The KUPMC Blog

Rebecca Nesbit, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of nonprofit management in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. She researches volunteer management in public and nonprofit organizations. Feel free to contact her at beckynesbit@ku.edu with any questions about volunteer use.

One of the questions that I get most often from volunteer managers (or those who have been given the responsibility for coordinating volunteer efforts) is how they can get their supervisor or executive director to support their efforts at involving volunteers in the organization.

Many executive directors think that once they hire a volunteer manager they will no longer have to worry about the volunteer program. This is not true. Volunteer managers need specific, supportive actions from their supervisors or the head of their organization in order to make the organization’s volunteer program more effective.

Do you provide adequate resources for the volunteer program? Volunteers are not free. Beyond hiring a volunteer manager, the volunteer program will need a budget for supplies, communication, and recognition activities. At the very least, the action of giving a budget to the volunteer program indicates its importance in your organization.

Do you hold staff accountable for good working relationships with volunteers? Many executive directors believe that relationships between volunteers and staff at their organization are good, but the volunteer manager often knows differently. In many instances, especially when introducing a new volunteer program, staff might be reluctant or resistant to working with volunteers. (Look for a future blog article about employee reluctance to working with volunteers.) If the organization is truly committed to using volunteers, then working productively with volunteers should be part of employee job descriptions and performance evaluations.

Do you orient and train staff in ways to work effectively with volunteers? Executive directors often assume that volunteers can fit seamlessly into their organization, but working with volunteers requires a range of skill sets—interpersonal skills, communication skills, the ability to give feedback, managerial skills and time management skills. In addition, most employees do not understand what volunteers want and need in order to help them to be effective contributors to the organization. Staff members need training and orientation in these areas before being asked to work with volunteers.

What are the most frequent issues brought to you by the manager of volunteers at your organization?

Teresa Schwab, LMSW, is an Instructor with the KU PMC.  She is also a Trainer, Coach, and Facilitator.  She partners with individuals, organizations, and communities that are interested in making progress on issues that matter.  She lives in Lawrence with her husband and three young sons.  Teresa can be reached at teresa@arnavonstrategies.com.


My husband and I grew up in a very small town in rural Western Kansas.  The town has been slowly losing population for years, but after their school closed a few years ago, about all that remains now are a library, grocery store, one café/bar, and a post office.

This past weekend, we took our kids back there to spend Spring Break with their grandmothers who still live in the area.  While we were there, we took a walk around town to share memories from our childhood.  We started our walk through the alleys of downtown, which revealed something that we couldn’t have seen had we taken the sidewalk—almost all of the remaining buildings, emptied long ago of their businesses, were caving in.  I felt overwhelmingly sad realizing that in the not too distant future each of these buildings, remembered so fondly from our childhoods, would be reduced to rubble.

What does our small town have to do with your personal brand?  Basically, a brand is your identity, the way that you differentiate yourself from everyone else.  In order to create your brand, any brand really, you must first understand who you ARE and who you want to BE in a way that it influences what you DO and subsequently, how others see you.  Getting this kind of clarity gives you a blueprint for your future, informs the kind of tools you’ll need (skills, expertise, etc.), and allows you to make decisions about what kinds of materials you’d like to use (what you really need vs. what you can let go of).

Had our small community developed its identity consciously, perhaps defining that it wanted to always be a vibrant community, these buildings would never have been allowed to deteriorate and crumble.  Taking the time now to build your personal brand will prevent you from climbing a career ladder, only to find years down the road that your ladder has been propped up against the wrong wall.

Here are a few steps to get you started building your own personal brand:

Step 1
Understand who you are, especially your strengths. Make a list of what you perceive to be your strengths, then add any feedback you’ve received over the years from supervisors, colleagues, friends, family, and even strangers.  Pull out annual evaluations and/or any assessments you may have taken and re-read what they say about you.  This step helps set the context for the next few steps.  When you’ve got a pretty good combined list, you’re ready to move on.

