Managers of Volunteers Seek Training, Respect from Education Programs

TOOLS AND TRAINING

By Eman Quotah

Like a lot of people who manage charities’ volunteer activities, Joni Todd fell into her job. The former teacher had volunteered for a year in the thrift shop run by the Freeport Area Church Cooperative, in Freeport, Ill., and that experience helped her snag a staff position when it came open six years ago. Today, she coordinates the charity’s food-pantry and thrift-shop volunteers.

For the first four years she held the job, Ms. Todd says, her program ran well in an informal way. But she wanted to make some processes less casual, like applications for volunteer positions, and learn more about the best ways to manage volunteers. She also wanted answers to some basic yet tough questions, such as, “Can you reject an applicant for a volunteer position, or do you have to take everybody?”

So Ms. Todd went back to college, receiving two certificates in managing volunteers from Harper College, in Palatine, Ill. She says the program helped give her a strong foundation for the things she has learned on the job. “I have tried to ‘formalize’ the basics without taking away the informal feel,” she says.

Harper’s noncredit program is one of about 10 certificate programsin the United States designed specifically for managers of volunteers. Although small in number, these programs, college administrators and managers of volunteers say, reflect a growing need for trained professionals who can help nonprofit organizations respond to the changing face of volunteerism and major trends in the nonprofit world.

Although these credentials by themselves do not guarantee career success for managers of volunteers, say these observers, professionalizing the field can help bring it greater respect. And managers who have been formally trained may enable charities to recruit better volunteers who stay for longer periods of time and, in the end, have a bigger impact on the organization’s mission.

“One thing that a well-managed volunteer program can tell volunteers is that ‘We’re not going to waste your time. You’re going to make a difference, ‘” says Pamela Sybert, director of the Educational Consortium for Volunteerism at the University of North Texas, in Denton.

Gaining Skills

Sending that message to volunteers is important, Ms. Sybert says, because volunteers will leave if their time isn’t used well. Two out of five volunteers stopped volunteering for reasons related to poor management, according to a 1998 survey by the UPS Foundation, the charitable arm of United Parcel Service. The volunteers who dropped out said that their time and talents were not used well, that tasks were not clearly defined, or that no one had thanked them.

Charities simply can’t afford to lose volunteers because of mismanagement, says Victoria McDonald, director of volunteer programs at the Salvation Army in West Chester, Pa. “In the nonprofit arena, more and more financial resources are becoming scarce,” she says. “We need to look to a future of reallocating resources. One of the most successful ways [in] which this may be accomplished is through the use of a professionally led volunteer program.”

That’s where Ms. Sybert sees that professional training and certification come in. To design programs with results, managers of volunteers need skills in leadership, mediation, strategic planning, and organization, and a strong awareness of diversity issues, she says. “One of our big reasons that we would like to see [volunteer management] become more professional is that there are more skills needed to be a volunteer manager” than in the past, she says.

Not every manager of volunteers need a formal credential, says Ms. Sybert. But certificate programs can give managers the skills and knowledge needed to see the big picture and plan effective programs.

Real-Life Lessons

The first certificate program in volunteer administration was started in 1986 by the Arkansas Department of Human Services’ Office of Volunteerism — now called the Division of Volunteerism — and the Arkansas Public Administration Consortium, which is a collaboration among Arkansas State University, in Jonesboro, and the Universities of Arkansas at Fayetteville and at Little Rock. In the years since, several other programs have sprung up, such as those at Harper College, the University of North Texas, and Washington State University, in Pullman. No credentialing body oversees the programs, which focus on a broad spectrum of topics, including the history of volunteerism, current trends, recruitment, recognition, planning and strategy, staff-volunteer relationships, board management, supervising and delegating, accountability and evaluation, risk management, and diversity issues.

These certificate programs can take anywhere from 10 weeks to two years to complete, with costs ranging from $700 to $4,260 for an entire program, depending on the institution offering the courses.

Program administrators say they attempt to strike a balance between theory and practice, and encourage students to share their professional experiences and strengths and to network with one another. Classes in the Arkansas consortium’s certified volunteer- manager program, for instance, rely heavily on case studies and team activities, says Rebecca Burton, the program’s director. Students “are learning real-life situations,” she says, “not just theory.”

Participants in the University of North Texas program must spend time volunteering themselves, Ms. Sybert says.

Although the programs cover a lot of the same ground, the University of North Texas’s certificate in volunteer and community-resource management is the only one offered for academic credit. The program — which, like Washington State’s, is delivered exclusively online — is taught on both the graduate and undergraduate levels. It draws students from across the United States, as well as from other countries..

That mix of international and American students, who bring different levels of professional experience, enhances the educational experience, Ms. Sybert says.

“It makes the class so rich to have professionals in with students who want to do this in the future,” she says.

Practical Applications

Managers of volunteers who have earned certificates echo that sentiment. They say they have benefited most from the practical skills they learned and from the opportunity to share information with others in their field.

