The Magic One-Question Needs Assessment for Volunteers

Last week I saw Mary Lee Sale present at the annual conference of the National 4-H Agents and Youth Development Professionals, and she fired up the room to assess volunteer needs in our County 4-H programs.

The challenges facing a volunteer base in a County 4-H program felt universal in our room, with issues such as:

• No new volunteers stepping forward to be trained
• Groups self-segregating into silos and not interacting
• Low participation and overall lack of engagement

Mary re-energized her County program by starting with an assessment of volunteers, asking a deceptively simply question: What do you need?

Of course, once answers start coming in, that's where the real work begins. Once volunteers reply (in-person with physical whiteboard, or perhaps virtually with a survey tool like Qualtrics or an interactive platform like JamBoard), the work begins!

Extension professionals can and should review this data, prioritize it, and work to address it.

Simple? Maybe. Easy? Of course not. But starting from this clear question caused a positive shift in one County program, and I believe Mary's model for success can work in many other programs.

That's the crux of volunteer assessment right? What do you need.