Tobi Johnson: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. In this episode, I’m making a big announcement. And if you read the episode title, you probably already know what that is. I’m taking a summer break. The first summer break in over four years. I’ve produced over 220 episodes of this podcast, which has taken about four and a half years.

I’ve been thinking about time, energy, how I’m spending it, and why we all need a break once in a while. So I’m going to share a little bit about that today. I’m also going to share what I’m going to be working on instead this summer, which I’m very excited about. I also want to share a few curated episodes that are some of my faves that you might want to listen to if you haven’t listened to all of them. There’s some oldies but goodies that I want to call out for you. So that’s what our episode is all about today.

A few weeks ago, I sent this note to our Volunteer Pro Impact Lab members. I want to read it to you because it sort of encapsulates what my frame of mind is lately. So I titled it, the subject line of the email was “Working to Live This Summer.” And in the body of the email, I said, “Whatever happened to summers? It used to be that we looked forward to with relish the dog days of summer. We used to plan out real time off, choose books to read, and set aside time to do absolutely nothing. I’m not sure when it exactly happened that summers became just another season of getting things done. Maybe we should put leisure time on our list of goals. Considered an achievement when we actually exhale and enjoy the miracles around us. This summer I’m going to give it a try to work less and enjoy the fruits of my labor more. After all, don’t we work to live, not the other way around?”

So that was my note to my members. They’re hardworking people, they’re experts in volunteer engagement, they’re doing amazing work in their communities. But I also think there’s something in recent years that has really taken us away from a little bit of leisure time and leisure time without feeling guilty. This year, instead of living to work, I’m going to work to live. So this summer I’m taking a break from the podcast.

As I mentioned, I’ve been doing this for about four years. I started my first podcast in April of 2022. And I couldn’t believe it when I was reviewing my old episodes. I thought, “Are you kidding me? April 2022?” Time really does fly. But I’ve decided this year to lean into my summer break. And so this will be my last episode for a while. I’m not sure when I’m coming back. It will be this fall sometime.

Before I talk about what I’m going to be doing instead, part of it is obviously a little more leisure time. But before I talk about that, I want to thank you all for listening. If this is your first episode, please go back into our library and enjoy all of the 200 plus episodes I’ve recorded over the years. If you have been listening week after week after I drop every Thursday our new podcast episodes, thank you so much for spending time with me. I really appreciate it. If you didn’t listen, I obviously wouldn’t podcast. So I really appreciate the folks that support this podcast and share it and talk about it and listen to it because volunteer engagement is important and the work we do in communities is essential.

I wanted to make sure as we talk through this podcast and connect through this podcast that we are doing it in the most effective way possible, in a way that’s pro-volunteer, in a way that is good for staff as well, in the way that helps us all meet our missions. So that’s really been the intention of the podcast to date.

So I’m going to take a break. I’m actually reducing my hours to three days a week, which is insane. But I’ve been working on it. It’s been a little bit of a bumpy landing, I would say. It’s hard to go from four or five days a week to three days a week, especially when your five days a week is usually more than 40 hours. But I’ve really been taking seriously the need to rest. And if you follow me at all, you’ll know there’s an episode where I talk about my challenges with long COVID and recovering from long COVID. I still feel those challenges sometimes.

My husband and I just moved to the West Coast. We’re now in the Pacific Northwest full time. My husband’s retired now. I’m looking on the horizon for retirement at some point. But also we’re just seeing how life is passing by and we want to be able to live it and not be so head down in work that we’re missing the important things like spending time with family, spending time with your partner, spending time with yourself, your own spiritual time. So it’s all important.

But this summer, I’m working on some projects. We’re finishing up the Volunteer Management Fundamentals Live cohort. Shout out to our students. They are doing amazing work and it’s such a great group to work with. We have a few more coaching calls this month, and then we’ll be closing out that cohort. But also, I’ve decided to return to my book. I’ll link to the episode where I talk about my book. It’s episode 80. Now that tells you how long ago I started this book. Episode 80, a sneak peek of my new book for volunteer leaders.

