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Question:
Does one of your chapters address the reluctance staff may feel to encourage wide participation because someone may say or do something that's off message or reflects poorly on the organization? Along the same line, how about staff reluctance to involve people because there can be blow-back if staff ends up negotiating a resolution that some campaign activists don't like.
Answer:

Welcome Liz,
Thanks for sharing your questions about volunteer management (if I read you correctly) with Ask an Advisor and everyone who reads our conversations. Really salient questions and I'm sure there are many who share your concerns. Hopefully, we'll provide you with useful information that you can apply directly, if not today then certainly tomorrow. Although I'm not sure what type of campaign you're referring to (e.g., advocacy, membership, capital) I think the issues you raise are transcendent. As you so well know, volunteers are in many ways the life-blood of NFPs, community organizations, and the like so how we recruit them (a lot of effort), orient them (hopefully in the right direction), train them (not always, unfortunately), manage them (especially), engage them (and with them), motivate them, and reward them for their efforts are determining factors in any campaigns success. How many times have we recruited volunteers to our cause only to see significant attrition for a lack of attention to the aforementioned factors? I digress, but when we discuss volunteers we have to take many things into consideration including, as you noted keeping volunteers on message or acknowledging that staff may be reluctant to engage with them for the very real risk of unintended, yet negative consequences (this would be the case of no good deed going unpunished, right?). Yes, sometimes it's just easier to want to do everything ourselves. However, I get the sense that you'd like to manage your volunteers better so I think that we have the resources you need. If you go to our home page you'll notice the Learn a Skill (how-to information) button in the top left corner. Click it on and the click on table of contents and scroll down to "Developing a Strategic Plan and Organizational Structure." This section provides you with information about developing a strategic plan and organizational structure, recruiting and training staff and volunteers, and providing technical assistance. You will notice there are five chapters (8 - 12) and two toolkits (5 and 15): Chapters - Chapter 8. Developing a Strategic Plan; Chapter 9. Developing an Organizational Structure for the Initiative; Chapter 10. Hiring and Training Key Staff of Community Organizations; Chapter 11. Recruiting and Training Volunteers; and Chapter 12. Providing Training and Technical Assistance; and Toolkits - 5. Developing Strategic and Action Plans and 15. Improving Organizational Management and Development.
From my perspective, the key to your success can be found in Chapter 11, sections 1 - 4 inclusive, although the other chapters and the two toolkits may be of interest to you as well. In the work we do most of the parts are interrelated and interdependent so having broad ecological knowledge is of paramount importance. If the specific answers to your questions can't be extracted directly from Chapter 11, at the very least it will inform your thinking about volunteers and give you greater insight into everything that goes into a volunteer program. So, Liz I really hope this helps. If not, please engage with us again and we'll keep working together until we come up with a solution. Let us know if you have any other questions and again, we thank you for sharing your questions with us. Always remember you are never alone! Best to you.
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Question Date: أربعاء, 04/13/2016