Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations

128 Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofi t Organizations

Keeping key offi cials informed about the scope of volunteer services

Establishing and monitoring program goals

Assigning volunteer responsibilities and monitoring results

Recommending policy changes or action steps to top management

to maintain, improve, or expand the volunteer effort

A variety of administrative tasks need to be taken care of as well.

Someone needs to recruit volunteers, provide training and orientation,

keep records of their attendance and any expenses for which they might

need to be reimbursed, secure liability insurance for volunteers or verify

their coverage, work with departments to establish the need for volunteers

and develop job descriptions, work with agency supervisors to integrate

volunteers into their departments or programs, decide how incentives

and rewards will be used to motivate volunteers, and keep the volunteers

informed about issues that will affect them (Farr, 1983; Fisher & Cole,

1993). Pearce (1993) notes that organizations have less control over the time

of volunteers than over employees; thus, there needs to be a large pool of

volunteers to accommodate different preferences, talents, and time con-

straints (Montjoy & Brudney, 1991). For these reasons, more and more

organizations that rely on volunteer assistance for executing their missions

are hiring volunteer coordinators to assume management and administrative

responsibilities.

Orientation and Training

Volunteers should be made familiar with the agency ’ s mission, history,

accomplishments, fi scal goals, and strategic plan (Alexander, 1991), as well

as what the agency expects from them. It has been suggested that an agency ’ s

mission statement be translated into operational objectives, making it easy

for volunteers to see how their contributions reinforce the mission (Muson,

1989). Understanding what the agency is about should increase commitment

to its programs.

Volunteers need to be trained. Often employees expect them to be

clairvoyant and know what to do, how to do it, or what the standard oper-

ating procedures are. This is a mistake: volunteers do not necessarily have

the same expertise or experience that employees have. On - the - job training

time should be devoted to providing instructions, answering questions,

and allowing the volunteer to witness and absorb how the agency operates.

This experience will reduce volunteers ’ insecurity about performing new