“The strength of any program like this is the strength of the people,” says Leslie Hanks, volunteer coordinator at Conway Regional Health System, an acute health-care facility in Conway, Ark.

Although Ms. Hanks received her certificate in volunteer management from the Arkansas consortium more than five years ago, she has stayed in touch with her classmates and continues to share information with them. That’s how she got the idea to start a volunteer-run van service that ferries patients across the health-care facility’s large parking lot.

Rita Lopienski, director of leisure services at Beacon Hill Retirement Community, in Lombard, Ill., says that at Harper she learned basic skills such as how to set up volunteer policies and procedures, how to motivate and acknowledge volunteers, and how to promote and raise money for her program. Ms. Lopienski completed the program at Harper in 2001 and now teaches a class there. Her courses were paid for by her then-employer, Lexington Health Care Center of Streamwood, in Streamwood, Ill.

At both Lexington and Beacon Hill, Lopienski says, she used what she learned at Harper to streamline volunteer-application and -orientation processes, revamped application forms that were outdated and difficult to use, and started annual events to honor volunteers. She also wrote a volunteer-management manual for other Lexington staff members who supervise volunteers, and when she joined Beacon Hill a year ago, she started a volunteer database where none had existed.

Benefits in the Job Market

Coordinators of volunteers at health-care organizations in particular say that enrolling in a certificate program shows their employers that they have a commitment to education.

“Continuing education in a health-care environment is very important, whether you are nurse or volunteer coordinator,” Ms. Hanks says. “Staying updated in your field just makes you a better employee.”

Although she has not enrolled in a certificate program, Jessica Xavier, director of volunteer resources at Whitman-Walker Clinic, a provider of AIDS and HIV services in Washington, says that such programs can benefit managers of volunteers by exposing them to best practices, and perhaps gain other advantages for their organizations. “Not only do you get more efficient programs,” she says, “but you also position yourself for funding by public and private funders.”

While Ms. Xavier says she would certainly view completion of a certificate program as a plus for a job seeker, she notes that other achievements — such as foreign-language skills or a history of volunteering — would weigh more heavily in her assessment of a potential volunteer administrator.

Other managers of volunteers consider a commitment to a particular organization or type of institution more important than general training in volunteer administration. Diane DeBevec, associate director of volunteer initiatives at the Cleveland Museum of Art, says her master’s degree in museum studies (from a joint program of the museum and Case Western Reserve University) and her experience at the museum where she has worked for 16 years give her a strong enough background to run a solid volunteer program. “I’d favor apprenticeship over a lengthy and expensive course,” she says, “because much of volunteering is institution-specific.”

Legitimizing the Profession

Despite the growing importance of volunteer hours to many organizations’ ability to fulfill their missions and balance their budgets, attitudes toward volunteer coordinators haven’t kept pace, volunteer managers say. “Sometimes the position of volunteer coordinator can be overlooked or underfunded because you are ‘just working with volunteers, ‘” Ms. Todd says.

Many managers of volunteers see certificate programs as a way to gain respect for their profession. Jeanne Bradner, who directs Harper College’s volunteer-management program, says certificate programs underscore the fact that managing volunteers is one of the most important professions in nonprofit organizations. Volunteer managers, she notes, “may manage more people than the personnel director.”

At the same time, Ms. Xavier cautions, these programs are young and their impact has not yet been measured. With the hopes of creating a universally recognized credential for volunteer managers, the Association for Volunteer Administrationthree years ago revised its professional credentialing program. Managers of volunteers who go through the process receive the certified-in-volunteer-administration credential, commonly called the CVA.

“It’s valuable to an organization to have a specialist who understands the field of volunteerism and can build strategy for the organization,” says Katherine Campbell, who directs the group’s credentialing program.

Unlike students in the academic certificate programs, candidates for the CVA are not given formal instruction. The credential is awarded based on what candidates have already learned on the job. They must have at least three years’ full-time experience in administering volunteer services. To earn the credential, they must satisfactorily complete two written statements and a multiple-choice exam. Cost is $150 for association members and $300 for nonmembers, and the credential must be renewed every five years. “It proves to be a dynamic, not static, process,” says Ms. McDonald of the Salvation Army, who received her credential in 2001.

The Association for Volunteer Administration is exploring the possibility of creating specialized units of its program that would test the skills of volunteer managers in particular fields, such as health care or museum work. The question, Ms. Campbell says, is whether it is better to have one credential that employers can easily recognize, or to have specialized credentials. “Many volunteer managers move between disciplines,” she says, “so for them, a universal credential is better.”

“In a tangible, visible way, [the CVA] is a validation of our skills,” Ms. Campbell says, adding that it also can demonstrate that an organization values volunteers enough to have a credentialed professional on staff. “It’s sending a signal to the community: ‘We take this seriously.’”

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