The book is something that I started working on a lot about three years ago. We had a massive flood in our home here in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve been going back and forth between East Tennessee and the Northwest over the past three years. The first year we bought the house that winter, we had a very huge flood. We were going to be staying here and I was going to be writing my book, editing it at that time. I had a manuscript done, but I didn’t have it edited yet. Unfortunately we had this huge flood. Then I sort of came down with long COVID. Long story short, three years later, we are here.

So this summer is really the summer where I make space for that creative endeavor. It does take headspace. It takes a lot of headspace actually to be creative and not write a book like you would write a blog post.

This book, if you’re interested and want to indulge me a little bit, has a central question to it. It’s really designed to help volunteer leaders and leaders in the making conquer their doubts, build their confidence, and make impact for the greater good, all while working in harmony and synergy with their team. That’s really what the book is about. So it’s for volunteers who lead. I have met so many volunteers throughout my trainings with board members, committee members, chapter leaders, association special interest groups, sections, you name it, project leaders, you name it. I’ve had the pleasure and the honor to help these folks get better at what they do and to really enjoy their volunteering, which is what it’s all about.

The central question for the book really is: how can volunteer leaders make a bigger difference in the causes, charities, and communities they care about with less stress and greater fulfillment?

We as staff who’ve been working in nonprofits, I had a 25-plus year career in nonprofits before I ever started my consulting practice almost 20 years ago. So I’ve been at it for a while. We know how fulfilling it is to work in nonprofits, but to volunteer in nonprofits and lead in nonprofits is another animal altogether. Your organizations rely on volunteer leaders.

But we found in our Volunteer Management Progress Report that when we asked what percentage of total active volunteers are in leadership roles in your organization, over 43 percent said one to five percent. And we had another 18 percent that said they had no volunteers in leadership roles. So we know we have a long way to go when it comes to really leveraging volunteer talent in leadership roles.

We also asked how confident are you in your organization’s ability to fill volunteer leadership roles with qualified candidates over the next two years? The average was like 3.2, so average confidence. So not only are organizations not leveraging volunteer talent, they’re sort of “meh” about whether or not they can find volunteer leaders.

Part of this book is really to encourage volunteers who lead to help them feel confident, to help them actually be more effective with their teams. A lot of folks get either voluntold or begrudgingly say yes or get thrown into volunteer leadership roles. Sometimes they run for elected office, but often they struggle to really have synergy with their teams. There are things that they can do. Leadership doesn’t happen by accident or chance. It happens by design. I’m going to help them design their teams.

As leaders of volunteers, if you’re paid or unpaid, this book might also be helpful to you to be able to figure out how to best support these groups and get them prepared for leadership. That’s really what it’s all about. I want to make sure that people feel confident in their roles, but also effective and joyful. Usually volunteer leaders are contributing a fair amount of time to these roles. Most of the time, in large membership-based organizations, for example, the organization would not exist without its volunteer leaders.

I also want to encourage those organizations that don’t really leverage volunteer leadership that much. In order to scale, you’re just not going to get the kind of funding you need to hire the levels of staff you need to really make a huge impact. It’s going to take volunteer leaders to help you get to that next level. So it’s an important topic, I think, and quite timely in today’s world.

Volunteer leadership is important because volunteer leaders bring a lot of resources to the table besides just their time. Besides just being a pair of hands, they can help improve the culture of an organization. They can bring social capital and social networks to your organization. They have connections that you don’t have. They also bring resources. They make tangible contributions, financial contributions to organizations. They bring expertise that you may not have. Generally volunteer leaders have some level of expertise that they can leverage.

So this is a book for them, but it also can help you. Over the next few months I’m going to be working with my publisher and I’m going to be working with a coach and a group of authors who are also working to finish their manuscripts. I’m excited about that. I walk my talk. I believe in continuous improvement and making ourselves better as we move forward in our careers. I do that myself as I go along.

