job descriptions

I’ll be the first to tell a client that job descriptions are vitally important. They are important for for us as staff, and they are important for our volunteers. Its common sense really - if we don’t lay out expectations and responsibilities for our volunteers, how can we expect them to know what they are being expected to do and for what they are held responsible?

Sure, we can allow our volunteers to assume their responsibilities and expectations in their roles, but assumptions can be costly in time, costly in effort, costly in morale, and then they can just be costly. By failing to clearly define expectations and responsibilities, we leave room for details to fall through the cracks, for unnecessary overlap and for an inefficient use of time and resources. Not very ideal really.

Yet, for some reason, it seems that many of the non-profit organizations with whom I work are very averse to giving their volunteers job descriptions. There’s this concern that a job description will make a volunteer’s role sound like too much work. Um, news flash, volunteering is work - and not just work - its hard work! Anyone who has ever volunteered will most likely agree to that. As staff, its our job to make a volunteer’s job as easy as possible, and that means being realistic and up front about what you are asking that volunteer to do. The job description should align the expectations that the volunteer has of their role to the expectations that the organization has of the volunteer’s role. The goal is not to overwhelm our volunteers with bullet points and give them a “to-do” list, the goal is to enable our volunteers to be the best they can be. It sounds cheesy, but its human nature that people want to spend their time doing things that they feel good about, that they believe they do well and where they feel valued and appreciated. When someone’s not getting paid to work hard, if they don’t feel good about their efforts, you can rest assured they won’t be working hard for long. In over 10 years of fundraising, marketing and consulting, not one time have a I ever had a volunteer say to me, “It really bothered me that I was given a job description. I did not like being told what the organization expected of me in this role. I did not like being able to accurately assess the commitment I was being asked to make in order to determine if I could take on the responsibility and give the organization my best.”

Bottom line: volunteers are a unique breed. Not everyone out there wants to work really hard for free; never take that for granted. Get on the same page; know their strengths, acknowledge their efforts, understand their motivation and say thank you. Say thank you OFTEN.