Transcript
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Welcome to the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership.
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I'm Tim Barnes and I'm Nathan Ruby.
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Okay, nathan, you got to tell me when was the last time you volunteered for something.
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Let's see, last time I volunteered uh was uh earlier this year Uh, our church does the uh Tim Tebow foundations uh night to shine and it is a uh, it's a evening for people, for adults with special needs, uh, to provide a prom like experience, and so that people dress up and you know, there's a prom queen and well, everybody gets to be prom queen and prom king, and so it's for adults with special needs and it's a great night and it's a big, big event, and so I had a parking duty for one of the parking lots.
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Well, you know for so many nonprofit organizations, whether it's a church or whether it's a local organization, it takes a lot of work to do events and to help the organizations keep going, and oftentimes volunteers are a huge part of making it happen, especially if there's resources that you don't have.
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So you're looking to fill some of those positions, some of those things, and so we're going to jump in and we're going to talk about volunteers, right, nathan?
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Yes, absolutely.
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We have two awesome people with us today, two experts in the world of volunteers, way smarter than Tim and I on this category, and Jada Hare and Corey Barrett.
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Welcome to the practice of nonprofit leadership.
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Thank you, great to be with you.
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Thanks for having us.
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Yeah.
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So just a little bit.
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I'm going to start with Jada.
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So Jada Hare is the chief resource officer at Midwest Food Bank, whose mission is to share the love of Christ by alleviating hunger and malnutrition and providing disaster relief.
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In her role, jada stewards and develops resources and fosters partnerships that enable the organization to serve over 1 million people each year partnerships that enable the organization to serve over 1 million people each year.
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After a successful 21 career in sales and marketing at Caterpillar, jada made a purposeful shift to the nonprofit sector, motivated by her faith and desire to contribute to meaningful causes.
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You know, jada, we're going to do a different show, just with you, on how you transitioned from the corporate world to the nonprofit world.
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We'll do a follow-up on that.
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And then Corey Barrett serves as the volunteer and community relations manager for Midwest Food Bank, new England.
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In his role, corey leads over 2,000 volunteers annually and opportunities to serve, while deepening their relationship with Midwest Food Bank and the agencies whom they serve.
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As a nonprofit professional, corey's career spans over 15 years in volunteer leadership, development operations, event planning and event management, while working for organizations like Feed my Starving Children and Samaritan's Purse.
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Corey has worked across the United States engaging thousands of volunteers for work in hunger relief and local church ministry, where he has been convinced of the power and impact made possible by a culture of volunteerism.
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So you guys, your resumes are pretty powerful when it comes to volunteers.
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Volunteers, jada, could you give some context to Midwest Food Bank and size and scope of the volunteer program and how that culture is working?
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As a volunteer there, I sure will.
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But first I want to say thank you to both of you, nathan and Tim, for just leaning in and leading this podcast.
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Both of you are nonprofit professionals, and so I'm just impressed and thankful for the time that you give to the content that you share, so hopefully this can be helpful for the other listeners as well.
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In the US, we also have operations in Haiti and in Kenya.
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So, started 21 years ago, midwest Food Bank has grown to.
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This year we will distribute $500 million worth of food and resources to the nonprofits that we partner with.
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So really an honor to be a part of an organization that is giving that food away to our nonprofits at no charge, and so it might seem like oh my goodness, like what a behemoth of a organization, and in fact we are usually right around one of the largest food banks in the nation.
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But I want to give some context.
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Why am I on this podcast today and volunteering?
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We do this and we're able to fulfill our mission only because of volunteers.
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Volunteers are.
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Sometimes we casually call them our secret sauce.
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That maybe is a little bit off brand to say that, but inside the walls of Midwest New Bank now on this podcast, we call our volunteers our secret sauce.
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And so at Midwest New Bank we have 62 employees 62, and this year we'll have nearly 40,000 volunteers, so 40,000 individuals that are serving our mission.
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And let me just share a little bit about how we structure those volunteers, and then Corey is going to have much more content on how we break that down in each of our locations.
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But our volunteers of those 40,000, about 700 are what we call our core volunteers, and those core volunteers are essentially the ones that are coming in, maybe not every day, but they're coming in frequently, multiple times in a week, and they're serving in what we would consider a staff role.
