Just to remind you my research question is "How do you motivate a volunteer workforce in a nonprofit?"
I am making headway with my research and this week we were looking for empirical articles for our source. My search skills are progressing nicely and I am finding that I am getting sources that are about my topic much faster than before, my problem this week, was navigating through my chosen source. My source was fairly technical and I have to say it was kind of boring and hard to read with all my children running around, so I find myself writing this at 1 am just so I can get through reading my source enough to have a good understanding of it.
My source has taught me a lot about the differences between people who chose to work nonprofit and those who choose to work for profit organizations. One factor that stands out the most is that people who need stability, retirement, and health care as their main criteria when choosing which field to work in normally pick for profit organizations. People who look for family friendly positions tend to lean toward nonprofit. I found this to be something that I had never really thought about before. It caused me to look at my own motivations for this being my chosen profession and I realized when I examined myself this rang true for me. I am lucky enough to be in the position where my spouse provides us with stability, retirement and health care so I can pursue a career in something I find family friendly that allows me to be a mom and have a career. I wondered if I wasn't in this position if I would have even considered working in the nonprofit world.
How this helps me with my research question and how to motivate my volunteers, is that a strong leader can't lead well if they don't know their own strengths and weaknesses. If I don't know myself I can't lead as well as I should. If I don't know what motivates myself and my paid staff, I can't expect myself to be able to motivate a volunteer crew.
Hi Cheryl,
ReplyDeleteSo true when you make a point to say that what people are looking for is a reliable job or career that has a good salary and benefits. Many times working for either a non profit or private sector can assure that these will come with job. I have worked for a non profit program for the last 23 years and have to say that I have both, a good salary and love what I do. You make a good point of differentiating the both private sector and non profit entities. Through the years have come to realized that working for non profit programs does give you a sense of a friendlier more family type of environment.
We do rely from volunteers in the many events we host in our community. Without their assistance we would not be able to provide resources and education to our community. To show our appreciation to our volunteers we will have a night were we provide a nice dinner and provide each one of them a certificate of appreciation and believe it or not they are very grateful. I know for a fact that many other programs rely on volunteers because without them they would not be able to host and offer services to community.
I command you for your dedication to your education which may not be so easy having a family and small children but having the perseverance makes it possible.