.

Episode 200. That’s this episode. It’s a very special episode of The Volunteer Nation Podcast because this episode almost didn’t happen. I mean, I’m thinking back to when I was thinking about podcasting, wondering if I should do podcasting, worrying about doing podcasting and doubting. Whether a podcast would make a difference and 200 episodes later, I think it was worth the work.

And I have met so many people around the world that are fans, and it’s always blowing my mind when I meet people who’ve been listening. Whether it’s your first episode or you’ve listened to every single one of the 199 before this one. I just wanna welcome you and thank you for being a part of this community.

I started the Volunteer Nation Podcast just to create a space where volunteer leaders felt seen, supported, less alone, and also where volunteer driven organizations could come and get trusted information about how to grow their volunteer teams and how to think about volunteerism a little bit differently.

Back then, volunteer engagement was often treated as an afterthought. I’ve been in this business for a long time. I started my consulting practice back in 2009, after 25 years working in a variety of private charities, grassroots organizations, government agencies, both federal and state. I mean, I had a long career in nonprofits before I started consulting.

And when I started consulting, there was so many different things I could do, but I just decided to focus on volunteerism because it was such. A need. It was such an area where not much was understood and folks were just winging it. And when we think about even back from then till now, almost, wow, 2009.

Almost to 2029. We’re almost 20 years into it. A lot has changed. So this podcast was my latest iteration in that long career of consulting where we start, I started as a consultant and then we started up the Volunteer Pro membership community, which is now the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab, which is about to go through another growth spurt, which I’m really excited about.

We’ll talk about that later, but also. The volunteer Pro Man Volunteer Management fundamental certificate course doing online work. And then four years ago, almost four years ago, I started the podcast and it’s just been a labor of love. It’s a place where I can talk about my ideas in more depth and really kind of dive into things as you probably got a clue.

About my in depth. If you’ve, if you follow us and you’ve listened to the past two episodes, I’ve been talking about the future of volunteerism and I shared my trends and predictions in two parts, in episode 1 98 and 1 99. If you’re brand new to us, go check those out. I’ll post the links in the show notes, but I was looking forward in those episodes.

I was really taking a look at. What do I think or predict for the future of our field and the future of community engagement? And I looked at a variety of things and made my best predictions, and I’d love you to listen if you haven’t had a chance. ’cause it’s really kind of some of the things I’m predicting aren’t talked about anywhere else.

I, I have never seen some of these things talked about elsewhere, so it’s kind of fun to do that kind of mental. Exercise. Just analyzing the world as it is, as it stands today and how it might impact how we do volunteerism. But today is a reflection backward. It’s a reflection back through. 200 episodes of the Volunteer Nation.

I pulled out 10 lessons, 10 key lessons that I thought you might be interested in. It’s not really, I’ve done my past top 10 of 2025. I’ll post a link to that, uh, as well. If you wanna know what are fan faves, but this is sort of. Amalgam of the key themes and lessons, sort of how are we moving forward as a field?

Of course, our volunteer management progress report, we produced that report for 10 years in a row, asking leaders of volunteers around the world about their challenges and their practices. We put a pause on it this year just ’cause I needed a break, but we may have a different iteration coming up in the coming year.

We’ll see. So don’t put that one to bed yet. People have reached out and said, Hey, why aren’t you doing this? I said, Hey, I needed a break. 10 years was a good run, but I think we’ll probably end up doing some type of research in the future. Not sure what it might look like, but it will be maybe a different iteration of the progress report.

But if you’re interested in that report, there’s plenty of data to dig into and you can download a copy of that from our website. Most recent EP or most recent. Iteration or addition of that report was all about volunteer recruitment, which is something we is so near and dear to our heart here at Volunteer Pro.

But let’s talk about today’s episode. Today’s episode is really about. What’s been changing over the past four years, over 200 episodes, it’s still blowing my mind ’cause I’m like, really? I recorded 200 episodes. We had so many fabulous guests and we have so many fabulous guests to come as well, so. I just wanna thank everybody who has been on the show, been a guest, anybody who’s shared our episodes with their friends and colleagues, anybody who’s given us a review or a star rating.

Thank you so much. It just helps us reach more people, and Lord knows people need trusted information right now. So when we started volunteer engagement was often treated as an afterthought. It was something that organizations did. They looked for widgets to fill their slots, and that’s how we thought about volunteerism.

