What are the best practices for managing volunteers in Higher Education?

This step, often overlooked by many, is absolutely crucial. Instead of hastily recruiting volunteers and diving into tasks, it's vital to first define their roles to avoid miscommunication. Consider factors like the expected availability of volunteers and the specific skills you're seeking. This ensures a clear understanding from the get-go.

Effective management of volunteers in higher education involves clear communication, role definition, and recognition. Provide detailed orientation to align volunteers with institutional goals. Foster a sense of community through regular meetings and updates. Recognize their contributions publicly to boost morale and retention. Utilize technology for efficient scheduling and communication. For example, Stanford University's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program involves student volunteers providing tax assistance to low-income community members. Stanford ensures comprehensive training, clear role delineation, and recognizes volunteers through awards, fostering a positive and impactful volunteer experience.

Something that has always helped me in managing volunteers is understanding what needs to be done, and then identifying what areas the volunteers want to develop skills in and assigning them to tasks that help them do that! They are often a lot more motivated to do something they are excited by :)

While its commendable that people wish to volunteer for whatever the cause or organisation, communication as in most aspects of life, is the absolute key! There should be clear objectives & logical planning. The volunteers need to be assessed as to their skill sets & their availability & any previous experience in the same area. Be aware of cultural diversities & possible misunderstandings. Correct & comprehensive training must be undertaken before they embark on the actual voluntary work. Be sure to praise & compliment the volunteers for their diligence, you may have need of their assistance in the future. Listen to feedback from the volunteers, it could be vital when contemplating similar projects again!

Understand their motivations and encourage them to have mentors. Every volunteer comes to a higher education institution with personal motives. Usually, these motives are shaped by gaining experience, enhancing their CV, and career growth. However, some of them might not directly reveal these motivations. Mentors will help volunteers focus on their motivations while contributing greatly to the mission and vision of the higher education institution.

It is a given that volunteers do not know what needs to be done and how to go about doing it. Therefore, elaborate on the tasks at hand and how to complete them. That isn't enough though. You have to provide training and support. Planning is the key to success. Always remember that any volunteer needs your ample help to get the job done. Also, recognize their effort generously.

In addition to creating good and clear communication channels with the volunteers, clear expectations must be coordinated. Volunteers are an important population and can be of great help. However, their free time is limited. Because of this, a clear coordination of expectations must be established between the volunteer and the person who manages the volunteers in the organization

La comunicación efectiva es esencial en la gestión de voluntarios. Es clave adaptar los métodos comunicativos a sus preferencias, como usar redes sociales para actualizaciones o videollamadas para capacitación. Escuchar sus preocupaciones y sugerencias es tan importante como reconocer sus logros. Mantener una comunicación respetuosa, transparente y coherente refuerza la relación y refleja los valores de la institución. Así, se construye un ambiente de confianza y colaboración.

Get to know the interests and special skills of the volunteers, before planning to assign a task to them. They need all the resources and assistance from the institution to complete the assigned task. Once the task is completed, acknowledge the contribution and keep them in the loop on any further action on their report.

Context is everything. Having worked with high-powered, highly motivated, and committed alumni for years, I can say that while training on mission, vision, and goals (which volunteers can learn from the website) is certainly important, training on the nuances of campus culture, social norms, and relationship development and management (which they can't learn from the website) is an additional critical piece in helping them truly understand the full context of the work and how they can support it.

Creating standard operating procedures and encouraging your experienced volunteers to be involved in training new or inexperienced volunteers can assist with maintaining standards and ensuring high quality efforts.

In addition to providing training and support, make sure you match volunteers with appropriate tasks. If you put a 16 year old volunteer in charge of marketing, they might not take the task seriously and, if they do, they’ll probably only market to young people. In this example, a board member who works in an advertising firm would be more appropriate—although, you’d probably be best hiring this particular task out!

Without good training and support to meet needs, volunteers may not have the requisite skills or tools to be effective. Mentoring volunteers often done well by a successful veteran volunteer.

Without good training and support to meet needs, volunteers may not have the requisite skills or tools to be effective. Mentoring volunteers often done well by a successful veteran volunteer.

