Managing volunteers: help!

[bagofbits]

I'm almost completely retired after a 30-year-career in advertising, publishing, PR, publicity and marketing. I have qualifications in PR, marketing, typography and graphic design.

Last year I was asked by someone who knows my background to help out a local community group that has traditionally held six events per annum, each of which needs publicising. They'd been struggling to get word out and sell tickets and needed assistance. I could do the work myself quickly and easily: I can create graphics and manage a social media campaign, design and print posters and flyers and programmes — whatever's required, really. The first event I publicised for them sold out and received some regional media coverage. The committee were delighted and so it's gone on.

But... volunteers. There are three main volunteers who'd been doing the publicity before I was asked to help out. They're enthusiastic amateurs and I assumed that they'd have no trouble learning to be a bit more professional and effective and I'd soon be able to hand everything back to them. But it isn't happening. I'm spending hours trying to gently teach them the basics but it's not sinking in. I've just had to explain again why we can't use, say, an iconic Getty image on FB or X unless we pay for it, despite having explained copyright law several times in the past. One of them argues, time and again, that we should always use upper case fonts in all text 'so that's it's easier to read'. He also loves terrible, illegible fonts on posters and flyers. I'm careful never to use words like amateurish in front of them: instead I print a flyer up using the font he wants in UC and we all agree that it's illegible and I suggest something that works better. And next time round, he's back to wanting 125pt Comic Sans and all upper case...

Only a couple of days ago I had to squash their bright idea of publishing what is clearly a libellous meme on the community group's X account. I've told them they can do it under their own IDs and they're really annoyed with me. I know they complain to the committee about what they see as my negativity, but I get results and so far we haven't had to issue an abject apology to a famous person for defaming them or pay a picture library fine.

Does anyone here work with volunteers? How can you encourage people to learn in an environment where there's no real incentive to improve? I regularly remind the publicity team that the only thing that matters for the group is ticket sales and staying within the law and that's how we judge our success. They say they feel straightjacketed and can't use their creativity. I really don't know how this can go on.

I left a national charity with 30000 volunteers last year. The majority were great but a significant minority were an absolute nightmare. I couldn’t believe how volunteers could be so in it for themselves, entitled and incompetent and be allowed to get away with it (almost lauded for it). It beat me in the end.

Can you try the accessibility angle re fonts, capital letters, coloured backgrounds etc? There are standards for readability to help eg dyslexic people, I don't know much about it all but it is important. As for the photos thing, some sort of social media policy / code of conduct is probably needed. Is the chair or whoever sympathetic? Does the organisation have a constitution or policies?

Not surprising that in the voluntary sector there are lots of volunteers.

Warn everyone that you're busy/on holiday for the next event. That they will have to organise it themselves. Then step back and watch it fail. Come back into the fold for the next event and ask how it went😁

For the fonts, agree a house style, get it approved by the committee. Then every poster is in that style.

For the photos, suggest ways they can be creative without breaching copyright - eg take their own photos. Community groups need volunteers like you, please don't quit!

Indeed. It was surprising what utter tw@ts they could be, though.

Can you create a reference sheet of "corporate" font, text size, colours, image sources etc to use going forwards. In the interest of consistency, accessibility, brand identity and ease of use.

I agree with this 100%.

Introduce a comms strategy, including guidance on which fonts, brand colours are approved/agreed etc.

Set up a Canva account, invite them to join once you've uploaded the fonts, styles, templates etc.

Use unsplash for images.

All of these will create a cohesive, professional and recognisable brand which will encourage sign up and engagement.

If they continue to divert from the agreed style, I'd step back completely.

For the fonts, agree a house style, get it approved by the committee. Then every poster is in that style.

That.
I volunteer for and am a trustee of a small charity. All our publicity is in the same font and the same colours, to match our logo and our website colours.

Nothing is put online without being passed via a staff member who is trained in SM. We've never had a problem because it's a clear house style and the same rule applies whether you're a volunteer or one of the handful of paid staff. .

I'd expected to get flamed for being controlling or unreasonable, so thank you for understanding the issues and offering encouragement. I could create a house style manual, that's a good idea. Whether any of them will stick to it I couldn't say: we can but try. Perhaps we can build a style manual together and then I'll take a few months away from it all and we'll see how they do on their own.

I do think people at all levels in the group tend to minimise my skills. One of the committee members took me aside not so long ago, told me he liked what I'd done with the design of an annual-report-style document and asked me if I'd spend an afternoon teaching him everything he needed to know to do something similar. I didn't know what to say. He seemed to assume that I could teach him a skillset developed over years in an afternoon. Typography, design layout knowledge, photo manipulation, editorial skills to start with. It didn't seem to have occurred to him that he might need some design talent too.

Some of the volunteers I've encountered have been great. I can't believe that some of the others have actually been employed, though they ensure me they have. It's been an eye-opener.