Now, not everybody did, and certainly we didn’t here at Volunteer Pro and many leaders in the field didn’t think that way, but. 200 episodes later, I am feeling a shift. Things are shifting. There are so many more voices in the marketplace. This morning I was looking. On LinkedIn about and how many people are posting about impact and about, and points of view about how volunteers should be valued.

And volunteer managers are key players in organizations. There’s new investments into volunteerism with. Points of light. I, I interviewed Jennifer Angelo several episodes ago, and I, I’ll link to that episode as well, where she talked about their investments into volunteer management and volunteerism.

There’s the international year of the volunteer with UN volunteers. There’s many more voices and conversations happening around volunteer impact. We have so much to look forward to. The field is evolving. And even though it may not feel like that inside each and every organization, certainly we have many challenges that, and themes that come up year after year.

I mean, I’ve read so many open-ended comments to our surveys about people’s biggest challenges. We know that there’s still so much work to be done to understand volunteer engagement and the practice. Bringing our communities together and partnering with them to make the world a better place. We know that work still needs to be done, but.

Today I wanna reflect on how far we’ve come on the heels of my two episodes on trend predictions. Again, I’m looking back and I wanna reflect on how far we’ve come. So in this episode I’m gonna share 10 lessons I’ve learned from 200 episodes of the Volunteer Nation, lessons shaped by what I’ve heard again and again from leaders just like you.

So I hope you’ll enjoy it. Let’s dive in. So let’s start with Volunteer Nation lesson number one. Volunteer engagement is strategy. Not support. So volunteer engagement is strategy, not support. This is one of the biggest shifts over the years. Volunteer engagement is not extra help. Volunteer engagement is not, okay.

Let’s day labor. I like to say volunteer engagement is not day labor. We’re not looking for people to work for free. People aren’t volunteering because they wanna work for free. They’re volunteering because they wanna make a difference. And so. When we think of volunteer engagement as extra help, we tend to lean into a more of an HR perspective.

And this shift has really been starting to change. It started to change in the way that we talked about things on the pod over the past four years. I remember earlier on I would talk about more HR related, and we all evolve in our understanding and knowledge. So volunteer engagement is not extra help.

Volunteers are not extra help. Volunteer engagement is a strategy to drive community impact. So the organizations that I’m seeing Thrive are not asking how do we use volunteers? They’re asking, or how do we leverage volunteers better? Now, of course, that’s a question that needs answering, but the bigger question to ask is how does our mission expand?

Because volunteers are here. How does our mission expand? Because volunteers are here that starts to answer. The answers to that question are bigger and they’re better. Not the bigger is always better, but in this case. How does our organization’s mission expand? And there’s so many different ways to answer that question.

If you think about how it’s expanding and benefiting volunteers themselves, how we’re partnering better from the, with the community, if our volunteers comprise the community we’re serving, we’re we are able. To be more attuned to community needs. Not to mention the extra pairs of hands, of course, but that’s not really the biggest question, is not how can we get more extra pairs of hands?

It’s actually how can we drive more community impact by and through partnering with people in the community. So. When we wanna make this happen, it means that volunteers and leaders of volunteers are included in planning and decision making, and when they are, engagement becomes stronger and impact grows.

So it’s not, again, vol, a bunch of people working for free. I know we like to think about how we can get resources for organizations and volunteer talent is a resource, but it’s also a strategy. So strategy, not support. So I love that lesson that I’ve seen shift over the past four years, past 200 episodes of the Volunteer Nation.

Here’s my second lesson from podcasting on the Volunteer Nation. Capacity problems are usually designed problems so often. I hear this all the time. We don’t have enough capacity, we don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough resources. It’s really a scarcity mindset that pervades our sector and it stops us from thinking further.

’cause the minute we think money is the problem, and I’m not saying money isn’t a problem, not having resources is a problem, but. Often, and I’m not saying to do more with less ’cause I’m not, I don’t, I’m not a believer of that. And I’ll explain that just so folks aren’t left hanging. When folks say do more with less, they’re asking you to either work more hours or you can become more effective with the time you have, or you can engage more volunteers to bring on.

More impact through a greater workforce or help force. But if you’re just the volunteer manager on your own, being asked to do more with less, you’re asking to be cloned. And that’s not possible. It’s just not possible to clone yourself. I know. Or you’re working extra hours, you’re working weekends, and that’s just not sustainable.