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So we have volunteers that are serving as our forklift drivers, forklift operators, our truck drivers, our bookkeepers, our receptionists, our grant writers, all of that, our agency coordinators.
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All of that is kind of what most nonprofits would think of, or all of us on the podcast today would think of as a staff role.
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But at Midwest Food Bank we believe in empowering our volunteers, and so we've been able to find individuals that find joy and purpose in serving.
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Then we also have what we call our project volunteers, and so these are the corporate groups, the Boy Scouts, the church groups, the moms clubs that are coming in and serving for a couple hours at a time and maybe they'll come in once or twice a year, but those are kind of.
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The majority of our volunteers are coming in for a very short period of time.
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Tim and I have an exciting new feature to share with you.
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Well, that is, and you know we've talked on the podcast before about how, when it's time to volunteer, when it's time to add a staff position, you're you know, maybe it's just you as the executive director and a couple of volunteers and it's now time to hire your, your first staff position, whether it be on program side or accounting or fundraising, whatever it is.
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One of the options you have is to hire a volunteer.
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I'm using my air quotes with hire but have a volunteer come in for a 30-hour a week, 20-hour a week, even a 40-hour a week job.
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There are people out there that would volunteer to do that.
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You just got to go find them and you guys are a perfect example of how that would work.
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Maybe just a little bit of context too.
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Our founders started the food bank on their family farm in a shed, and so it was a family project.
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And for the greater part of a decade it was all volunteers, and so the volunteerism is just in the DNA.
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It was just a family project that they turned into a nonprofit DNA.
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It was just a family project that they turned into a nonprofit.
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Uh, so kind of at the core of who we are is that spirit of of volunteering and finding purpose in volunteering.
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Yeah, and having a culture of that from the get go does, uh, makes a huge difference, yeah, so okay, uh, corey, first question Um, so Jada talked a little bit about the scope of the organization and you know you're most years, you're that you're the largest food bank in the country.
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That's pretty big scope.
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But how do you define a successful volunteer program, knowing that you know you can have 40,000 volunteers or 10,000 volunteers or one volunteer?
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What does that successful volunteer program look like for just the one or two or three volunteers?
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It's a good question.
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I would say a successful volunteer program is one in which your volunteers come away feeling they are truly contributing to something meaningful Truly contributing to something meaningful, in other words, you're not just having people come in to do menial tasks that are just throwing a bone to someone to keep them busy and occupied.
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They come away knowing that they've truly contributed to the mission because you've been able to make it clear what the mission is and how their role is connected to that mission and why it's impactful.
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I would also say a successful volunteer program is one in which your volunteers are aligned with the mission effectively.
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How well can they convey to you, back to you, how their role is meaningfully impacting the mission in the community in which they're operating?
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Are they synthesizing their activity with what the mission of your organization is?
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Are they engaged regularly?
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Are these individuals, when you reach out to them, that they're responding to you if you need them for something or if you're trying to stay connected with them for meetings or whatever it is?
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Are they regularly engaged with respect to their communication?
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Are they better equipped a year after they started volunteering than when they began?
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Right, that's a big part of any and we can talk more about that as things move forward here, but a big part of having a successful volunteer program is how well you're able to equip the volunteers for what they're doing.
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You're not just throwing them to the wolves.
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You're not just expecting them to know everything when they start.
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There might be people who are transitioning out of careers that are looking to do something wildly different from what they were doing in their careers.
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And that's going to require some tools and equipping along the way.
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So are they better equipped than when they started?
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Yeah, I had a volunteer experience.
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Actually, I was on staff and we had a group of volunteers coming in on a Saturday morning and I was young, I was new into my career and I didn't know anything and I was the fundraiser.
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So it wasn't my event, I wasn't the volunteer person, thank goodness.
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But we had a group of like I don't know, I'm just picking out numbers it was a chunk of people Like 30 people coming in and they were going to do landscaping type stuff and so the group got there and I was there and the uh, I was ended up being the only staff person there.
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The person who was in charge of the from the staff side of the volunteer event got was there late.
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So you know, things weren't ready and they were going to do landscaping and we had like 30 people and we had like two shovels, a rake and uh you know, and one other thing, and it was just thing and it was dis, it was horrible.
