Blog draft April 8 26

Volunteers

Horsepower: If you want to get something accomplished, ask volunteers to help you do it. It is as simple as that. These are the people who are involved in many issues and wish to be involved in more issues. You will find this population only if you look. They are already there. They are worker bees who truly are the horsepower of most nonprofit organizations.

Idea creativity: Volunteers are involved because they have a special interest in the topic you are working on. Because of that interest and involvement, they understand the problems and potential solutions better than most. As a direct result, creation of ideas and methods flow quickly. They can be evaluated quickly as well, and improved in their execution. Practical ideas drive this creativity. It is priceless and a primary characteristic of nonprofit volunteers.

Core of nonprofits: Very few for profit corporations have volunteers. Hospitals have them, but medical organizations are generally viewed as nonprofits, especially hospitals. When nonprofits are the focus, however, a considerable amount of their labor force is volunteers. That is a distinguishing feature of nonprofits. Managing volunteers is an entirely different human resources issue to tackle. How do you supervise, discipline, and earn compliance with management direction and orders? How do you ensure training is evenly acquired and measured? How do you motivate and encourage higher end performance from volunteers? Indeed, volunteer issues are many among nonprofit organizations. This is there primary manpower and needs effective management.

Accountability: To be valued and successful, an organization needs to be accountable for results. How this is measured may be difficult but essential. I feel confident that how well an organization fulfills its mission statement is the critical point of accountability. Is the organization known for its mission and achieving it? What is the vision of that mission statement? Is that measurable? Can that be the base of performance evaluations? Homework in this area needs to be done if performance is to be measured. That is the core of what the organization is all about. Its workforce, its volunteers, are the doers of these results. Measuring them should be achievable. If the mission is worth its salt, the results should be obvious.

April 8, 2026

Remember the Epstein Files

 

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