So I think we have to work smarter, not harder for sure. And our capacity problems are often design problems. So often I like to say it’s not people, it’s systems. It’s not people, it’s systems. So how do we develop systems that are designed well, that engage people in the work? So simply having a more money does not necessarily mean that our volunteer recruitment gets better.

For example, let me give you an example. Let’s say you were given a grant to do some Facebook ads to attract volunteers. Well, that’s great. But if you don’t understand marketing, you don’t understand your ideal audience who you’re trying to reach, you don’t understand how to write copy properly, you don’t know how to make the case and make a proper appeal, then it doesn’t matter how much money you have.

It’s not gonna happen. You’re not gonna attract the right volunteers for your good cause. And so we need to make sure that if we are provided resources, and I’m not saying we don’t need resources. We do. We need resources, we need money, but to build that capacity, in addition to that, we need. Clear roles.

We need responsibilities that are clear and accountabilities across the organization. We got in a great conversation when I was in New Zealand about who is ultimately accountable to the volunteer culture at your organization. And I asked the group and they said, the volunteer manager. I said, no. The leader of your organization, the CEO, is ultimately accountable to the culture, whether it’s with paid staff or volunteer throughout your organization.

They are. They are the chief executive. They are responsible. They are the chief person accountable for culture. Now, you as the leader of volunteers, might be responsible for. Advising on how to create a great culture for implementing initiatives that build volunteer culture, but culture comes from the top down.

And so we wanna make sure we have clear roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities for volunteer engagement across the organization. We also wanna make sure we have out updated processes and technology. Technology and a lack of updated technology is a huge area that is a barrier to capacity. So that’s a design problem.

It’s understanding what. Tech could we bring on board that could save time, especially admin time, so that we can replace that admin time with time spent on the real deal. Volunteer engagement, which is people to people building community building strength and network building social capital, building intellectual capital, making sure that the gifts that our volunteers are.

Bringing are being used in the best way possible and that that we are able to not only tap that talent into the mission, but also recognize and reward and acknowledge that talent for what those contributions. I was making the comment. Last week at the workshop about volunteers are major donors, let’s start treating ’em that way.

Right? Imagine it’s so much di more difficult to volunteer, especially on a regular basis than it is to write a check or pull out a credit card. Much more difficult. And yet we still in organizations value money over people’s most valuable asset, which is their time that, you know, I like to say the years.

The months, the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds each person has left on this planet are their most valuable asset. That’s the only thing that we have that is ours, a hundred percent. And folks are giving you that asset, giving your organization that asset. And so when they do give that asset, we need to be really grateful and treat them.

Like the major donors, they are contributing an asset that is far and above more the most valuable, so. Capacity problems are usually design problems, obviously. Yes. More resources. More resources to buy tech, but also to build our programs for today’s volunteers. You know, we, we have programs that are built for a different era for volunteers of the 1950s.

And that was just an entirely different world than we live in today. So we’ve got to upgrade processes. People expect immediate responses from folks, and that’s just how it is, right? And so again, lesson two, just capacity problems are usually design problems. So the first thing to do is to figure out how you can redesign something so that.

That problem can be addressed. That use case can be, and problem can be solved for, and by going through that design process, then step number two, what resources do we need to implement this new design? Right. Much more compelling to someone who wants to support you to say, look, this is the redesign we need to do to fix this problem that we have diagnosed, and these are the resources we need to support this.

Design decision in terms of management, I’ve worked, I’ve been in nonprofit management for over 30 years now, and it’s process instead of people blaming people for the problems we have is not gonna get us anywhere. Alright. Let’s talk about Volunteer Nation lesson number three. Recruitment follows meaning not marketing.

It’s so funny when I used to do marketing in nonprofits, one of my jobs was I was a marketing director of a four state region for a federal employment and training program for young people, and I remember going out and training. Our staff and even youth at our centers in my region, and I remember the word marketing was a, it was a dirty word in the nonprofit sector, like we don’t do marketing, we do outreach.

I said, well, I hate to say it, but you do marketing too well now, marketing and communications and nonprofits, this is not a dirty word. It is something that we need to really think about in terms of improving how we attract volunteers. Recruitment isn’t. Just about posting more opportunities. And as this podcast has been around for 200 episodes and I’ve posted many times on volunteer recruitment, it is one of my favorite topics because it’s something I have a lot of experience in.

