As a busy volunteer organizer, there's no better feeling than having all your shifts staffed up and everything running smoothly. If you were clever enough to use VolunteerSpot, scheduling and coordinating your volunteers almost runs itself, the volunteers can easily be contacted, automatically reminded, automatically thanked, the whole deal is nearly automated, you are blissful, relaxing... hang on, just a minute, now you're getting cocky, like me, so read on, and save yourself from a huge potential problem!
In addition to writing and spreading the joys of VolunteerSpot, I also round out my life as co-chair of a one committee of 40 or so parents who each work one shift a month. After the frenzy of recruiting early in the school year, my co-chair and I got everyone into the groove of their monthly shifts, and then started to relax as all ran smoothly.
Quite by accident, I stopped in on the committee's work this morning, and noticed some disturbing signs: no one was really talking with each other, supplies were half what they should have been and there'd been a lot of resentment building between team members which us co-chairs weren't aware of since we'd been "relaxing." Diving in to help, it was easy to see where the breakdowns were occurring -- there was a minor training issue and one shift change needed would address and fix the issues that had been plaguing this awesome, hard-working, reliable group of people and in my opinion turned what should have been a bubbly, happy, monthly gabfest into a source of gently seething frustration that might have sent most of these great people off toward other jobs next year (instead of the one I need them for).
The lesson is obvious: don't take people for granted! You've done the hard part -- recruiting the volunteers -- now keep your job easy by checking in regularly with your teams in person. The experienced eye can spot problems quicker than newbies and can also make them understand that problems are not their fault. Experienced eyes can fix the problems, keep the volunteers happy, and prevent unnecessary burnout.
So, if your volunteer life is running smoother than you could have ever imagined, take a moment and make sure you haven't let your guard down like I did -- keeping your volunteers happy keeps everyone happy (especially committee co-chairs!).
