Don’t Make These 4 Common Volunteer Training Mistakes

While there are a number of excellent resources on developing effective nonprofit training, few address the significant pitfalls that can arise in training and orienting your volunteers.

Because they are often the faces of your nonprofit, volunteers need to be properly trained to maintain your nonprofit’s community relationships and the efficacy of your programs. But the inverse can mean more than inefficiency in your organization. Insufficient training can also mean that you’re less likely to give your volunteers a positive experience, leading to poor volunteer retention.

You can mitigate risk in your volunteer programs by looking for, identifying, and remediating the most common and significant training mistakes:

1. Failing to plan volunteer training sessions.
2. Ignoring your volunteers’ opinions and suggestions.
3. Devaluing your volunteers’ time and impact.
4. Neglecting your appreciation strategy.

Instead of waiting until your next training is upon you, we recommend that you begin these steps well in advance. By fixing any mistakes now, you’ll save time, energy, and resources in the long run.

1. Failing to plan volunteer training.

When you’re in charge of leading training, the biggest mistake you can make is showing up unprepared. You have a responsibility to set the right example for your volunteers.

Fumbling through notes on your phone or reading from a decades-old guide appears unprofessional. Moreover, an off-the-cuff training plan generally lacks any of the structured, interactive elements that give volunteers the hands-on tools necessary to do their jobs well.

Ultimately, training without a plan and set schedule is a waste of your volunteers’ time as well as your own.

Instead, define exactly what you want your training to accomplish and then work backward to plan the learning experiences and instructions that will help you meet your training goals. As you make your plan, you should:

• Take stakeholder opinions into consideration. Listen to and survey your staff and volunteers for ideas to improve training sessions.
• Develop clear, step-by-step instructions for training leaders to follow. While an experienced member of your team should ideally lead training, you want to create procedures that can be easily followed for continuity between staff transitions.
• Plan your training to be interactive. Don’t expect your volunteers to learn what to do simply by listening to lectures.
• Create handouts and a schedule that volunteers can follow and refer back to. These will help prepare volunteers for what the training will look like and will keep everyone on the same page.

Even as you enter with a strong plan, you’ll inevitably need to be flexible (within and between training) to accommodate the varying needs and skills of your volunteers. This brings us to the second mistake you can make in volunteer training: disregarding your volunteers’ feedback.

2. Ignoring your volunteers’ opinions and suggestions.

Volunteers come from all walks of life, and they volunteer for just as many reasons. Treating them as a homogeneous group means that you miss opportunities for deepening your relationships and targeting their training needs.

What should you do? As we mentioned above, conduct regular surveys—before, during, and after each training—and adapt your processes based on volunteer responses.

You might, for example, survey volunteers during their initial registration about their motives for working with your organization. If responses emphasized an interest in the social elements of volunteering, you might edit your next training to spend extra time on introductions and getting-to-know-you activities.

Even negative survey responses can be beneficial to your training development. While they may sometimes be difficult to hear, these responses usually come out of a place of a volunteer’s care for your organization—and hope to make it that much better. Take critical survey responses as an opportunity to respond to time-sensitive volunteer concerns quickly and to improve your processes for future training.

3. Devaluing your volunteers’ time and impact.

According to Galaxy Digital’s guide to tracking volunteer time, the national value of a volunteer is $28.54 per hour. That’s a big investment in your organization that adds up over time.

But when you don’t see your volunteers every day, it can be easy to take each volunteer’s impact on your organization for granted. When they feel like they’re not valued, they’ll eventually leave your organization for greener pastures.

Training is often the first major contact many volunteers will have with your nonprofit, and this sets the stage for their continued feelings about their organizational value. Many volunteers have busy lives, and they’re making time in their limited schedules to support your cause. If you waste their time with unfocused or confusing training you’re telling your volunteers that you don’t value their investment.

As you communicate with volunteers during their training, be clear and consistent about:

1. The reason they’re being trained. What is the intended outcome of the training?
2. The impact your organization has on the community you serve. What’s your mission, and where are you successful at achieving it?
3. The way their role will contribute to the organization’s impact. If you’re unsure of your volunteers’ impact, that’s a sure sign that you need to develop ways—such as time-tracking—that can give you accurate, actionable metrics.

Looking to the future of your training, show that you value the time of busy volunteers by offering a virtual training option. This gives volunteers a choice to participate in training at a place and time when they’ll be most attentive and receptive.

Moreover, during both virtual and in-person training, don’t forget to articulate the difference they’re making. This gives volunteers context for their work and a stronger personal drive to see your organization succeed.

4. Neglecting your appreciation.

Along with devaluing your volunteers’ time and impact, not showing your appreciation for volunteers during and after training can negatively impact performance and retention.

Just like you’d thank your donors for their financial gifts, you also want to thank your volunteers for their time and energy. In each thank-you message, follow these best practices for the most effective results:

• Personalize each message with volunteer names, titles, and pronouns.
• Reference the training they attended and its main takeaway.
• Restate the impact your volunteers have on accomplishing your shared mission.
• Consider also using the thank-you note to remind the volunteer of their volunteer schedule or other opportunities they might be interested in.

If you want to take a step beyond your thank-you notes, consider also hosting volunteer-specific appreciation events, such as a happy hour at a local brewery, that gives volunteers an opportunity to socialize with your staff and fellow volunteers.

Your job is done once you’ve planned and conducted successful training while avoiding these common mistakes, your job is done, right?

Wrong! As a volunteer manager, the biggest mistake you can make is stopping here, sending your volunteers off to their assigned tasks, and never training them again.

Instead, after the initial volunteer orientation, plan to continuously assess knowledge and skills gaps and interests, and then develop subsequent training to fill these needs.

Nonprofit Courses’ list of professional development opportunities suggests offering volunteers a range of resources, including online courses, mentorship programs, live seminars, and book clubs. Programs and best practices will evolve, and volunteers will take on new, expanded roles.

Along with these changes, it’s in everyone’s best interest to continue training on a regular basis. Helping your volunteers complete their assignments to the best of their abilities will ultimately help your nonprofit achieve its mission.