“I Fired a Volunteer”

"I fired a volunteer," he said to me. "Can you believe I had to do this?"

"Yes," I said. "I did it before. It is tough to do but necessary."

At a local nonprofit meeting, the staff leader asked their supporters for help. An event was on the calendar, and they didn't have enough full-time staff available to cover it. They asked for a volunteer to lead it. My friend raised his hand and stepped up.

Once the lead volunteer position was filled, other people raised their hands to help. Within a couple of minutes, the event volunteer team was staffed. All was well, and everyone was committed to getting the event done until exceptions started to arise. This tested the resolve of some of the volunteers. Because of schedule conflicts and other priorities in their lives, these volunteers did not get their jobs done.

The buck stops with the lead volunteer.

My friend first tried to chase these people down. Maybe they were doing their assigned work and were just slow to get back to my friend. This took time because they were generally unresponsive. My friend told me, "If they would have told me they changed their mind and wanted to un-volunteer, I could have gotten someone else to do it." Because of this delay, the work all fell on my friend. He had to change all his priorities to make good on his commitment. He did and the event went off without a hitch.

When my friend and I ran into each other, this volunteer leadership experience was top of mind. I sat there and just listened as he vented. He said things like, "I know people want to help. That's nice. But they need to make good on their commitments. What's wrong with these people?"

"Nothing," I said. "This was a miss on your part."

The first time I had to fire a volunteer was in June of 1995. That was the year I volunteered to lead the Business and Technology Alliance's High Tech Month of Georgia. It was a big undertaking, but I had asked a close group of friends who were tech leaders to join me.

As the event date became closer, we moved from planning to execution. The one person I had to fire started showing his cards early. He missed a planning meeting here and there but always had a good excuse. The execution phase landed heavy on all of us and our individual schedules. And that's when this guy went dark on me.

I did just what my friend did as a first step. I tried to chase him down and find out what was up. After a lost week, I found him. His answer to me was simply, "I just don't have the time to do this."

And that's when I told him, "You're fired!"

The next time our volunteer team got together, I told them what happened. Then I asked for a volunteer to take on this guy’s responsibilities. Someone did, and it all worked out well.

Over the years I developed some best practices as a lead volunteer.

1. Understand the mission and values of the organization you represent.

2. Be aware, in your dealings with volunteers and vendors, you represent the organization.

3. Define the work that needs to be done, including budget, due-dates, and the success measurements. This is what you are signing up for.

4. Evaluate the work to be distributed and determine if the volunteer team is qualified to do the work.

5. Share the plan, including the work, with your volunteer team.

6. Distribute the work to individual (qualified) volunteers.

7. Get with each volunteer, one on one, face to face, and verify they understand their responsibilities and deliverables. Gain their personal commitment to do it. (This is where I missed as a leader. I just assumed because he volunteered he would do the work assigned. He didn't understand his time commitment.)

8. Conduct a regularly scheduled status meeting where each team member reports on their work. This keeps everyone committed as this meeting reinforces the concept of a team effort.

9. Conduct a concluding meeting where each volunteer lists what they learned from doing this volunteer work. Document these comments for the next volunteer leader.

10. Celebrate and give a small gift to each of your volunteers to show your appreciation.

Yep. It took a long time to learn these best practices as a lead volunteer. And looking at the list, I still don't do all these steps. And that causes me to work harder than I need to.

But you understand. I just don't have the time. I have other priorities, you know!