This is my message to potential readers and particularly to volunteers who lead. This is all the thinking I’ve been doing as I focus my book down on my ideal reader. If you’re a volunteer who’s passionate about your cause, your contributions are invaluable to the organization and people you support. Working inside organizations and with teams can also be challenging as you navigate purpose, personalities, and projects to help your organization reach its goals. But leadership need not be confusing, difficult, inefficient, or laden with conflict or drama. Instead, equipped with the right tools and frameworks, your team can make a real impact in ways that are both meaningful and fun for everyone. That’s really the bottom line.

I’ll be excited to talk about how we do leadership from the inside out. If you want to check out more about what I mean by leadership from the inside out, check out Volunteer Nation episode 80, a sneak peek of my new book for volunteer leaders. I’ll link to that in the show notes.

So let’s take a break from my summer plans for my summer break. After this, I’m going to share with you five specific podcast episodes of the Volunteer Nation podcast that can help you think differently about leadership. They’re all around the theme of leadership. If you’re going to miss this podcast over the summer, if you want to listen to some Volunteer Nation podcasts, I’ve got five episodes hand selected for you right after the break. So don’t go anywhere.

Tobi: Okay, we’re back with my summer break plans. I’d love to offer you five curated, hand-selected Volunteer Nation podcast episodes from the archives that are all about leadership in some way. I’ve got links to these in the show notes, so there’s no need for you to search around. You can find them there. I hope while I’m on break, you’ll have a chance to listen to these. When I come back from break, I’m going to do a rethink of the pod. We’re going to think about what is the best format, what offers the best support for listeners, and how does it align with where I’m headed in my life as a podcaster and a volunteerism expert.

But for now, let me give you the curated list of Volunteer Nation podcast episodes for your summer break enjoyment around the theme of leadership. You may have missed these oldies but goodies. There’s some that go way, way back.

Volunteer Nation episode number 3: Moving from a Scarcity Mindset to Abundance. This is such a core essential leadership skill, especially in our sector. We tend to lean towards scarcity, poverty mindset, and that just doesn’t help us grow. In this episode, I help identify the facets of a scarcity mindset. I include a self-assessment and nine ways that limiting beliefs can keep you from growth. I also give you five practical ways of how you can counteract that scarcity mindset. Scarcity mindsets are pretty sneaky things. Sometimes they show up and we don’t even realize it’s impacting our lives. You’ve got to cut those off at the knees because they will pervade and keep you from seeing opportunity.

Volunteer Nation episode 67: How to Set Up a New Volunteer Coordinator for Success. This is a perennial favorite in our top Volunteer Nation podcast episodes. Folks really like this. This episode has quite a few downloads. In it I discuss two areas for key volunteer management success. I focus on two big areas that are, in my mind, the most essential.

First, the new volunteer coordinator’s role. It’s evolved into such a multifaceted position that encompasses a wide range of responsibilities. When we bring a new volunteer coordinator in, we need to help them prioritize that monster list of things that we all do as leaders of volunteers, to first prioritize which are the most important, but also to take steps to reduce paperwork and administrative burden and overload. What I see with new volunteer coordinators often is they spend a lot of time behind the computer doing manual data entry, manual reporting. The real work is relationships between volunteer services and other departments, working on the social, relational side of volunteerism. They end up thinking that the paperwork side is somehow going to solve all problems, and it doesn’t.

Second, establish what success metrics they’re going to track and what success looks like. Metrics play a vital role in measuring success. There aren’t a lot of metrics out there to track volunteer manager performance, but establishing a few small metrics can be beneficial and be a visible guidance of their work. Maybe it’s, “We’d like you to increase the number of volunteers by X percent.” Or it might be, “We’d like to achieve a net promoter score of 63, or reduce monthly churn of volunteers down to below 5 percent.” Those are really clear metrics that help us understand the health of the volunteer program. Impact metrics around volunteer work are important, but those are not always something that a volunteer manager has total control over. We need to choose ones that are within their locus of control.