And over the past few years, I’ve been doing a lot of Com communications comms audits for my consulting clients, and I look at. Everything in their recruitment, from their search engine optimization to their website, to their postings, to their social media, to their application and onboarding process. And I write these very extensive reports and give people and diagnostics to say, okay, here’s where if you focus on these areas, you’re gonna get better results.

And these are the low hanging fruit that where I would start if I were you. And over that time, that’s really impacted some of my podcast episodes as well because I start sharing what I’m seeing as trends and key mistakes folks are making. And one of the biggest ones that I’ve seen over the years, and I’ve talked about it a lot recently and it continue to talk about it, is.

People show up when the work feels meaningful. People show up as volunteers, as community members to help nonprofit organizations when the work feels meaningful. They wanna know why does this matter? They wanna know who does. Who would I be helping and how would my time make a real difference? And. Our marketing materials and our marketing messaging is not sharing enough of these details.

Perfect example, websites, and I’ve talked a lot about websites on this podcast of your recruitment webpages, just what are people, what are you sharing with people about the mission? Are you mission forward? Are you answering your audiences? Quick questions early on, or are you listing 25 things people have to do to become a volunteer?

Most organizations are not talking about meaning, they’re not helping people make meaning about their volunteering or about this potential experience early on in their. Messaging. It’s not at the top of the page. It’s not at the top of the page. And sometimes that can be communicated through photographs, it can be communicated through video, et cetera.

Our headlines, our subheads, all that good stuff, but the case just isn’t being made. So people just click away because like, well, this just doesn’t, I’m not understanding where can I find how this is gonna make meaning in my life? Volunteers, when they’re volunteering, they’re constantly making meaning, because volunteering is an aspirational exercise.

If you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you’re up at the, as you move to the top of that apex of those hierarchy of needs, it’s self-actualization. And that’s what volunteers are looking for. Self-actualization. Who am I in the world and am I living up to my own values? And I wanna know if I’m living up to my own values through my volunteering.

And if I don’t feel like I am, then I’m gonna try something else. So people may not even get started with you if they look at your website and realize there’s no way this organization can help me live up to my own values and my own beliefs of whatever it is. And everybody has different values and beliefs, so you’ve gotta mirror that more.

So recruitment follows, meaning not marketing. We’ve gotta make sure people are attracted by purpose. Our platforms and our media are only and simply channels to deliver those messages. So the more testimonials and endorsements we have, and the more stories we have, the more people can make meaning they’re, oh, okay, I understand the meaning of this story.

Right? So really big transition and change through a lesson learned through the years of the Volunteer Nation podcast. Let’s look at lesson number four. Retention is built in the first 30 days, so retention starts much earlier than most organizations think. We think often that. Okay, I’ve got everybody onboarded.

They’re trained, they’re start their first day. Okay, let’s just make sure they come back after their first day. And really, it’s all about the annual recognition event, sending thank you notes, et cetera, et cetera. But honestly, the first 30 days of a volunteer’s experience shape everything for the future.

They cast the sort of. Tenor, they cast what’s possible for people. Again, people are making meaning, right? So the first 30 days are about clarity, understanding what am I here to do? How am I gonna get it done? Confidence, yes, I can get it done. And I’m confident that I. Am a player here that I can contribute in a real way, belonging.

The other thing, people want to feel like they are part of a team. I must belong. Now. They don’t have to be exactly like everybody else, but they have to have something in common. So strong onboarding nowadays isn’t a nice to have. It’s an essential first impression and foundation to future commitment and leadership roles.

It is one of the most powerful retention and recruitment tools you have. Years ago, at the beginning of the podcast, we used to talk about. Sort of funnel based recruitment and marketing where it has a wide net and then you sort of sift out and find the best people and you end up with the people who are just perfect for your nonprofit.

Well, nowadays. And you know, through 200 episodes we’re now talking about, and I think I’ll probably do an episode on this in the future, on flywheel marketing. I talk about this in the Impact Lab. We do training on recruitment, and I talk about flywheel marketing. It’s really about how do you keep momentum going through.

The recruitment and onboarding process. And then when people have such a great time, they start talking about it to their friends. When the meaning, when the experience is so meaningful, they talk about it with others and they recommend you to others, and pretty soon you’re not doing a very hard job of recruitment.

