Without YOU, WE wouldn’t exist!
- A very dramatic statement, but one which rings true for so many charities. For any non-profit making organisation, volunteers play a vital role in achieving necessary funding, goals and targets. Quite simply, without volunteers, the organisation and its purpose would not survive. Without volunteers, your charity would not exist.
Volunteers play an essential part in representing the ‘grassroots’ of the organisation. They are relied upon to spread the word of the organisation and to cascade crucial information to both the customer and the extended volunteer community. They are expected to convey the charity mantra with consistency, drive and enthusiasm, whilst sometimes working in isolation throughout the country (or the world for that matter!) in retail outlets or satellite offices.
In order to encourage, motivate and empower the volunteer, it is imperative that they are made constantly aware that their role provides a vital link to the charity and that they have an essential part to play in its success, growth and development.
Nevertheless we too often see that volunteers are left without the essential communication tools to do the job properly, and as a consequence are unable to take ownership of their role within the organisation. Without effective communication, inconsistencies may weaken or contradict the brand message and ethos of the charity – so, just how do you communicate with volunteers to inspire them to maintain their enthusiasm and brand passion?
Well, primarily it’s important that any internal message is rolled out in a clear and consistent manner. Key messages, whether motivational or administrative, should be easily picked up and understood. Consistency is key to the strength and longevity of any communication to a far-reaching and disparate audience and it’s therefore vital that the message remains constant for both volunteers and staff, even though the delivery method may vary according to the roles and channels open to the audience. A fixed format communication is important to reduce the ‘noise’ and ‘Chinese whispers’ effect. It’s also important to produce controlled and consistent messages aligned with other volunteers and staff.
So often, new initiatives are given time and resources but are then shelved and forgotten. We encourage clients to take a more ‘drip, drip’ approach to their communications, as we have found that constant reinforcement of messages proves to be much more effective and cost efficient.
Communications to your volunteers should be engaging, creative and varied. A hastily-written email or a magazine produced to communicate to a range of audiences is so often uninspiring to the volunteer. Volunteers are special, so treat them as such by producing messages specifically targeted to them in order to emphasise their importance.
Communications between you and your volunteers should be - wherever possible - two-way. In our experience, the language used to communicate with your volunteers can often sound ‘dictated to’ and not ‘listened to’. Disillusionment amongst your volunteers can bring about the loss of very valuable, customer-facing support, so volunteer feedback should be encouraged, valued and reacted to – therefore signifying a desire from the organisation to listen to views, concerns and advice. Volunteers should also be allowed to have some say in any decisions that are made – after all, many of them are on the organisation’s front line and have valuable knowledge of ‘the customer’.
As a consequence of your demonstrating how much your volunteer contribution is valued, an element of ownership will be created on the part of the volunteer, and this starts what we like to call the ‘Pride Effect’. We have seen this work successfully throughout organisations, and have seen communication channels grow as employees are encouraged to provide their own input into messages.
The Pride Effect is something that needs to be sustained and carried forward. It shouldn’t exist purely within the lifespan of a single project but should be built on project-by-project, gaining momentum as it goes along. No big display, but a drip, drip effect – which has a regard for your budget throughout the year.
Pride Effect Definition:
Volunteer Ownership
Volunteer Contribution
Volunteer Recognition
Peer-to-peer communication to share best practice together with ‘top tips’, should be encouraged and allowed to thrive. As a result, new communication channels can be created to allow peer-to-peer information to feedback to HQ, thereby giving you an insight into your volunteers which in turn will help you to develop and build future communications based on your understanding of your valuable volunteers.
Without them, you wouldn’t exist!
Vicky Fagan and Deryck Jones
Fagan Communications Ltd.
www.fagancomms.com