I am the longest serving head of a Provincial Heritage Organization with a focus on Black History in Canada. As such I was a volunteer and headed both volunteers and paid staff. What I believe is crucial is making the work itself its own reward, knowing the value that your work does & why it is important, trying to monitor and assess impact. Rewards help to affirm a commitment that already needs to be there in the form of a persistence to meet or surpass the mandate of the organization. Create times to affirm, recognize, honour and celebrate your volunteers. Listen to them, make them feel heard and appreciated. Celebrate with them and act on their suggestions where possible.

The most impactful rewards: 1.) Increase volunteers' skillsets, 2.) Provide advantages in their professional pursuits, 3.) Create a pipeline for employment in higher education or with institutional partners, 4.) Enhance volunteers' professional networking, 5.) Provide an avenue for being added as authors to professional publishing pursuits, 6.) Enhance leadership skills for a professional edge, 7.) Are formalized through advanced certifications, 8.) And can be easily identified by outside professional organizations via formal, authenticated badges on professional networking sites.

Stories are impactful. What do your volunteers see as success; let them share their stories with you and other volunteers. Celebrate the small and large wins. If your volunteers work for a big annual event having a celebration when you are done. Shoutouts in shared social media and communication platforms. Encourage the connection with one another and the organization.

Volunteers basic conceptual understanding, of the institution they serve, must be provided. This is required, to enable them to grasp some basic understanding, of their mobility and limitations, wherever and whenever appropriate. Cross cultural communication, provide the synergy to both formal/informal communications. As a newcomer, there is a tendency for them, to have an ethnocentric, eurocentric and egocentric (EEE) overview of the institution, which could be avoided, at the earliest. To ensuring that a harmonious culture prevails, for the benefit of their duration of short/long term stay, provide positive reinforcement and profile their individual performance, to enhance their potential and much anticipated productivity achievement.

Providing rewards for individual achievement, goes along way, towards enhancing the individual populace success stories. Managing cultural diversity via giving rewards, provides the synergy for uplifting quality standards and learning outcome. Appraise performance by measuring input, with the daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly output. In this way, there is a transparent, accountable and smooth flow of gauging productivity and performance simultaneously.

The greatest improvements come from those doing the work. By connecting with your volunteers, you can find new ways to further your mission. There is always room for improvement - your volunteers can tell you how!

Evaluar y mejorar constantemente el programa de voluntariado es vital. Recolectar y analizar datos y comentarios de voluntarios, personal y stakeholders es clave para medir el impacto y eficacia del programa. Identificar fortalezas, debilidades, oportunidades y desafíos permite realizar ajustes necesarios. Es esencial actualizar roles, políticas y métodos de capacitación, y expandir el reconocimiento. Compartir resultados y acciones con los voluntarios e involucrarlos en el proceso de mejora refuerza su compromiso y enriquece el programa. La retroalimentación continua no solo mejora la experiencia del voluntariado, sino que también asegura que el programa evolucione y se mantenga relevante y efectivo.

Remember that lower-order-thinking skills ("grunt work") are best incentivized through external rewards while higher-order-thinking skills ("fostering talent") are best rewarded through creativity and volitional, interest-based joy... intellectual play. Dan Pink has a famous 2009 TED Talk titled "The Puzzle of Motivation" that sheds more light on this concept. Therefore, we must identify what kind of volunteerism meets our aims before advertising, solicitation, and incentivization planning.

Many volunteers do so for personal and professional development. Discussing this at the outset allows you to understand their motivation and helps set clear goals and responsibility growth targets for them. Presuming volunteers to be 'grunts' will often be self-fulfilling. For best practice treat all adults working with you as peers. In my teaching practice I've had doctors, solicitors, engineers, firemen, counsellors and linguistic experts as volunteers. None had teaching experience and some were looking to further develop their own language skills. In their own fields, all were qualified and many of their skills were transferable. It just needed some encouragement and professional respect to push the process along.

In your communications and thank you’s, communicate to the volunteer how their efforts contributed to the organization’s key goals. This builds connection between the volunteer and the organization and helps volunteers realize the larger impact of their efforts.

I think creating a community with volunteers is beneficial if possible. Working with students some of them volunteer because they want to find a community at their institution and when you have a strong community with volunteers they tend to feel more comfortable giving suggestions and feel empowered in their work. It also tends to lead to mentorship opportunities within this volunteer group.