I know volunteer organizations that have a wait list for volunteers. They simply. Do not lack volunteers, and I can guarantee you it’s because it’s a well-designed experience where volunteers are finding meaning. And so that flywheel effect, instead of sort of this funnel of a lot of people at the top, tiny amount of people at the bottom, we’re now moving to this circular flywheel where people move to not knowing you, to getting to know you, to getting involved, to really enjoying their involvement, to starting to tell others and circle that around.

So it’s a cycle of flywheel. So retention is really about setting the stage early on in the first 30 days, setting the stage not only for the volunteer experience, but for future leadership opportunities. Talking about those early on, showing people leadership pathway. Volunteer Nation lesson number five.

Volunteer managers need power, not just passion. We talk about this a lot. Volunteer leaders care deeply, but passion alone really isn’t enough. Without authority, resources, or buy-in burnout is almost inevitable. I’ve seen lots of people come and go in our field. The most effective organizations don’t just appreciate.

Leaders of volunteers, they empower them. So questions you wanna be asking? Volunteer managers, what are you doing to build your ability to influence change? I have seen from my own two eyes, so many people in our volunteer Pro Impact Lab build their influence and authority in their organizations. I’ve watched people go from getting a no to everything.

To getting yeses to some of the initiatives that they’re recommending. I’ve seen people get FTEs added to their team. I’ve seen people get invited to meetings that they weren’t invited to in the past. I’ve seen people get. Added to the strategic plan. Oh my goodness. Volunteers are finally mentioned in the organization’s strategic plan.

Imagine that. So I’ve seen this growth and it only happens when we build our skills and competencies as well as our confidence to speak up. But we’ve gotta bring the goods in our organizations. Having worked in nonprofits from the ground up my entire career, I started right outta college in nonprofit work.

And I remember not getting much traction early on. It took me time to, and lots of hard work and lots of study and lots of coming to the table with ideas over and over again that I became credible and reliable in my organizations and I started to get more and more authority. And so. Volunteer managers need power, not just passion.

If you’re a nonprofit executive director, maybe you’re a very small organization, maybe you’re a large organization, what are you doing to support buy-in and support for leaders of volunteers and volunteers throughout your organization? How are they being championed and not in a Pollyannish way, but in a real way to make real impact?

So what are you doing to support buy-in and making sure that all people that are working with volunteers understand that they are responsible for supporting volunteers in a way that is healthy? Some of our organizations are not healthy the way they treat volunteers. So, and those organizations, honestly, I’m just gonna say it shouldn’t have volunteers.

If you’re not interested in investing, volunteers don’t have them find another way. Because there’s so many other organizations that could use volunteers and could really leverage their talents in ways that you’re not allowing for in your organization. So let’s let others work with the community in that way and your organization find another way.

I know that’s probably quite controversial, but sometimes it just, because we are so interconnected as nonprofits that when one, an organization, a volunteer, has a poor experience at one nonprofit. They end up broad brush stroking the entire nonprofit community in that area and say, oh, volunteering is awful.

I’m never gonna volunteer again. Because of the acts of one organization. The inability to get back to people on time, treating people with disrespect, not giving people meaningful work. There’s a lot of things we all know. We’ve all seen it, so I feel like we need to be ethical in our volunteer practices.

So volunteer managers need power, not just passion. Volunteer Nation. Lesson number six. I think we’ve nailed the coffin on one size fits all. Volunteerism. It is over. It is over. I remember working in organizations where we had one and only one volunteer role, and it didn’t last long in the organizations and the programs that I was designing because I was like, that doesn’t work for this person or that person.

Let’s find something else for them that will work for them. Being responsive to your community, it’s just. Part of it should be part of your mission. So volunteerism has changed. We all know that people want flexible opportunities. Today’s really effective volunteer organizations include flexible schedules, skills-based roles, short term and virtual options.

Growth in self-directed and mutual aid volunteering. It’s on fire. People are doing their own informal volunteering. I talked about in the trends episodes, I talked about mutual aid volunteering and how I, my prediction is it will be on the upswing because there are so many community needs. There’s grow, just growing community need and not enough nonprofits to, to answer all of those needs.

I also see. That volunteerism rather than a one size fits all approach. We wanna figure out how we can create flexibility with volunteer teams, and I’ve done a fair amount of training around with volunteers themselves, volunteer leaders, but also organizations around team-based volunteering. It creates a kind of flexibility that the work can get done, but the team decides how that work gets done.