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It was so disorganized, it didn't have enough equipment and those people walked away.
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And I remember thinking to myself when I was like 28 years old, I was like those people ain't never coming back.
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And so I think the the, you know, the the volunteer, when you're having volunteers, come in and correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the success of that is planned out way before those people ever show up on the day of.
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You hit the nail on the head and my mind is going in a thousand different places with respect to all the different things you've just tapped or noted here, one of which is the reputation of an organization.
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Jada and I talked a little bit about this leading up to the podcast today, but one of the things that a leader, an executive director, has to consider at the onset is what your mission is, how you endeavor to stay true to your mission, because success is relative to the mission of the organization, it's relative to the culture, it's relative to the vision that you've set forth for the organization.
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And then, along the way, how do you aim, what do you aspire for the reputation of your organization to be?
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Because a reputation, once you start involving people from the outside and folding them in your reputation, is now in the hands of multiple people.
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It's not just held with the executive director anymore, right.
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So when someone has a negative experience where people are unprepared, under-resourced, not on time, that's not just connected to the person that was supposed to be there providing those resources.
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It's connected to the name of the organization or entity associated with that individual right, yeah, and how many times?
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how many conversations do you think those people will have when they have a negative?
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They will have more conversations when they've had a negative experience than they will when they've had a positive experience.
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Bingo and a reputation and I'm lingering on this point for a reason.
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A reputation of an organization is so closely tied to repeat volunteerism and the multiplication of volunteers who go on talk about the positive or negative experiences they've had and giving the giving element and donor stewardship associated with all that comes after that.
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So if people see that you are worthy of their time and their finances and their resources, they're more inclined to partner right.
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So all of that is so critical in the planning associated with resourcing your people.
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And ultimately it gets to the last point I was going to bring up here, as it relates to a successful volunteer program the sense of community and belonging that people have subsequent to their volunteerism with the organization.
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How are they feeling more connected to you and the other people within the organization with whom they're volunteering as a result of the experience they've had with your organization?
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I think, jada, you could speak to this as much as anybody with what happens in Illinois.
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There is an incredible sense of belonging to the community associated with Midwest Food Bank and that makes it a very unique place.
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There's people from all walks of life, all sorts of different careers, who come in every day to these walls and they're volunteering under the banner of Midwest Food Bank, but they feel part of something that has nothing to do with their past necessarily their past careers, or what they do at school or what have you.
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So that's a ripple effect that I think can be measured by the growth of your volunteer program.
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I think too, if I could just add into the reputation is also considering just the environment in which they're volunteering and there's lots of different ways that people can be volunteering but just doing our best to provide an environment that's comfortable, safe.
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Safe is first and foremost, but just clean and tidy.
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So if we're going to have someone to do some bookkeeping work, making sure, then they need to have a decent computer that doesn't lag and doesn't break down.
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You know, let's not, let's not give them a chair that we pulled out of the office in the shop.
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You know that's got dust all over it.
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Let's get a nice chair, and so and you know we have to back to the example with the gardening or the landscaping.
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You know, okay, do we have to go buy six more shovels because we have seven people coming?
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I mean, there's a little bit of resources in there and you don't have to spend a ton of money.
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But you've got to think through that.
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What would help this experience be the best possible experience and then prepare for that as good as you can?
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Our budget, we have a line item for volunteer recognition and resources, and so it's something that we have to plan for, and in doing so, we know that it's still an investment that has an incredible ROI.
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So let me ask this question.
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I love what you guys are sharing.
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Who is thinking about volunteers at Midwest Food Bank?
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Who's making sure this is happening?
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Is there a volunteer coordinator?
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Is there the director at each location?
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Who wakes up every day thinking about volunteers for Midwest Food Bank?
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Empowering our volunteers is one of our values, and so the easy answer maybe the Sunday school answer is that everyone's waking up, thinking about volunteers and all of us.
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Even in my SMART goals, identifying and equipping volunteers is one of my goals my SMART goals, identifying and equipping volunteers is one of my goals, and so I'm responsible for finding volunteers to help me execute my responsibilities, but there is a dedicated role, and I'll let Corey share about his position.
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Yeah, there's no seven degrees of separation from thinking about volunteers in Midwest Food Bank.
