Written by James McBryan Part-Time Volunteer Coordinator — someone who is leading a volunteer organization but not as their full time job. Maybe you’re a busy professional who is volunteering on a board, or a parent helping your children’s school or youth sports program, or maybe you’re retired and you want to enjoy life while also giving back. Or perhaps you're a nonprofit professional or executive director, but you have to take on this role from time to time. Either way, you’re a part-time volunteer coordinator and you want to do this job fast and right because you have other things to do. This blog was created for you.
My name is James McBryan and I'm the founder of Track it Forward. I'm also a part-time volunteer coordinator. I’ve led over 11 different volunteer organizations and talked with hundreds more every year as they sign up for Track it Forward. And no matter how much experience I get doing this, every single batch of volunteers is different, and to do a good job as a coordinator I always need to come back to the fundamentals.
As working professionals, the ways in which we incentivize employees is simply different than how we incentivize volunteers. When situations get stressful and things need to get done by a deadline, it’s crunch time. But that can’t happen with volunteers. If employees don’t do their jobs, they get reprimanded, but if you take same approach with volunteers, they’ll probably split. In some ways, business managers should actually take a cue on how to treat their employees as if they were volunteers, however that’s not the world we live in and a lot of your practices need to be updated.
This blog is meant to take what’s common practice in the business world and translate it into something that will work with volunteers. I hope to produce a new article every 2 weeks and actively respond to your comments below. I want to hear your questions, your struggles, and I hope to weigh in and give any advice I can. It’s easy to feel like we’re living in silos because we’re just too busy to look up, but you’re not alone. We can do this together.