by Larry Ullian
Recently I helped implement a program for VISTA and AmeriCorps volunteers. The workshop’s purpose was to help the volunteers prepare for the next occupational phase of their lives. They were supposed to practice selection interviewing in scenarios where they were to act as both interviewers in one scenario and as the applicant in another. One of the volunteers was a young woman (they were ALL young from my advancing perspective!) who had been assigned to a hospital where she was supposed to be functioning as the volunteer coordinator. When I asked her if she had gotten any orientation or training for the position, she replied no she hadn’t; she was learning as she went along. Many of us know this method…it’s the immersion technique where you jump in and see if you can stay afloat and maybe even get to the shores of at least, minimal competence.
This is no criticism of the young woman who was bright and committed to doing her best. Instead, I’m writing about a profession that thinks so little of itself that it could actually assume that a young and inexperienced person could actually understand the complexity of the organization’s structure, culture, and history, not to mention the interpersonal complexity of recruiting and supervising mostly older volunteers.
Is volunteer management so marginalized that anyone can do it just by walking in off the street? No educational or experiential preparation at all? How does this square with the effort to professionalize a field that’s going to become increasingly important as more and more boomers choose to volunteer at non-profit organizations (NPOs) who are just beginning to realize that they will need volunteers as their budgets are threatened by increased competition for fewer and fewer dollars? How, on the one hand, can we expect to revise and strengthen the standards of volunteer management if anyone can do it just by being appointed or assigned or asked to fill the position?
Among other things, maybe by a public education campaign to sensitize and educate the public and the NPOs to the need for educated, experienced volunteer managers who are crucial to their desire to achieving success on behalf of the vulnerable populations they serve.
Larry Ullian is Director of Program Development at USM‘s Muskie School of Public Service.
