Last week, millions watched the popular television show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, when the “TV formula” of one lucky family receiving a complete home renovation/reconstruction reached new heights and an entire neighborhood received a facelift. How did they go from reconstructing one house to renovating an entire neighborhood? They did it through the help of an unprecedented number of volunteers. No – this wasn’t some network scheme to lift ratings. In fact, according to the AmeriCorps Alumni website: It all started with a text message to a friend. Kyle Kraus from David Homes sent Joshua Randle from Western New York AmeriCorps this:
“Extreme Makeover Home Edition coming to do a house in Buffalo. You in?….can you bring volunteers?” Randle’s response, “Of course!……you want 10 or 10,000”
Thanks to the efforts of Western New York AmeriCorps led by COO Joshua Randle, within a few days the grassroots outreach effort worked. Community meetings, online outreach, and word of mouth brought thousands of volunteers forward, ready to lend their hands to a community rebuild. The results are staggering: In five days, more than 6000 volunteers contributed more than 50,000 hours of work to complete more than 100 construction projects to improve the homes in this Buffalo, NY neighborhood.
Just days before this Extreme Makeover episode, ten other cities received news of their own impending makeovers – in their case, the makeovers will begin with volunteerism in their cities, and then will move to renovating neighborhoods and solving the communities’ challenges. In celebration of the national day of service on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Cities of Service coalition (a group of mayors from across the US) announced the ten cities that would receive Cities of Service grants. These two-year grants of $200,000 are given to support hiring a senior city official “dedicated to developing and implementing a citywide plan to increase volunteerism and target volunteers to address their city’s greatest needs.”
How are these cities going to address their greatest needs and how did Extreme Makeover expand from one house to an entire neighborhood renovation? The answer is not volunteers – the answer is volunteer leaders. In Buffalo, while the Extreme Makeover crew focused on the home of the Powell family, Western New York AmeriCorps stepped in and not only helped to recruit the 6000 plus volunteers, but also deployed AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers to manage and lead these teams of volunteers. Similarly, last spring, in response to President Obama’s call for increased national service, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (and Cities of Service co-founder) partnered with AmeriCorps VISTA so that nearly 200 VISTA volunteers worked with nonprofit agencies throughout the city, helping them refine and improve their volunteer programs as well as recruiting additional volunteers. City officials now report that these efforts resulted in 18,000 new volunteers being recruited and deployed to help tens of thousands of New Yorkers!
So, in an economy that is tight, and at a time when nonprofit employees’ plates are quite full, what is the key to expanding capacity – and increasing your impact – through volunteers? The key is to engage volunteer leaders who actively lead other volunteers and facilitate their teams in achieving results. Whether the project is a 3-day porch rebuild, a 6-month program development, or a year-long marketing endeavor, volunteers can lead the effort from inception through implementation, and even conduct the evaluation as well. By engaging volunteer leaders, you can deploy new teams to help develop programs, deliver programs, enhance your marketing, increase fund development, and so much more. Here are some tips on successfully engaging volunteers as leaders of new or existing initiatives:
• Effective volunteer leaders know the big picture. They know how the ultimate impact of the organization’s work and they know exactly how their team’s efforts will help move the organization towards that end.
• Effective volunteer leaders know the specifics. By being specific about what volunteers are being asked to lead, not only are all of you more likely to get the desired result, but you are also giving the leaders the specifics they need to develop their own plan of action to reach those results.
• Effective volunteer leaders have a greater degree of autonomy and latitude than traditional volunteers. Authentic leadership depends on having autonomy and freedom to lead. It takes practice, patience, and trust for staff to truly delegate and afford their volunteer leaders the authority to make a plan, revise it as needed, and get to results.
• Having effective volunteer leaders not only increases outcomes but also helps with measuring outcomes. Volunteer leaders and their teams can intentionally collect data throughout the process so that evaluation and measurement are easier and more comprehensive at the end. In other words, they can help tell the story of their teams’ success. How is your organization engaging volunteer leaders?
Volunteer leaders will move your organization towards a broader and more lasting impact – much like the Extreme Makeover: Neighborhood Edition did. Define your constituents’ greatest needs and then engage skilled and experienced volunteer leaders to become team leaders and project managers to address those needs. In doing so, you will expand from “remodeling one house” towards rebuilding a neighborhood. Please share your story of volunteer leaders on this blog and check back to see what others are doing as well. Join the conversation!
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