Volunteering

Mariner Management president Peggy Hoffman recently sat down with Carol Hamilton on her podcast Mission: Impact to talk about the heart and soul of associations: the volunteer.

In our first post, we introduced a way to shift your volunteer training to one that focuses on the person not the position. Our second post talked about how to build a volunteer matrix based on the 5 basic learning and development levels.

Our volunteers are motivated. There’s no question there. They begin their volunteer journey enthusiastic, energized, elated to be involved in something they truly believe in.

We’re knee-deep in interviews with volunteers from a cross-section of associations as part of a number of volunteer strategy projects. There’s still lots of passion. There is also less time, less patience with volunteering that doesn’t move needles, and a sense of a lack of reward for effort. On one project, we had a task […]

In our April salute to National Volunteer Week, we talked about using this time to reassess your volunteer training by considering flipping your training programs from a global “here’s what you need” to one that begins with the learner’s needs.

Member Volunteers bring passion to their work… What they don’t always have are the leadership and team skills needed to make the most of that passion. Tapping effectively into the diverse skills, knowledge and energy of our volunteers requires a commitment on our part to reduce barriers to entry and provide effective volunteer preparation. We […]