Volunteering builds a sense of ownership among your group’s members and makes them feel more connected to ONA. Diverse perspectives on the leadership team will help make your group stronger, and by creating more leadership opportunities for others, you’re developing more leaders in your community who will be better equipped to make change. You’ve put in a lot of work to start this group, and if you need to step down or want to change your role you will need someone who’s well-positioned to take over.
But developing leaders for your team is a relationship that takes time. We recommend starting by creating some volunteer roles, gradually increasing their responsibility, then transitioning them into a leadership role.
Start by recruiting volunteers.
- Be very clear on each volunteer’s responsibilities/expectations.
- Be creative in coming up with roles. When someone comes up to you at an event and asks how they can help, give them something to do right then.
- Find the right role for the right person. Make sure it’s something that they can reasonably and comfortably do. If the person is an extreme introvert, maybe invite them to help with setup or cleanup rather than having to be a greeter at the door. Or, if someone has trouble standing for long periods of time, give them a role where they can be seated.
- When possible, give volunteers a chance to get to know each other.
- Recognize them for their work. You can thank each volunteer by name from the front of the room when you introduce the speaker, or send them a thank you card after the event.
- Give them opportunities to grow their roles and build new skills, if they volunteer at multiple events. Even if the task you are giving them is something you can easily do yourself, it helps them build a sense of ownership over the group.
How do I move people from being one-off volunteers to being a long-term member of my group’s leadership team?
- Just ask. If you have a person in mind to join the team, tell them what the leadership team does and why you think they’d be a good fit. Organizers who do this find that most people were flattered and happy to help.
- Give them a clear role, and let them pick which one they want to do. When Andrew and Margaret of ONA St. Louis grew their leadership team from two to six, they used ONA’s templates for hospitality coordinator and communications coordinator. They recruited two people for each role.
- Think of this as leadership development. Check in regularly with each person to find out how they are doing in their role and how you can help them work towards their professional goals. Look for ways to complement each other’s leadership styles.
- Keep communications regular with your leadership team. Here are some ideas for ways you can do this:
- Weekly Zoom call
- Slack channel for the leadership team
- Google Docs/Drive
- Scrum
- Divide and conquer
- Master contact list on Google Drive
- Monthly checklist on Google Sheets
- Facebook chat
- Asynchronous communication channels (e.g., email thread)
- Team dinners
