Case Studies for Volunteer Managers

Recruitment of Volunteers

Sarah recently moved to Brighton from another state where she had been involved in a Welcome Center program for international students. She sought out the international office staff, was welcomed warmly, and was invited to the committee meeting to plan the Welcome Center. When a discussion of possible ways to set it up was brought up, Sarah ventured some ideas from her previous experience. "Well, we’ve never done that here," she was told. "We try to make it as easy as possible and that would take too much time."

Question: What could be done to keep Sarah interested in volunteering?

Retention of Volunteers

Joan had been working for a year, chairing a Publicity Team for the Friendship Families Program. She had assigned a volunteer "techie" the work of developing a Web site for the program. He came forward, after about 100 hours of creative work, with a Web site that Joan thought was very strong and promoted the program much better than the previous site. Two other members of her committee, however, got excited, talking loudly and saying the Web site was a "piece of junk" and "not ready to go live." This angered the techie and Joan was unable to calm down the three people and restore order. The staff member attending the meeting made a couple of weak comments, but did not try to help Joan get out of the difficult situation.

Question: What could the staff member have done to prevent Joan from feeling terminal frustration?

Recognition of Volunteers

Barbara from Center College attended a regional NAFSA conference. She was an advocate in the small college in her community for the 40-50 internationals studying there. With the approval of the administration, she met the students at the airport, found American hosts for the students, designed the friendship family paperwork, and became the troubleshooter for the friendship families, the students, and the school. She was very effective and driven by the love of her work.

Two years later the Campus and Community Programming Rep on the regional team wrote to ask if she would be in a program at the upcoming regional conference. She was surprised to learn that Barbara had dropped all of her work with the students. She had become very discouraged with the progress she was making with the administration. She felt that they were indifferent to her efforts and did not show any interest in the support services she had been providing.

Question: What could have been done to recognize Barbara’s efforts?