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Right, it's not Kevin Bacon out there, but we do have an individual at each location, ideally, whose responsibility is to recruit and select, identify individuals who are putting volunteers in a position to be impactful at the food bank.
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But that also requires some ongoing communication with other staff at the facility to know what the needs are within the facility.
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So that might be within bookkeeping, that might be in the warehouse, you know folks who are driving forklifts, that might be CDL drivers who are retrieving loads of food.
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There are volunteers in really strategic positions.
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But then we also have, as Jada alluded to earlier, projects ongoing that are opportunities for volunteers to work on on a short-term basis and that responsibility to coordinate those works, probably cooperatively with the warehouse, but that primarily falls on the shoulders of the volunteer manager at that particular location.
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I just love it.
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I hear it in your voices as you talk that volunteers is deep in the culture and that has to be a reason why you're so successful at it, because it truly is a value no-transcript.
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There is a massive amount of volunteer resources out there for organizations if they figure out how to tap into it.
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But that requires kind of zooming out first to identify.
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If you're brand new looking at how to establish a volunteer program, it requires zooming out first to see your mission first and then to work backwards to understand where volunteers can have an impact to help you achieve whatever mission it is.
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It's not taking a shotgun approach and hoping that volunteers have a good experience right, you have to understand a few things first, one of which is what are the resources that I'm going to need to provide this individual or multiple individuals if you're just starting out?
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What are the resources I'm going to need?
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What are some of the competencies I'm going to need these folks to understand and have?
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What are some of the what's the knowledge they need to have about us as an organization, and how am I transferring all of this?
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Right?
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If you're getting people in the door first without having some answers to some of those questions, you're going to feel like you're fumbling your way forward first.
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So it's okay to take some time.
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I would caution anybody from acting out of desperation in terms of recruiting people first, because you're going to find yourself feeling like you're constantly behind the eight ball and it is possible to end up recruiting the wrong people and having the wrong people in the wrong seats on your bus, and that is a much more difficult problem to face, I think, in the long term.
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So do you think the process of recruiting and retaining a volunteer and the process of recruiting and retaining a staff person is it obviously at your organization it's equally as important.
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Um, is it the same process?
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Um, because the the as I listen to you talk that the thought that goes into writing a job description for a staff person and the thought for going into a job description for a volunteer, they're almost the same right.
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So is that?
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Do you guys see that equally or do you see those as two separate things?
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I think at the highest level it's very similar and even sometimes we use the same tactics.
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You know we'll give a volunteer job posting and put it out online in the same way that we would post for a paid position and obviously word of mouth recruiting is critical, especially for our volunteers.
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So there is a lot of similarities and understanding and respecting the flexibility that a volunteer has and that they're seeking and being able to adapt to that, like you know, being clear about the hours that it would be ideal for them to come, but they're volunteers, for goodness sakes.
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So they can kind of come and go as they please Of course.
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Very well stated, jada, very well stated.
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So can I ask you know, as I think about this, so what a volunteer needs to come in and help pack boxes for a project, like they come in for a few hours on a day, or a group comes from a company and comes in and helps do something, what they need, compared to what someone who's going to show up several times a week and do the jobs is probably different.
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So do you have a process to like?
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Do you take them a process to prepare them to get them plugged in?
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Do you have something set up that?
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you know how do you Like an onboarding, onboarding, yeah that's a great word.
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Do you have an?
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onboarding process for your volunteers.
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The process is fairly individualized and, excuse me, and it requires a conversation, and triage isn't the right word.
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That's not the way we treat the volunteers, but that's effectively the process that's taking place.
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We want to evaluate.
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If individuals come to us and they're looking for an opportunity to serve, we ask them questions.
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You know, on what basis are you looking to serve?
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Is this like a weekly opportunity you're looking for and are you looking for, or are you looking for something just for this time, because you have some hours that you have to fulfill for your work or for school or some other reason?
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And that helps start to answer some of the questions because, as we know what exists within the organization in terms of opportunities, we can start putting people in positions based on what their interests are, but based on what their availability is, what their physical aptitude is, what their background may look like, and start placing people accordingly.
00:25:53.509 --> 00:26:18.140
But it all depends on what that initial encounter is maybe like mentioned earlier in the show that uh about the, how important it was for the experience and then to convey a basic vision and mission to volunteer so that when they, after the event is over and they're back out in the community, they had a great experience and they understand the organization better and they can share those stories.
