Leader's Insight: What Volunteers Want

Like many volunteers, I spend most of my week in the marketplace, pleasing several masters: bosses, customers, employees. Those stakeholders have values different from mine. If my workday thoughts appeared in over my head in a cartoon bubble, you would read, “I can’t wait to do something that really matters with people I love and with whom I share a common cause.”

If you are looking for volunteers, you should be salivating as you read those thoughts. People with those thoughts are ripe for volunteer work, on a few conditions.

1. Give me a clear, compelling purpose.

Happy volunteers are crystal clear on their ministry’s purpose. They can tell you not only why their group exists, but also why that cause is important. For an important cause, they will give selflessly, and thank you for it.

As Andy Stanley said recently in a talk on vision, volunteers want answers to three big questions: (1) What is the problem? (2) What is the solution? (3) Why are we the ones to solve it now? Answer those questions clearly, and people will volunteer for all manner of tasks.

2. Involve me as much as possible.

This principle is counter-intuitive, but miss it and you’ll drive volunteers nuts. On one hand, volunteers are busy and juggling multiple priorities. On the other hand, we desperately want to have input into the direction and execution of the ministry. Simply donating funds or executing staff-made plans fail to excite long-term motivation.

A large parachurch ministry recently asked me to provide training for their staff fundraisers. I have supported the organization financially, but after interacting with these committed servants, I was ready to give more, serve more, and tell more friends about it.

By allowing me to use my talents, they had converted me from ordinary donor to impassioned supporter. They can now unapologetically ask for the best of my time and talents to strengthen the ministry.

3. Celebrate moments by creating traditions.

A couple of years ago, we got to the end of our ministry season and I wanted to hold our monthly volunteer meeting near a lake. I decided to do a take-off on the foot-washing story; we gave each leader a servant’s towel and, as a group, affirmed some way that they had imitated Jesus’ service. Dry eyes were at a premium as we soaked in the affirmation of God and our peers.

The next year, with the same result, we decided to make the towel-affirmation a tradition. It allows us to underline core values and say the positive words that often go unspoken. And it speaks to the desire of volunteers—consistent relational investment punctuated by meaningful moments.

4. Don’t waste my time.

Remember, our volunteers want to contribute. They see their unpaid work as a wonderful way to build meaning and purpose into life. And they evaluate every meeting, e-mail, and phone call to see if it adds meaning. If not, they will withdraw and allocate their time elsewhere.

Our volunteers develop a sensitive nose for the hopelessly under-resourced project. Nothing leads to the starving of projects more predictably than a failure to regularly prune the ministry project list.

As a leader, I find that I need a “stop doing” list at least as much as a “to do” list. Otherwise, I simply confuse and frustrate my volunteers.

5. Stop the ball-hogging.

Any ball player knows how little fun it is to play with a ball hog. What that player is silently communicating is that he doesn’t trust you to do something good with the ball. And eventually, you just want to sit down. How often do we really entrust our volunteers with doing the most important part of ministry?

I remember a pivotal meeting we had when I was on church staff. We had always made a big deal of small groups in our discussions of life-change strategy. But as we sat in a conference room, we realized we had been kidding ourselves.

We had two large programs a week on everyone’s schedule, complete with music, drama, and creative messages. But small groups had to find a way to fit into everyone’s schedules in the corners and cracks.

In the end, we decided to give our small group leaders, almost entirely volunteers, the ball. It was far from easy, but it was an important statement.

Ted Harro is a volunteer ministry leader at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. The full article appears in the Spring issue of Leadership and on our website, LeadershipJournal.net.

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