Organizations who want to keep their volunteers need to learn how to party more.
Brenda Robinson, who conducts leadership workshops, told the Growing Rural Tourism conference in Camrose that celebrating people is what volunteering is all about.
“I have never heard anyone say they joined an agricultural society because they had a balanced budget, or were efficient,” she said.
“We just need to party more and quit waiting for people to leave to party and quit waiting for volunteer appreciation to say thank you.”
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She said people used to volunteer out of a sense of duty. Now, organizations need to make volunteering fun if they want to attract and keep their volunteers.
“People aren’t feeling quite as dutiful.”
Robinson said younger volunteers are also interested in hearing more feedback. The era of ‘no news is good news’ is long gone.
“How will they know if they are doing good if we don’t celebrate these.”
She said feedback shouldn’t be limited to the annual performance review or volunteer party. Instead, organizations need to recognize small accomplishments achieved throughout the year.
“If there was more feedback to more people in more ways, we would have more volunteers to celebrate.”
For example, celebrate a project several times during its progress instead of once at the end.
“In the volunteering world, we’d get them all to the project if we celebrated along the way,” she said. “When people don’t feel their help is valuable, they don’t feel celebrated.”
Robinson asked conference participants if they had ever caught themselves repeating these sayings:
• if you need it done right, I’ll do it myself;
• if I don’t do it, no one will;
• by the time I show someone how to do it, I could have had it done;
• why is it always the same people doing the same work all the time?
She said organizations that rely on volunteers can’t afford to be territorial about positions or jobs or worry about how it’s done.