00:26:18.140 --> 00:26:27.864
How do you do you take time during their their volunteer time to sit them down and talk to them about vision and mission and values?
00:26:27.864 --> 00:26:29.015
How do you do that?
00:26:29.470 --> 00:26:32.069
So I see two possibilities existing here.
00:26:32.069 --> 00:26:56.755
One, if someone's coming to us, they're seeking us out or they've come to us for the first time as a short-term or project volunteer and they come through an opportunity to volunteer for two hours, I look at that a little bit differently than as if I'm looking for a specific person or a specific role to be filled and I'm trying to cast vision to somebody who I think might be a good candidate.
00:26:56.755 --> 00:27:06.601
There's a great quote from a pastor I don't think he's the original person that said this, but there's a straight quote what you win people with, you, win them too.
00:27:06.601 --> 00:27:08.825
What you win people with, you win them too.
00:27:08.825 --> 00:27:24.750
And what he means basically is, as you cast vision to somebody, what you're holding out before them is effectively what you're trying to win them to as far as your mission is concerned.
00:27:24.750 --> 00:27:36.282
So if you're just telling somebody, hey, I've got these bags that you have to put from here over here, from one box into another box, that's not a particularly appealing thing.
00:27:36.890 --> 00:27:55.307
But if you can connect the role that you're trying to appeal to them to the greater mission and the impact that they're having, regardless of what their background is, you can win them over, even if there's administrative tasks that aren't particularly appealing, if there's hours that may not be particularly appealing.
00:27:55.387 --> 00:28:01.795
If you connect their heart to the mission, ultimately you've won them over to something much greater than the task itself.
00:28:01.795 --> 00:28:15.755
That's a little bit different than if you've got someone who comes in who's experiencing this for two hours and if they've never been in the building before, we make it a point to give them a tour of the facility and each touchpoint around the facility.
00:28:15.755 --> 00:28:28.750
They get to know about what happens internally within the building, externally, what's happening outside of the four walls of Midwest Food Bank, within the communities in which we're serving and operating within the scope of our partnerships.
00:28:28.750 --> 00:28:40.962
We have about 157 agencies in the New England region, but there's far more happening out of Bloomington and Normal and Peoria relative to the age of the organization in those places.
00:28:40.962 --> 00:28:47.079
So it's helpful for them to understand the scope of the impact relative to the tasks at hand.
00:28:47.079 --> 00:28:51.034
So we take time to talk about all of that as part of that tour.
00:28:51.094 --> 00:28:51.295
Again.
00:28:51.295 --> 00:29:03.317
We were talking earlier about the experience that volunteers have and that experience and how important it is, but that experience starts doesn't start when they're at the assembly line picking up out of one box of put in the other box.
00:29:03.317 --> 00:29:06.673
That experience starts doesn't start when they're at the at the assembly line picking up out of one box of put in the other box.
00:29:06.673 --> 00:29:26.342
That experience starts when they pull down the street and pull into the parking lot, and and so the volunteer who is out pulling weeds out of the sidewalk cracks is just as important as the person who's having direct contact with the end user In your case, who's having direct contact with the end user In your case, the food banks coming in to pick up the food.
00:29:26.342 --> 00:29:36.916
It's that whole process, and so that guy or that woman, whatever, who's outside working in the yard is just as important as the person over here.
00:29:38.800 --> 00:29:44.512
And when you have a good volunteer experience, it's amazing how many volunteers will sign up to pull the weeds in your yard.
00:29:44.512 --> 00:29:59.119
Yeah, I think it can be overwhelming for someone listening to be like, oh my goodness, like this takes a lot of staff time, but even the development of some of the things that we're talking about and creating that positive environment can be done by volunteers.
00:29:59.119 --> 00:30:15.105
So the person who's meeting the volunteers as they're walking into the facility like that's a volunteer too, and so finding the person that has that joy and making people feel welcome, that hospitality I mean they're just going to love to sit at your front desk and invite your future volunteers to come in.