Step 2
Define who you want to be and what impact you would like to have. Ask yourself, what difference do I see myself making in this world?  By the end of my career, what impact would I like to have had?  You may not completely know the answer to this yet, but you should feel okay about making a “best guess” based on where you are in your career path.  For some people, this is an evolutionary process.

Step 3
Define what you want to be known for. Ask, what do I want people to see when they look at me?  What do I want others to say about me to other people?  Articulate the value that you uniquely offer to others.  This step is important because this is the outward expression of your brand, i.e. what others see and experience as your unique value.

Step 4
Define for yourself why what you want to be and what you want to be known for are important. Values drive behavior, so make a list of values that are important to you.  This step is important because it keeps you focused on the most important priorities when you meet the inevitable barriers along the way.

Step 5
Get clear about what you need to do and how you want to do it. It may be helpful to limit your timeframe to either the next 12 months, or perhaps a little longer, like 3 years.  Ask yourself, what do I really want or need to do in this next year (or next 3 years) that will set me on a path to making the difference I ultimately want to make?  What projects do I want to initiate or complete?  What new relationships do I need to establish?  What additional training do I need?  Think not just about what you yourself would like to do, but also about what your organization or other stakeholders need or want you to do—you may not be able to control every project you take on, but you can certainly control how you carry it out.

One final note, just as a building built in the 1950’s needs to be updated and remodeled, it is important to understand that developing your personal brand is a process–you’ll need to revisit it periodically.

After you’ve had a chance to develop your personal brand, I would love to hear how you’re using it to move forward in your life and career!

There are big failures like the Deep Water Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Fortunately, however, most failures don’t have stakes that are quite so high. In a recent post on Lifehacker, Jason Fitzpatrick suggests we bear that in mind and “embrace the inevitability of failure” to achieve higher levels of workplace productivity.

He notes that “when you abandon the stance that the mistake-maker is flawed and embrace the stance that mistakes are part of human cognition and everyone will make them, you can focus on productivity instead of scapegoating the mistake makers.”

This rings so true that I can feel myself breathe a bit easier just reading his words. I think of my experiences working with college writers to improve their papers at the KU Writing Center.

A lot of students who knew about our services for their entire time at KU would spend multiple semesters avoiding us before finally coming in. I absolutely understand this–coming in means admitting that one’s writing isn’t perfect.

Of course, the Writing Center staff approached this as a given and believed that no one’s writing–even (especially) our own–was perfect. Starting with this assumption allows space for improvement.

We didn’t blame the writers for imperfect grammar or disorganized drafts; we assessed what they needed and offered some assistance to make the paper better. As long as they were making an effort, we were right there with them to offer support and guidance.

What if we bring this idea into the workplace?

As long as we’ve put a good-faith effort into doing our best, we could embrace the inevitability that all of us will fall short sometimes. This would allow us to direct our attention to dusting ourselves off and moving forward with new information rather than stalling out on the self-flagellation that can accompany failure.

Are there flops and failures that have contributed productively to your skills and perspectives today? Have you helped your colleagues or your kids navigate through a failure and watched them come out stronger on the other side? Share your stories in the comments to helps us all embrace the possibility of failure and dive in anyway.

Check out this CNN story about a study by Carnegie Melon University indicating that “sentiments expressed via the millions of daily tweets strongly correlate with well-established public opinion polls, such as the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) and Gallup polls.”

The full report of the study hasn’t been released yet, but it’s interesting to think that the twitter comments about a city or other government agency might be a reasonable representation of the views on an issue.

Study after study indicates that what staff want more than anything else in the workplace is more recognition, not in the form of Employee-of-the-Month awards or plaques, but rather day-to-day feedback that let’s us know our work has been noticed and is valued. This post on the Harvard Business Review blog addresses how to offer such feedback and praise in ways that truly matter to the recipient. Hint: being specific is key.