And the team can switch in and out. I’m part of a team like that and it’s great because when one of us can’t make it, if I’m in New Zealand and I can’t jump on and do our gardening tips live broadcast on the weekend, one of my team members will step in so we can get the work done. And we’re flexible within our team.

So I think there’s gonna be growing team-based volunteering, and I’ve talked about that as well over the years on this podcast. I, I think we just, if we’re an organization that is still stuck with a one size fits all approach, we’re probably having a really hard time finding folks to fit that niche.

Flexibility also isn’t about lowering expectations, it’s designing engagement opportunities that fit real lives In today’s really busy and distracted world, no one owes our organizations anything. We must earn their support and value their contributions, and when we do volunteers pay us back over and over again with their dedication and their commitment to our good causes.

So. Those are my top six so far. I’m gonna take a break right now. Let’s pause for my reflections and lessons learned over 200. Can you believe it? Almost four years of the Volunteer Nation Podcast. Don’t go anywhere. I have got four more lessons to share with you that I’ve learned just through the evolution of volunteer engagement over these past 200 episodes.

Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back. 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. Tension 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 will 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 focuses, 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 ball pro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved. Again, that’s ball pro.net/join. Okay, we’re back and I’m sharing my reflections and lessons. Learned over 200 episodes of the Volunteer Nation Podcast.

Folks, I cannot believe that it’s been 200 episodes. I don’t even know where these episodes came and went. I mean, where did they come from? But there’s been a lot of evolution and in learning and understanding and growth in our sector and in my own thinking as a podcast host. So I thought I’d share these lessons with you as we celebrate the 200th episode.

So I talked about. Several epi, several lessons I talked about. Lesson one, volunteer engagement is strategy, not support. I talked about lesson two. Capacity problems are usually design problems. I’m just a huge design thinking person. Um, lesson three. Recruitment follows meaning not marketing. That’s right.

It’s all about, it’s all about the mission. Lesson four. Retention is built in the first 30 days lesson. Five. Volunteer managers need power, not just passion. Lesson six, one size fits all. Volunteer engagement or volunteer roles are over. I think we can just put the nail on that. That’s over. Close the book on that.

So let’s get into Volunteer Nation lesson number seven. Community is the real retention strategy. Now, I talked to before the break about retention. Is built in the first 30 days and it can be turbocharged. Absolutely. If you focus on community building. And when we were doing our workshop in in New Zealand, I kicked it off with a conversation about community and it was so.

Fun to use that lens throughout the day for, yes, we have these HR practices, but the real deal, the real transformation happens when we focus on community. And so we really focused with a lens on community building as we mapped the volunteer journey. So community is the real retention strategy, so people don’t stay just because of the mission.

They stay because of the other people and because they belong, it’s because they make friendships. It’s because they feel that they are an important part of what’s getting done. When volunteers build relationships with each other and with staff engagement deepens and retention improves. Nobody flakes.

On their best friend, or if they do, they’re not a good friend, right? They’re not hanging out. I’m sure somebody could think of a friend they’ve had who flakes all the time, and I bet you they don’t follow, they’re not your friend for long. But really, when we have, we feel like we belong to a group. We feel committed to that group, and retention improves.

Community. We think of building community as sort of, oh, teamwork, team building. Oh, that’s a bonus thing we can do with our volunteers. And I remember early on in the podcast, I think I did some episodes on team building. And I would think of team building as a type of training endeavor, a training exercise, and activity.

Let’s do a team building activity. My. Thinking on this has changed dramatically over the past 200 episodes. Community isn’t a bonus. It is foundational. It is absolutely foundational to the practice of volunteer engagement. It is people plus purpose. And when we think about volunteer engagement, we have to think about building community.

And I know a lot of folks are doing. Training online. We do training online. I’ve been doing online training for 10 years plus. So if we are training our volunteers that way, how are we also building community? How are we building community through our application forms? How are we building community through the first shifts that volunteers attend or the first events?

How are we building community as we match volunteers with roles that might make meaning for them, right? So it’s not a bonus to do team building. It’s actually foundational. How do we help people belong? Right, and it takes purposeful design. I talked about design earlier, so community is actually the real retention strategy.

Yes, it’s fantastic to acknowledge the work of our volunteers, but if you ask anybody how would you like to be recognized? Ask them and listen carefully and listen to see if anything has to do with being in community with others. Making friends, learning new things. Part of learning new things is when we’re learning in community with other people.

