BUSI 409 Week 3 Discussion Board Forum 2 Thread Example

Discussion Board Forum 2 Thread: Managing Staff and Volunteers

BUSI 409 Nonprofit Management and Governance, Discussion Board Forum 2 Thread

Thread by [Student Name]

The forum prompt and the food bank example are composites; the textbook, research and Scripture cited are real, and textbook locations are given by chapter because page numbers differ between printings.

Volunteers stay with a nonprofit when the organization manages them as deliberately as it manages paid staff; treating volunteers as free labor is the surest way to lose them.

Worth (2017), in Chapter 9, describes volunteers as a major part of the nonprofit workforce and emphasizes that effective volunteer programs require the same basic management practices as paid staff: clear roles, recruitment, orientation and training, supervision, evaluation and recognition. He also notes that volunteers are motivated by different things, some by altruism, some by social connection, some by building skills, and that organizations do best when they match roles to those motives.

Research supports this view. A review of studies (Studer & von Schnurbein, 2013) examined research on volunteer coordination and found that organizational factors, including the practices used to recruit, train and support volunteers, the organization's values and culture, and the structures that integrate volunteers with paid staff, shaped volunteers' satisfaction, commitment and intention to stay. Volunteers give their time freely, but they do not give it unconditionally. An organization that leaves volunteers waiting with nothing to do, or that never thanks them, teaches them their time is not valued. The relationship between volunteers and paid staff matters too. When staff see volunteers as a burden to supervise, volunteers sense it; when staff are trained to work alongside volunteers and are given time to do so, both groups tend to stay longer.

Consider the food bank. On Saturday mornings, dozens of volunteers sort donations, but turnover is high, and the volunteer coordinator spends much of the week recruiting replacements. A deliberate plan would include a short interview to learn each volunteer's interests, so that a retired accountant might help with inventory records while a college student leads a sorting team; a brief orientation that explains how the morning's work feeds families in specific neighborhoods; a shift leader who checks in with new volunteers; and a simple recognition practice, such as sharing the number of meals provided each month. Worth (2017), in Chapter 7, adds that building such systems is a form of capacity building that makes the whole organization stronger.

The biblical application is that each person has a gift to contribute. Peter instructs believers that as each has received a gift, they should use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Peter 4:10). A nonprofit that learns what each volunteer can offer and places them accordingly honors that principle. It treats volunteers as people with gifts, not as interchangeable hands, and it helps them experience the satisfaction of serving well. Stewardship applies to the organization too: volunteers' hours are a gift to the mission, and wasting them is poor stewardship.

Managed this way, volunteers are not only a cost saving but a source of skill, community connection and future donors. Many people who first come to sort cans become monthly givers, board members or advocates for the food bank in the community, so a volunteer program is also one of the organization's best long-term investments in its own future.

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Studer, S., & von Schnurbein, G. (2013). Organizational factors affecting volunteers: A literature review on volunteer coordination. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 24(2), 403-440. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-012-9268-y

Worth, M. J. (2017). Nonprofit management: Principles and practice (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.