Volunteers are a great source of support for NGOs since they input high level of professional skills with little or no obligations for payment. There can be both national and international volunteers, but the latter can not only provide skill support, but they can also be involved in raising funds for the organization. There are many cases where ex-volunteers after working with NGOs in developing countries have returned back to their home and raised funding for them. Besides, volunteer-sending agencies also ensure that only skilled professionals are given placement at under-resourced organizations so that right skill transfer takes place in terms of improved management of the systems.
However, in spite of the valuable support rendered by volunteers, sometimes, there are situations where NGOs fail to utilize them in the most appropriate manner. This is mostly because they are unable to plan out a systematic approach towards managing them and making them deliver the best in the interest of the organization. For NGOs in developing countries, it may be a challenge to develop terms of reference, action plans and performance assessments for volunteers. However, there is an interesting guide available for free download from techsoup.org that elaborately provides information about managing volunteers so that they able to contribute to the organization in the most relevant manner.
Working with Technical Volunteers: A Manual for Nonprofit Organizations was developed and improvised over a period of time. The latest version, published in 2009, gives an introduction to volunteers, how NGOs can write job description and also assists in finding them out and finally how to maximize their role for building the organization and improving project management. Although it seems the guide has been written for nonprofits in western countries, yet it still offers enormous amount information that can specifically assist NGOs in managing their volunteers. The guide uses the term, ‘technical volunteers’ and defines it as:
“Technical volunteers are enthusiastic, skilled individuals who also care about contributing to society. They may be accustomed to a different working environment than yours, but they have come to your organization to help contribute to its efforts. Everything you can do to maximize the time they spend with you will increase mutual satisfaction with the arrangement, as well as encourage a volunteer to repeat their gift of time and expertise.”
The guide also aids organizations with sample formats and projects on technology assessment, assessing a network, building a small peer-to-peer local area network (LAN), building a client server network, troubleshooting machines, database assessment, database training, building a rolodex database, building a new web site, changing an existing web site, technical volunteer questionnaire, volunteer contract, volunteer project schedule: sample volunteer project schedule, computer maintenance log and technical inventory – computer hardware.
The free guide can be downloaded from this link.