If it’s done well, I should say, yeah. That’s why the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab community, we’ve been running it for 10 years because we believe community matters that much. Alright, volunteer Nation lesson eight. Data tells the story that leaders need to hear. Talked a lot about data. I started out my nonprofit career right outta college.

Well, I worked in arts and culture for a few years, and then I moved into employment and training. And back in the day, in the early nineties, employment and training, we already had outcomes, metrics. We were already tracking impact. Employment and training programs, it wasn’t difficult. Did you get a job?

Did you not get a job? What was your average wage? How long did you stay on that job? The metrics are pretty simple when it comes to employment and training type programs. Other programs are a little more challenging to track impact, but I was schooled on outcomes and impacts from day one, really in my nonprofit career.

And so I’ve been talking about data and impact for a long time, but. We really have to get good. And what I’ve been trying to work on, especially inside the Impact Lab and with our Volunteer Vision Week, our Volunteer Pro Vision Week, a strategic planning bootcamp every year, is to link strategy with impact.

So we have success factors. This year we were talking a lot about what are your success factors for each of your key outcomes for your volunteer engagement for the year. And so volunteer for years now volunteer, uh, impact has been reduced to hours served and the economic value of hours served, but the hours don’t tell the full story and we.

Also need to be able to tailor the way that we communicate those hours as well as what happens during those hours. Right. What is the impact that’s made? So leaders in our organizations data is the language of leadership. Having been a program director, having managed team and large budgets in my nonprofit career, data is what?

It would change my mind sometimes on things. So leaders need to hear what’s changed, what outcomes were achieved, what capacity was unlocked, how did we grow as an organization, how did we grow as a cause impact area, and really around this. Theory of change. What has changed? What was input in what actions were taken and what transformation occurred?

And when we just look at hours, we’re not really talking about transformation, are we? We’re just talking about, okay, this is how many, and even if we are. Comparing hours, month to month, quarter to quarter, year over year. The only thing we might be communicating is the change in hours. That assumes that more hours equals greater impact.

But that’s a huge assumption, right? It’s a big leap of faith. So we’ve gotta think more about the transformation. So good data helps leaders of volunteers advocate for the support they deserve. So we’ve talked about not only both on the pod, but in also inside the impact lab about how do we communicate and what do we communicate to different leaders and different stakeholders.

’cause different people care about different things. So getting good at outcomes metrics, that’s just sort of a, not a nice to have anymore. I guess the first, like the most basic is if volunteers are driving a program through their actions and their contributions, why are volunteers not taking credit for the results and the outcomes for that program?

So that’s the most simple if you’re working with direct service volunteers. Now, if you’re working with arts and culture event volunteers, then the event outcomes. Are the volunteers outcomes if they’re the ones powering that event, right? So we don’t have to look elsewhere to find The most simplest answer is right in front of our noses.

It is the outcomes of the program, the event, et cetera. If the volunteers are driving it, they should take credit for those outcomes. And so sometimes I think we, we believe that we need to create these very complex systems for outcomes metrics, and I like to keep it simple. So remember that good data helps volunteer leaders advocate for the support they deserve.

Data tells the story leaders need to hear, and it just has become more and more evident over the past 200 episodes, past four years. It’s a big conversation inside our community of folks in volunteer engagement about how do we track impact now greater community, impact longer term impact. I would love if an economist and if one has figured this out, please get in touch ’cause I’d love to have you on the pod.

So love to have some formulas for that to how to figure that out. For now, though, we can look inside our organizations and look to the work that volunteers are doing. What is changing and it’s as there’s an attack on nonprofits, especially here in the us. There is the credibility of nonprofits is constantly questioned.

We as leaders of volunteers, both for the community at large, but also for our volunteers who are supporting us, need to help them make meaning about their volunteering, but make meaning about the organization itself and its work in the community. And we can do that with data, both qualitative and quantitative.

So storytelling and numbers. Okay, volunteer Nation lesson number nine. Volunteer leaders are doing more with less and still showing up. This one really matters, folks. It really matters and. We learned a lot about this through our volunteer progress report, volunteer management progress report. We, we’ve asked about burnout and tracked burnout, and what we found is that volunteer leaders are tired.

They’re often un under-resourced, and they are still deeply committed. We have never found huge evidence in our volunteer management progress report of massive churn in our sector. However, the folks who take the survey are self-selected through their networks and hear about the survey, and most folks who are super new to the field don’t hear about it.

