5.2 ‘Don’t make me feel guilty, let me go!’

People’s circumstances change, and you can’t expect volunteers to stay with you forever. For example, if volunteers say at the beginning of their volunteering that their main motivation is to gain experience in a particular field, then, they might want to be supported to move on through the provision of a reference. Or, volunteers might want support to develop into a new role within your group or organisation, or elsewhere.

Volunteers might simply have a change in wider personal circumstances and find that they no longer have the same time available to offer, or that they’ve achieved what they wanted to through their volunteering. On occasion, volunteers leave because they have decided the role, or the group or organisation is not right for them.

Whatever the reason, it’s useful to try and get feedback from volunteers as they leave, which can then inform future service delivery, volunteers’ activities or roles. And again, whatever the reason, it’s important to acknowledge the contribution that the volunteer has given.

Here, James talks about managing volunteers leaving and how he seeks feedback.

Download this video clip.Video player: James, Volunteering Manger, LGBT Youth Scotland. All rights reserved.

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Transcript: James, Volunteering Manger, LGBT Youth Scotland. All rights reserved.

James

So I guess with every volunteer there comes that point where they have to move on. I think it’s really important we don’t look at a volunteer moving on as a failure. Often it just means that they have got to the place where they want to be or volunteering has filled a purpose for them. So I’m generally quite happy when that happens. When volunteers move on, it can happen in many different ways, it can be lots of different reasons, behind that. Commonly what I find is that a volunteer might ask if they can take a break because they’re really busy and then we agree a time limit for that break and then I will check in with them and they maybe want a bit longer. And that might be a time for me to then start saying, well should we have a chat about this, things have changed for you, you’ve got more responsibilities of work, you have a young family now, or whatever it might be. But we can gently explore if the volunteer wants to leave. And they don’t always, but there are times when they’re quite grateful that I have asked them that question, so we can look at a way on how that is done. What’s important for us, particularly if a volunteer is working with young people, is to plan how they exit the youth group, so they might want to think about when they are going to tell the young people that they’re planning to move on, and sometimes the young people want to throw some kind of a leaving party for the volunteer, so that can be really nice. I’ll always try and do an exit interview with volunteers when they leave, wherever I possibly can. Just go through how were things, is there anything we can learn. And I always send an anonymous online questionnaire that the volunteer can fill out as well, just in case there is anything they didn’t feel comfortable talking about. But it is really important to hear back from volunteers about, not just what we did well, but also what we maybe could have improved upon, that helps us get it right next time.

End transcript: James, Volunteering Manger, LGBT Youth Scotland. All rights reserved.

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James, Volunteering Manger, LGBT Youth Scotland. All rights reserved.

Accepting volunteers will leave means accepting the need to consider succession planning, which can be particularly important for small groups where everyone is a volunteer. Volunteers have said that some of the guilt that can be felt when wanting to leave comes from knowing a group has not really thought about how to replace them.

Some groups or organisations can become very reliant on the skills of certain individuals; sometimes it is the specialist knowledge they bring with them, sometimes it is the expertise they have developed through their volunteering. However, this is not just a problem for small groups. Groups or organisations of any size can become reliant on a particular volunteer, perhaps even taking their contribution for granted.

In this video, Tania talks about the challenge of finding new volunteers in a rural community.

Download this video clip.Video player: Tania, Volunteer Co-ordinator, GALE. All rights reserved.

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Transcript: Tania, Volunteer Co-ordinator, GALE. All rights reserved.

Tania

Trying to ensure that we have enough volunteers as other volunteers leave is a really difficult thing to do in this community. There is quite an established pool of volunteers that are shared by all the organisations locally. So we do sort of rely on people moving into the area. And we’re fortunate in that way is because of the nature of our organisation, that people moving into the area often come in here to try and find out more about the area. So immediately, very often the volunteers or potential volunteers, we can address them that way. Members of staff are aware and they’ll always mention to somebody who’s coming in or has just moved or is planning to move to the area, will always say ‘well you can always volunteer’. And we advertise, we have posters and we have a Facebook page. There is lots of different ways, but the main one, that’s our main way, we rely on recruiting new volunteers.

End transcript: Tania, Volunteer Co-ordinator, GALE. All rights reserved.

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Tania, Volunteer Co-ordinator, GALE. All rights reserved.