00:30:15.807 --> 00:30:34.978
I think one of the hallmarks to your point, Jada one of the hallmarks of Midwest Food Bank is cleanliness and, obviously, dealing with food and being in that world, it's important to send the message that we care about cleanliness, and on any number of occasions we've had people come in and remark what a clean warehouse we have.
00:30:34.978 --> 00:31:05.614
We have drivers that deliver to all sorts of different places right around the country, but when they step into Midwest Food Bank, oftentimes they are astounded by just how clean it is, and so that sends the message that we care about stewardship, we care about what's being entrusted to us, and when people see that, whether it's a truck driver or this is a business representative from within the community, they see it as something not just related to cleanliness but stewardship, and they're more likely to entrust to us people, time, resources, you name it.
00:31:06.820 --> 00:31:10.351
Corey, I know you've touched on a number of things as we've talked about this.
00:31:10.351 --> 00:31:23.005
You know we hear leaders from organizations talk about how challenging, how difficult it is to get volunteers, or it's hard to trust volunteers, to get volunteers or it's hard to trust volunteers.
00:31:23.005 --> 00:31:27.608
And I wonder if, at some point, maybe there are some things that you would say.
00:31:27.608 --> 00:31:34.855
From my experience it's probably X, y or Z there are these things.
00:31:34.855 --> 00:32:08.761
Maybe it's an attitude, maybe it's how you're approaching it no-transcript taught to ask.
00:32:09.242 --> 00:32:11.768
Or this great concept, and it's called retracing the loop.
00:32:11.768 --> 00:32:16.463
Al Newell is the name of this guy that does this course.
00:32:16.463 --> 00:32:18.208
So, again, I won't take credit for this.
00:32:18.208 --> 00:32:23.468
But this idea of retracing the loop means we start with ourselves.
00:32:23.468 --> 00:32:31.554
We start from the beginning and we ask ourselves okay, this isn't going well, or this hasn't in the past gone well.
00:32:31.554 --> 00:32:33.362
Why is that?
00:32:33.362 --> 00:32:35.484
And let's start from the beginning.
00:32:35.484 --> 00:32:43.016
Are there gaps in the resources that this person has been equipped with?
00:32:43.016 --> 00:32:50.088
Are there gaps in the expectation of the attitudes that we are expecting people to operate with?
00:32:50.088 --> 00:32:52.574
Are there gaps in the competencies?
00:32:52.574 --> 00:32:56.142
Have I failed to transfer knowledge to this person?
00:32:56.142 --> 00:33:00.204
And you might, from just that simple exercise.
00:33:00.204 --> 00:33:08.270
You might, from just that simple exercise, identify gaps that exist from myself, right, or yourself.
00:33:08.270 --> 00:33:11.894
It's not always somebody else's fault.
00:33:11.894 --> 00:33:23.407
Now, there are incidents where maybe there was a selection error and this didn't turn out to be the right person for the right role.
00:33:23.407 --> 00:33:25.619
That doesn't make this person inherently bad as a volunteer.
00:33:25.619 --> 00:33:29.330
It doesn't make this person unfit to be a volunteer.
00:33:30.642 --> 00:33:44.575
We want folks to have a good experience and so, as we work with our volunteers, it's really helpful to have ongoing touch points where we can inspect the work that's going on.
00:33:44.575 --> 00:33:46.163
Much the same we would with employees.
00:33:46.163 --> 00:33:52.405
But before we do any of that, there should be connection points with people, right?
00:33:52.405 --> 00:33:58.624
The term I use is I don't want anyone to feel like we've just chewed someone up and spit them out.
00:33:58.624 --> 00:34:01.151
We're not here to use people right.
00:34:01.151 --> 00:34:03.506
We're not here to just use someone for what they can give us.
00:34:04.048 --> 00:34:11.851
That's a very transactional experience and one which will be short-lived, probably within the scope of volunteerism at the organization.
00:34:11.851 --> 00:34:19.786
So if you're treating someone very transactionally, that's going to be the effect that has on the culture of your organization too in the long term.
00:34:19.786 --> 00:34:27.722
So you've got this idea of connecting with people to know them personally, to care about them personally.
00:34:27.722 --> 00:34:30.648
You can inspect the work that's happening so that you have some insight on an ongoing basis.
00:34:30.648 --> 00:34:35.775
And then, finally, if there's course correction that needs to take place, you can make course correction right.