I think if you are at the stage of having to explain how not to libel famous people on X or that capital letters are not easy on the eye, you won't be able ot just create a style manual and leave them to it - they will just ignore it.

Volunteering is hard because when the other volunteers are not just useless but a liability, you need to remove them from the volunteer pool.

Are you in any position to manage them properly, or is this just ad hoc 'management'? Can you get onto the committee and thus have a say in who in on the marketing volunteer team?

Just to clarify, this isn't a charity. It has had small grants but it's not run on formalised lines. No one is paid and it's difficult to know who is really in charge. Often it feels like the volunteers. No one had really taken social media seriously before I came along.

I haven't been asked to come up with an identity, logo or house style but perhaps that's something I can suggest. The events the group puts on vary widely throughout the year and a single style wouldn't work so well, but I could certainly put together a style bible with some templates.

The more I think about it, the more I think the whole set-up needs to get a bit more professional. Lots to muse on.

People who've never worked in Comms/social media rarely grasp how much work and expertise it takes to get it right/not get sued.

Is there a way for you to choose which volunteers are involved with what you do and see if the organisation can find other activities for the ones who are never going to grasp it?

The style guide is a great idea but will be useless if you still have some people who ignore it or, worse, are a liability.

Presumably (as you have mentioned grants and selling tickets) they receive and spend money, it all sounds unprofessional, things like liability insurance etc are important too, is there any formal structure at all? Who is responsible for the money? What if someone makes off with it? Or mis-manages it.

Some of the volunteers I've encountered have been great. I can't believe that some of the others have actually been employed, though they ensure me they have. It's been an eye-opener.

I realise that I might have given the impression that some people are be employed by the group when I wrote this. What I meant was that some of them have apparently had careers and experience of the workplace. I wouldn't have wanted to be their manager.

Yes, the financial and legal/ insurance side of things is well-covered. One of the committee members is an accountant and one of the others has run larger organisations. But the importance of promotion and design and comms goes over their heads. I think they think, as someone else noted, that anyone can do it with an afternoon's training.

In the same way that everyone has an opinion on teaching because they went to school, everyone has an opinion on social media and marketing because they are on it/have seen it.

Most of those opinions are not helpful, and if these people actually worked n the field they'd be knocked out of them pretty quickly.

Do you actually want them to take over doing it? In which case a few templates and a style guide would probably go some distance.

If not, smile and wave.

I have been involved in quite a few voluntary organisations and what you are encountering is the very essence of the challenge of voluntary work.

For better or worse, you are not in a workplace anymore. You can’t necessarily pull the familiar levers of authority, expertise or hierarchy to make things happen the way that you want, or even in a way that isn’t an absolute disaster…

Persuasion, commitment and winning people over is the way to effect change. Otherwise it is very easy to haemorrhage volunteers and then where will the event be?

It really begins with appreciating people’s strengths. Your view of your fellow volunteers seems a bit…negative? So what if Derek wants to send out a flier in Comic Sans, (yes, design people hate it but the font is loaded onto almost every computer in the world so it must have been popular at some point!) perhaps he brings something else to the table? Someone who is terrible with Comms might be brilliant at engaging people in person or know almost everyone in the community.

So my second point is to pick your battles and let some things go.

Glad the finance side is all covered, that's good.

Unfortunately I agree that you can only push volunteers so much, they are doing this work for free and could easily walk away, unlike in a workplace. Carrot not stick. Frustrating though it is. However the copyright thing is really important to get right.

Sigh. Too much time is given to
respecting the views of arseholes.

They’re not respecting you or your views or the law, are they.

Manage this up - just tell boss you can’t work with them. Keep explanation short. They’re putting the charity at risk.

Yikes, I’m tough aren’t I 😀 Sort out copyright with a guide sheet you hand out over and over again and photo release forms you hand out in stacks of 10.

Charity comms people can be pretty dismissive of legals and rules as you’ve found out. They’re not publishing pics of real kids are they? If they are, the parents will hit the roof, so you can always wait for that lawyer’s letter.

If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to tell the trustees.

I know one volunteer who claimed all sorts on her LinkedIn profile, editing it regularly and such levels of exaggeration it was shameful.

She talked the talk but never actually contributed anything other than suggesting work for others.

I’m a volunteer. We’re a nightmare.

I used to be a voluntary volunteer manager but I stepped back because the 🤯 from both the volunteers and the management nearly finished me off. You have my sympathy.

See, I was asked to help them promote their events better and sell more tickets. I've achieved that. I've hung in there for more than a year now, trying to persuade and cajole and encourage a more effective, professional way of working among other volunteers. But if no one actually wants to be more effective I'll probably quit before long.

Well that’s the thing. They have no taste - well they do but it’s bad taste. So they can’t ‘see’ what you see.

The only solution is someone like you coming on and taking it on.