Volunteers can't be managed with contracts and fixed rules. They need to be managed as what they are: volunteers. A volunteering policy must therefore accept fluid boundaries between the tasks of volunteers and professionals.
The tasks of volunteers are not something that you as a manager can define in advance with a contract or a manual. If you want to harness the power of volunteers, you need to take an exploratory approach to what the collaboration can be about. That's why public sector leaders make a crucial mistake by considering the employee as the starting point when managing a volunteer effort.
Volunteers come with risk
With volunteers, it is always personal attitude and motivation that takes precedence over formality. In other words, it is always the volunteer who decides whether or not to follow a rule. The volunteer is first and foremost loyal to what he or she thinks the moment and the encounter with the other person requires - not what the organisation values.
This means that volunteers always check whether a rule seems to make sense in the moment, and if they don't think it does, they are not afraid to break it. If a volunteer is in charge of the last hour of games and socialising at a nursing home, the social hour may suddenly take longer than agreed. This can be a big problem or a small one. It depends on who you ask. The relatives may be worried and ask where their family member is when they call at the agreed time, while the resident may think it's great that the social hour was extended. This is the strength of volunteering, but it is also the challenge for a public sector that focuses on control and risk.
Empty bins or cut roses?
Public sector management typically has a strong focus on risk management, and for good reason. But this kind of management can get in the way of getting better at bringing volunteers into public welfare.
If you as a municipality want volunteers to take care of the garbage in your parks, you have to accept that it won't always be done as agreed. That the volunteers have suddenly "forgotten" to empty the bins and instead cut the roses. This can lead to a lot of complaints from residents, which is why public sector managers may be afraid of making mistakes and avoid engaging with volunteers.
However, the way forward is not to try to shut down the risk of broken agreements and mistakes by wrapping volunteers in rules and contracts. Instead, be open to allowing volunteers to explore the boundaries between professional and volunteer work. Because what they're inviting in is something different from themselves, it's necessary for managers to understand how volunteering is fundamentally different from professional work.
