Becoming a volunteer manager might be the next step when you want to increase your involvement with your organization. With several responsibilities and required skills, volunteer managers connect nonprofit leadership and decision-makers with the individuals working on projects and campaigns.
Volunteer Manager Responsibilities
Volunteer managers are essential individuals in ensuring organization functionality. Regular volunteer manager duties include interacting with individuals and teams of volunteers and other nonprofit leaders. Understanding what to expect when holding this position can help you identify how you might be a good fit.
Some tasks expected of a volunteer manager include:
- Organizing volunteer operations: A volunteer coordinator will work closely with your volunteers. They’ll help assess volunteer skills and assign individuals to specific projects and tasks. Regular interactions with volunteers will allow them to understand their strengths and weaknesses to optimize volunteer time and resources.
- Scheduling volunteer shifts: Campaign and project success require the correct number of people working. A volunteer program manager is responsible for assessing project needs and ensuring they have enough people to complete it on schedule.
- Recruiting and training volunteers: When organizations or projects need more volunteers, the volunteer manager is responsible for bringing on new volunteers with the right skills. They will sort through applicants, onboard new team members and provide them with the proper training and resources to ensure their success.
- Creating essential volunteer resources: Volunteers require several resources and tools to help them become more independent. When they can find answers to common problems independently, volunteer managers can focus their efforts on other essential tasks. Some resources might be training modules, volunteer manuals, and handbooks.
- Reporting volunteer data: Nonprofit organizations and decision-makers need information about their volunteers to create budgets, allocate resources, and plan future campaigns. Managers collect data about their teams to pass along to executives. Data might include those from volunteer satisfaction surveys, efficiency averages, retention rates, and resource use.
- Working with other managers and planners: Volunteer managers must work with other organizations’ leaders. They might have to coordinate with other volunteer managers to organize and unite volunteer teams for one purpose. Managers must also help allocate resources, understand campaign goals and identify progress.
With so many essential responsibilities, volunteer managers help maintain daily tasks and volunteer retention. Understanding their daily and annual duties can help candidates better predict their expectations and determine if this position is right for them.
7 Signs You’d Be a Good Volunteer Manager
What makes a good volunteer manager? The following seven signs are good indicators that you have the right skills and experience to manage volunteers for your organization.
1. You Have Strong Leadership Skills
Volunteer managers need to be great leaders. Because they direct, organize and help volunteers, they need to know how to delegate resources and facilitate growth. They should also be a good example for their teams, showing with their actions the values and skills required to be a good volunteer.
In a leadership position, volunteer managers also need to know when to let go and relinquish control. Volunteers can solve some problems themselves and managers can streamline others by handing off questions to other leaders.
2. You Have Great Communication Skills
Volunteer management involves relaying information in several ways to volunteer teams and leadership. Good volunteer managers must communicate with others in several settings, tones, and formats.
They might have to attend meetings with leadership teams to understand campaign direction and objectives. They assess volunteer performance and provide in-person and written feedback on strengths and weaknesses. They will regularly write and send emails and newsletters to volunteers to keep them informed about the organization’s progress and impact.
Volunteer managers will also need to be good listeners. They are excellent resources for their volunteers, giving them a place to come with their questions, problems, concerns, and feedback.
3. You Have Strong Intuition
Volunteer managers must have good judgment and sound decision-making skills, especially about people. They should be able to quickly assess skillsets and strengths to determine where individuals would be most beneficial. While many aspects of the job involve planning, good intuition allows volunteer managers to make quality calls in the moment for increased efficiency and resource use.
Alternatively, good judgment and intuition help volunteer managers recognize when something isn’t working and needs changing. They can quickly assess what might be causing the problem and where the organization might better use resources. For example, they might see that a volunteer isn’t the best fit for a specific position, but their skills can be of better use in another. The volunteer can still help and might even feel better about their contribution.
4. You Respect Others
Respect is essential when building relationships, especially with volunteers. Volunteer managers should be inviting and understanding with their teams and individuals. These people are willingly giving their time and effort to the organization. Volunteer managers can respect their contributions by considering various accommodations and needs.
5. You Are Committed and Passionate About Your Work
Volunteer managers can inspire and motivate their volunteers with their attitude. Passion, enthusiasm and positivity can spread through teams, starting with volunteer managers and impacting how volunteers view their work and influence. A good mindset can help teams reach goals and approach more projects.
Commitment is another essential element in nonprofit work. Many goals and objectives are long-term, making it challenging for many volunteers and funders to see how their actions fit into the big-picture. Volunteer managers can inspire faith by tying operations into larger schemes and helping maintain existing volunteers.
6. You Have Great Organizational Skills
From working on multiple projects to handling various resources, volunteer managers have to track their resources and teams as they move and work. Excellent organizational skills enable volunteer managers to develop more substantial plans that reflect available and required resources.
7. You Value and Appreciate Volunteers
Volunteers are powerful resources. Their hard work and dedication drive nonprofit success and enable them to reach targets and objectives on small and large scales. Because volunteer managers work closely with volunteers, they can show how much their effort means to organizations through appreciation efforts. Spotlights, events and emails can be great ways for managers and leaders to thank their volunteers.
Volunteer managers are responsible for providing volunteers with praise and positive feedback on projects and events. Their input can help volunteers understand and identify their strengths, so they can discover new ways to help the organization and grow their skills.
Optimize Volunteer Management With Volgistics
When volunteer managers have so many responsibilities, having the right tools available can streamline their operations, so they can focus more time on working with volunteers directly. Volgistics makes it easy to manage volunteer information and procedures.
The Volunteer Database Management stores and organizes volunteer information, including groups. Volgistics is a web-based solution, so your volunteer managers can access essential data from any location or device, allowing them to make sound judgment calls. Its intuitive features help increase efficiency, and when volunteer managers need more people involved, the Recruiting tools can streamline application and screening processes.
Request a free trial today and discover how Volgistics can improve volunteer management operations.