Volunteers are juggling conflicting priorities. How can you ensure project progress isn't compromised?

To ensure project progress isn't compromised when volunteers are juggling conflicting priorities, start by clearly defining roles and responsibilities, ensuring each volunteer understands their specific tasks. Create a flexible but structured schedule that accommodates their availability, and use project management tools to track progress and deadlines. Prioritize tasks and focus on the most critical activities to keep the project on track. Regularly communicate with volunteers to understand their challenges and adjust plans as needed. Provide support and resources to help them manage their workload effectively. Recognize and appreciate their efforts to maintain motivation and engagement.

It helps if everyone focuses on the next project coming up. Sometimes people are more involved with different projects and so getting everyone to focus on the one that’s coming up next can be very refreshing . You say things like “we’re gonna talk about that when we have time today we’re getting this project done :)

Juggling conflicting priorities, to me, is not limited to volunteers. It is likely to occur in any task situation. Yes, if it is your paid employee you have more control of team members’ time. But conflicting priorities will occur among paid and volunteer team members. When it comes to volunteers I think the person interviewing/ supervising the volunteer, needs at the outset, to be clear how much time and when the volunteer can commit, and needs to keep that in mind when doling out assignments. And the volunteer needs to be and feel empowered to remind the leader of availability when the leader has that lapse in memory.

The overall person responsible for volunteer recruitment and supervision needs to be aware of the volunteer availability. The volunteer needs to let the supervisor know when availability changes and the volunteer supervisor needs to remind people working with the volunteer of the volunteer’s other commitments.

Always better to over communicate Don’t want to be in the dark or cut off guard Communication is extremely important and deadlines are met

Effective communication is importantly period. Everyone needs to know, that is, the volunteer, the paid team members, and other stakeholders. Do not make the mistake of thinking “ they are volunteers, and take them for granted”. All team members paid and volunteer are important and need to know.

Honestly, this is silly. This advice is equally important for volunteers and paid team members. By my way of thinking, all team members are important, be they paid or volunteer. They need tools and training, respect and recognition, supervision and timely communication.

You can’t do everything, especially as a small or grassroots nonprofit with limited time and resources. Smaller organizations can often fall into a trap of being responsive vs proactive. A great way to get out of this is to define a clear strategy with achievable and measurable goals, and to make incremental progress. It’s often paralyzing to try and do everything, and when faced with limited time, resources, and capacity it quickly becomes even more overwhelming and not motivating. Have a defined strategy, set feasible short, medium, and long term set, and take bite sized actions to move in the direction aligned with your organization’s mission, vision, and priorities.