And so we may be not able to track those new folks who come and go, but. My, one of my hopes for this podcast has always been to remind you you’re not alone. Your work matters. And you need to take care of yourself. I’ve been doing a lot more speaking out around boundary setting and the resources that are really needed and essential to making progress at scale.

We can’t just assume that we can do more with less. I talked about that earlier in this episode. Treading water isn’t a sustainable strategy and you can only swim upstream for so long before you just get tired. So it may not mean that you’re leaving your job, but you’re not as impactful as you could be.

If you are. Getting the resources you need. You need some current, some current behind you, pushing you along in the form of buy-in technology coaching training to truly scale that impact the world is changing quickly. If you think about ai, it’s such a rapid change. We started doing training inside the Impact Lab this past year around ai, and I talk about how I use AI to.

Speed up the admin tasks to do sort of the admin work that I don’t have time to do, but I need help doing, right. That needs doing. And so we do continue to scale impact through greater resources. And so it’s nice to see that there’s a greater understanding of that. There’s been exploration of that. We’ve had folks on the podcast talk about the differences between how development departments are resourced versus volunteer services departments, differences in pay scales.

At the volunteer management progress report, we’ve talked about pay scale over and over again, and it just didn’t budge very much, honestly. So we’ve got to think about how we are resourcing when people want to scale and grow. You can’t do it with the same type of resources and often not with the same strategy used in the past.

What got you here when not get you there. And so that’s something we’re, we’ve been talking about more and more on the pod in recent episodes. Okay. I’m to my volunteer nation, lesson number 10. My final lesson, over 200 episodes of the Volunteer Nation Podcast. I cannot believe it. I’m still, it’s still blowing my mind.

So what is it? What is lesson number 10? I think it’s a positive one. The future of volunteerism is braver than the past. It’s braver than the past. If there’s one word that describes the future of volunteerism, it’s brave. We’re seeing more evidence. We’re seeing more shared leadership. We’re seeing more co-creation.

We’re seeing more trust within our organizations around volunteer engagement. We’re seeing more funding initiatives focused on growing volunteer teams. We’re seeing more talk about inclusive volunteering, which back in the day when we started asking about it in our volunteer management progress report, I’m telling you, nobody was doing anything around it.

This was six, seven years ago. It’s a topic of conversation now. We are talking about creating belonging in our organizations. We’re talking about how to make volunteering accessible for everybody. These are brave spaces. With brave people stepping up and the future really belongs to organizations who are willing to experiment around their community engagement and to volunteer leaders and executives who are willing to lead change.

And I think those organizations that are willing to step out and be brave, they’re gonna be the winners in the end. So. That’s my lesson number 10. The future of of volunteerism is braver than the past. I really do think we’re stepping into a new era of volunteerism, and I think many of you are stepping up to meet the moment, doing the best you can with what you’ve been given.

And I think if we can continue to be brave about what’s needed, both for ourselves. In terms of the resources needed to actually, in real world terms, engage volunteers for our missions and also that we are able to be brave about what volunteers need and to be solid advocates and to co-create with them.

I just think the world can open up for us. So as we look forward to the next chapter of the Volunteer Nation podcast, I’m pretty excited. I’m excited to keep amplifying voices. I’m excited to keep exploring what’s next. I’m excited to keep supporting you as a volunteer involving organization and professional, and if you’ve listened to one episode or all 200, I just want to say thank you.

This podcast exists be because of you and would not exist if you weren’t there. So thank you for supporting The leap of faith. Certainly was was nothing when I started. There was no, it was an idea in my mind that took me about two years to get off the fence and make happen because I was so honestly freaked out about doing it.

And it’s just such a labor of love. It’s not always easy to put out a podcast every week, but we do it because it’s important. It’s important to have that consistency. It’s important for you to have new ideas, and it’s important for you to feel like you, you’re not alone. So before we wrap up, I’d love to hear from you post in the comments, which episode of the past 200 has impacted you most?

What lesson that I shared today resonated the most with you? And what do you wanna hear next on the pod? I would love to hear from you just a post in the comments. What do you wanna hear next? ’cause we can figure out how to make it happen on this podcast. Share this podcast, an episode with a colleague.

Leave a review or reach out. I read. Every message. Here’s to 200 episodes of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, and to the volunteer leaders and organizations who are building community each and every single day around the world. We are more alike than different. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next week.

Same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Bye everybody.