5 Tips for Leading A Volunteer Project

Leading a volunteer-run project takes excellent leadership skills. Volunteers usually agree to participate in such a project because they want to be useful, want to connect with other volunteers on the team, or want to learn new skills. If something else takes higher priority in their lives, or they dislike the leadership of the team, they leave.

1. Plan your objective, time-frame, staffing, financial and equipment needs carefully, in advance.
If you ask team members to bring equipment or supplies, make sure what you request will be needed. They may have purchased something especially for this project. Carefully determine how many volunteers you will need, and what skills they should have, if any. For example, do you need someone with excellent skills in carpentry, baking, or writing? Announce the necessary number of volunteers and specific skills that will be needed in your request for volunteers. If your project is one that is suitable for families, are you prepared to include children of various ages in the work you are doing so they feel needed? Do not assume the parents will have brought toys for little ones to keep them busy, for example. If children under a certain age should not be there, for safety or other reasons, state that ahead of time.

2. If your team will work together only once, for a short time, how will you divide the work to keep all the volunteers busy, preferably all or most of the time? As leader of the team, use your expertise to keep others involved, in addition to doing some of the actual tasks yourself. Think of yourself as a juggler, keeping all the people busy simultaneously while also keeping everything on schedule. Look around often and see who is standing around doing nothing; find a task that person can do.  If a volunteer is bored, often he will think of other things he would rather be doing - and he will regard this time as wasted.

3. If your team will work together over a long period of time, ask each person to complete a volunteer information form beforehand. Find out if the person likes to complete short term projects which have a sense of closure, is detail-oriented, wants to learn new skills and has a special interest that might fit into the project, likes to do a small amount of volunteer work regularly, or can help but only during certain time periods, for example. Each of those types of volunteers can be invaluable - if you know their needs in advance.

4. Some volunteers get involved to seek recognition and praise. Frequent public or private praise, depending on what they prefer, is easy to offer. (If in doubt, praise them publicly.) For example, have a "volunteer of the week or month", and specify what the person did that was terrific! Possibly you can give them a small token of the group's appreciation, such as a gift card to a local coffee-shop, if that is appropriate, as well as a letter of thanks.

5.  If you are likely to need more volunteers, ask your current ones first what they most enjoy about doing this work. With their permission, use quotes from them as part of your strategy to recruit new volunteers via fliers or online. Also ask current volunteers if they know of someone they would enjoy having on the team. Either they or you can contact the person.

Business Speech Improvement offers training in executive communication skills, as well as an economical  e-book on this.  "Executive Communication Strategies" is a 21 page e-book concisely covering 18 different communication techniques for leadership. It's a book you will wish your boss had read! Click here to get it.