Volunteer Nation episode 115: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Volunteer Managers. I stole that from Stephen Covey. In this episode, I share my particular seven habits and why they’re essential. Habit number one is mind your mindset, which we already talked about. Habit number two is setting healthy boundaries. Boundary setting is so important when you’re a person who wears many hats and your work touches so many other departments. Volunteer managers are often middle managers, and it’s easy to get pulled in a million and one directions. Habit number three is being strategic. Habit number four is know your numbers. Habit number five is sharing the load, letting go and delegating and working as a team. Habit number six is working on your program versus in your program. It’s about proactive program development and setting aside time for that. Habit number seven is sharpening the saw, staying on point around today’s best practices in leading volunteers.

Volunteer Nation episode 183: The New Reality: Volunteers Don’t Need You. This one was a little bit I don’t know. I was in a mood when I did that one. I tackled this bold question: has the volunteer nonprofit relationship changed for the better? I argued that societal expectations and volunteer trends evolve, and the landscape today looks so much more like a buyer’s market. Volunteers have countless options and really expect meaningful, flexible, and well-designed experiences. I talk about the rise of informal volunteering, the growing need for adaptable roles. Volunteers can do a lot of things on their own without organizations. We really have to have a value proposition for people in our community that is appealing and makes sense for people who want to make a difference. I talk about how to create engaging modern experiences that attract and keep the best volunteer talent and stay relevant in this new era of volunteerism.

Volunteer Nation episode 62: 10 Ways to Create an Exceptional Volunteer Experience. One of my favorite topics of all time is designing for the volunteer experience. It’s just so much fun. Not all volunteer experiences are the same. I talk about ways to not only improve the volunteer experience but also learn from volunteers’ lived experiences. I talk a lot about connection, being social, belonging, and why it’s not good for volunteerism to feel like paid work. Volunteers do not volunteer because they enjoy working for free. They want to make a difference. It’s a totally different motivation. When we think about improving the experience, we have to get out of the employee transactional work-for-hire type of mentality, and really think about how people are making meaning in their lives and what role volunteerism plays.

So that’s my fifth and final curated episode for you around the theme of leadership. I hope those have been helpful.

I’m really looking forward to this break. I will come back in the fall and let you know where I’m at with the book. I should be done with editing. I’m using you as my accountability partner right now. I hope you don’t mind. I’m putting it out there in the universe. The book will be done in the next month or two or three. I’m going to be head down. I’ve pretty much cleared the decks of most of my work, except for our Volunteer Pro Impact Lab and a few speaking gigs. Full speed ahead with this book. Wish me luck. You don’t really need luck. What you need is commitment and creativity. I’m making space for that.

If you haven’t made any plans for your summer break, I hope you do. Our most creative selves cannot emerge if we are head down constantly working on deadlines and constantly trying to strive and achieve. Our headspace actually needs to get cleared out from time to time, and we need time to just sit. That’s what summer break used to be all about. Just sitting and relaxing. No one ever felt guilty about lying on the grass and looking at the clouds and imagining what the shapes were, going for a swim and picking fruit, picking berries and apples, hanging out with friends, going for walks, all that good stuff.

I hope in your summer you have some time. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, maybe you can take a winter break and enjoy some of that time off.

Thank you again for listening. It’s been such an honor and a pleasure to record these episodes for you over the last four plus years. I’m going to be coming back in the fall with, like I said, maybe a reimagined podcast. We’ll see what happens. I don’t have the creative space yet. But once the creative space is there, the juices will start flowing and I’ll come up with some ideas. I hope you all are getting your time off and I hope these episodes will help you. We have a huge backlog and library of episodes, so there’s always something that you can listen to for inspiration.

If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. Rate and review us. We’re still going to be around. The podcast isn’t going anywhere. I love those five-star reviews because it helps us be seen and heard by more people. That’s all I’ve got for today. I hope you’re doing well. I will see you next time, sometime next fall on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.