One thing is for certain, volunteers are passionate about the causes they support. Knowing that club members are volunteering their time on the board or as a committee member, that level of passion is taken to a whole different level. This heightened engagement and involvement can be both maddening and incredibly rewarding for club managers and key directors mingling with club member volunteers.
To help with this unique dynamic at clubs, here are three easy tips to implement to enhance the volunteer relationship at clubs as well as maximize engagement with your volunteer members:
- Provide a comprehensive onboarding experience
- Ensure meetings are efficient and worthwhile
- Acknowledge their service
As a general manager or a member of the leadership team, you can impact quite positively the volunteers’ experience and simultaneously, enhance your own experience and interaction with volunteers by implementing these three suggestions.
Onboarding Experience
Let’s face it, club members volunteer for a wide variety of reasons. Whether to push a particular agenda or truly be engaged for the enhancement of the club’s mission, motivations vary as much as the different personalities that are present at any club. With a comprehensive onboarding process, expectations of board and committee members can be shared clearly so to establish expectations from the start. Job descriptions can be reviewed in a comprehensive manner (and if you don’t have job descriptions for your board members and committee members, maybe it’s time to create them).
Many organizations provide an “expectations” document to be acknowledged and signed by their volunteers/members. This signed document, covered individually during the onboarding process, not only eliminates ambiguity around what is expected as a volunteer but also holds each member accountable for their behavior moving forward.
Also, do you provide onboarding for committee members? Most clubs state they have some kind of onboarding for board members, but if the committee work is a precursor/recruitment platform for future board members, an onboarding process for committee members should be just as important. Again, many members volunteer at clubs for different reasons, and having a platform to clearly communicate expectations will be beneficial to enhance their (and your) experiences.
Ensure Meetings are Efficient and Worthwhile
A friend of mine once said, “if you don’t want people to leave church early, talk less, sing more and be done in 60 minutes!” While it may be unlikely to have your meetings completed in 60 minutes, the key is asking yourself if you are being a good steward of your volunteers’ time. Are agendas sent out prior to the meeting with specific time allotment to agenda topics? Communicating prior to the meeting as to whether a topic is to inform, get feedback or have a vote will be helpful to make your time together as efficient as possible.
Ensure you are leveraging the expertise around the table on strategy, not day-to-day issues that should be addressed and handled by club management. Consent agendas move boards and committees away from discussing operational issues and force conversations to focus on strategy and vision. This kind of discipline (while hard to implement at first), enables meetings to be more efficient from a time perspective and overall, more worthwhile for all participants.
Acknowledge
It is a privilege to serve at one’s club, at the board level or on a committee. That privilege and pride is magnified when volunteers/fellow club members are recognized amongst their peers. Most clubs do a good job of acknowledging and celebrating board members throughout the building or on its website, but how are we acknowledging committee members and specific board members. There are countless creative ways to highlight volunteers from special designations on their lockers to how they are celebrated in print or throughout the physical space itself.
Ensuring member volunteers feel valued and appreciated for the time they spend on club business will ensure that they continue to be engaged and support the club’s overall strategy and vision.
Michael Bruni is a managing director at HPS Chicago and the chair of the National Club Association. He can be reached at 708-774-2494 or [email protected].