Creating an environment that encourages alumni involvement
3 proven ways to engage alumni volunteers on your board and committees
The heart and soul of many nonprofit and alumni organizations comes down to one crucial asset: volunteers. Without them, these organizations would simply cease to exist. That is why it is imperative to keep your alumni interested and engaged in your work.
Regardless of their age or stage in life, most alumni are busy with responsibilities, like career, families and community service. Donating their precious time to helping your organization is only adding to that long list of obligations! With such busy lives, it can sometimes feel like we are fighting for their attention or engagement. By creating an environment that makes it easy to be involved, as a result, alumni are much more likely to want to be involved.
Having active alumni volunteers has the potential to make or break your organization. They help to bring an array of perspectives to your planning and projects. Plus, more volunteers means more minds and more hands to accomplish tasks.
It is possible to lead an organization in a way that volunteers find it easy to be involved in by efficiently and effectively managing the time and expertise of yourself and your volunteers.
Here are our 3 best practices that have proven effective for volunteer-led organizations that want to encourage volunteer involvement.
Make meetings productive and efficient
Meetings are one of the biggest places we see that organization leaders have room to improve. While these get-togethers are not always the most enjoyable, you can make it just a little bit easier on your volunteers by ensuring meetings are productive and time-efficient. Your volunteers are busy people, and nothing is worse than wasting their time with drawn-out or unproductive meetings. Here are the 3 most important changes we recommend to turn your meetings from a drain on your volunteers to something that sets them up for success.
Create a time-based agenda. Whether it is written down on paper or simply in your head, every meeting has an agenda, or a list of tasks you would like to discuss or accomplish in your time together. With most groups of people, it is easy to get caught up on the small details of this or that. Whether it be due to a disagreement or a tendency to go out on tangents in your discussion, it is safe to say that it is easy to let time pass by with having little accomplished. Your meeting efficiency can increase immensely if you take it a step further by allotting time for each item on the list and, most importantly, sticking to it. Let attendees know you are setting a timer at the beginning of each agenda item to keep things on track and prevent tangential discussion. This tactic will also make sure your meeting starts and ends on time, maximizing attendance. Nobody wants to attend a meeting that they know has the potential to run minutes or even hours late!
Send meeting materials in advance. By preparing and distributing minutes and materials at least a week before your meeting time, you will give volunteers a chance to develop their own ideas around the material before coming together in a group setting. Not only does this mean that your volunteers will come prepared and ready to tackle your agenda, but this ensures that your alumni have the opportunity to be more involved as active members in decision making and planning.
Identify and document next steps. The purpose of most meetings is to discuss current or future plans of action. What comes next? What was the point of the meeting? What does your meeting need to accomplish and how will that be done? These are all questions that your volunteers will be thinking about when coming into a meeting. Make sure meeting notes include next steps, timelines and individual responsibilities written in a clear, concise, and easy to locate manner. By including the next steps in a written format, volunteers are able to easily identify what their role is in the matter and what they need to accomplish before the next meeting.
Assign roles and responsibilities
Volunteers are more likely to engage in their roles with your organizations if they understand specifically what is expected of them. While it may take more time upfront, it will help to create ‘job descriptions’ for volunteer roles, including your board positions and committee roles. By having these formal descriptions in place, you can clearly assign tasks and avoid overloading one or two individuals.
Assigned roles provide individuals with a sense of duty and accountability. Volunteers with a position or role are aware of what is expected of them and are much more likely to ensure their tasks are complete rather than someone with no label.
Not sure where to start? Here are 3 steps for creating and assigning roles within your organization.
Create a list of the recurring tasks or goals of your organization. Some basic positions that most groups utilize are a president to lead and delegate, a treasurer for finances, or a secretary to handle correspondences, meetings and records. Once you cover the basic needs of your organization, determine if there are any special traits that would need a new position. For example, an organization with an annual alumni event could assign a member to oversee the planning and execution of that event.
Analyze your membership. What are their strengths or weaknesses? Identify what characteristics or skills are needed for each position and align those with the skills of your membership. A volunteer with a background in accounting may be a great choice as treasurer, or one with extensive experience in leadership could be an awesome president.
Communicate with your volunteers. As always, it is imperative to keep your volunteers up to date on all decisions made by your organization. Let members know your plan for setting up roles, who you think would be good in each role, and allow them to be involved in the process by either discussing the role assignments or setting up a forum to vote on the positions.
Another benefit of creating formal roles and job descriptions is in creating continuity as volunteer positions turnover. New volunteers can easily refer to documentation as they are taking over. This idea of efficient turnover will eliminate much of the confusion and frustration that may come with taking on a new task. As a result, the elimination of these negative feelings makes it much easier to enjoy being actively involved in your organization.
Say a meaningful “thank you”
Volunteers give their time and talent to honor their own experience and keep the mission of your organization alive. It’s important to create opportunities to acknowledge their efforts and encourage other alumni to do the same.
Here are some ways that you can say thank you to your volunteers:
Acknowledge volunteers publicly at events, and be sure to include what they have done that has benefitted the organization!
Offer small gifts like gift cards or personalized merchandise like shirts or hats.
Hosting an event, like a dinner, in honor of the hard work of your volunteers.
Send them a letter. A simple thank you card can go a long way.
Regardless of how you choose to thank your volunteers, they are much more likely to choose to offer up a helping hand in the future if they feel as though their past efforts are noticed and appreciated.
The takeaway?
Volunteers like to be involved with organizations that make it easy to be involved. While the word ‘easy’ may imply that they are required to do less work, this is not the case. In this instance, the word ‘easy’ means that you are efficient with your time and resources. No time or talent is wasted, because your organization took the extra time to set up a clear foundation for the performance of your volunteers.
By adopting these best practices for leading your alumni board and committees, volunteers have clear expectations for your meetings, know what they need to do, and feel appreciated for that work in the long run.
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