211 – Best Practices & Community Spirit with Volunteering New Zealand

Episode 211 – Best Practices & Community Spirit with Volunteering New Zealand 

Volunteer engagement is shaped not just by internal policies, but by the culture, values, and infrastructure of a country’s broader community. In places like New Zealand, where a small population relies heavily on volunteer-led organizations, best practices aren’t just guidelines; they’re a reflection of national identity and social cohesion.

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi Johnson welcomes Margaret McLachlan, Communications Manager, and Heidi Quinn, Sector Lead from Tūao Aotearoa Volunteering New Zealand. Together, they explore how best practice guidelines for volunteer management can be developed through genuine co-design, centering the voices of volunteers and the unique spirit of community that defines Aotearoa.

Tobi shares her experience facilitating a session in New Zealand, highlighting the importance of community-centric development and reflecting local values in volunteer work. Marg and Heidi then walk listeners through the history and methodology behind Volunteering New Zealand’s best practice guidelines—from a volunteer-centric, co-designed approach to using plain language that makes principles actionable for organizations of all sizes.

The conversation also tackles real-world challenges facing volunteer leaders today, including low technology adoption and the growing need for more informal volunteering opportunities. With over 115,000 not-for-profits in New Zealand—most of them volunteer-led—Marg and Heidi discuss how their membership-based organization provides advocacy, research, and training to keep the sector resilient and connected.

If you’re ready to move beyond one-size-fits-all volunteer management and learn how community spirit, co-design, and practical guidelines can elevate your program, this episode offers a rich, cross-cultural perspective and actionable insights you can apply anywhere.

Best Practices & Community Spirit – Episode Highlights

• [00:00] – Introduction to Community-Centered Volunteer Best Practices
• [12:15] – Structure and Size of New Zealand’s Volunteer Sector
• [22:30] – Challenges in Volunteer Management
• [49:23] – Tips for Developing Standards and Getting Buy-In
• [54:26] – Challenges Around Volunteer Exit and Succession Planning
• [60:07] – Values, Language, and Grounding Standards in Purpose
• [64:32] – How to Learn More and Connect with Volunteering New Zealand

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Strategy Scorecard™  
• Volunteer Management Progress Report 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #131: Volunteerism in Australia Part 1 – A National Strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #132: Volunteerism in Australia Part 2 – A National Strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson 
• Tūao Aotearoa Volunteering New Zealand website 
• Tūao Aotearoa Volunteering New Zealand Best Practice Guidelines 
• Assess your practices against the Volunteering New Zealand Best Practice Guidelines 
• Find Marg on LinkedIn 
• Find Heidi on LinkedIn 
• Mural Online Collaboration Tool 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode 211 – Best Practices & Community Spirit with Volunteering New Zealand 

Tobi Johnson: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson. And today I have such a treat. We’re going to talk about best practices and community spirit with Volunteering New Zealand. I have two of my newfound friends from Volunteering New Zealand who I met back in January when I was in Wellington and presenting and facilitating a session on their best practice guidelines and how we can improve the volunteer experience at each step of the volunteer journey. So we did a facilitated journey mapping session. We had such a good time and it was just really fun to hang out and learn more. And, you know, we feature national standards and work like this on the pod. A few years ago, we had folks from Australia in episode 131 and 132, we talked about the national strategy with Zach Reimers and Sarah Wilson. And so it’s something that always fascinates me because I believe I have seen through these different standards and reviewing them, the way that different countries approach volunteer engagement and volunteer mobilization. And in particular, it’s so interesting how these often will reflect the community or the way of being of folks in that country. And I think in New Zealand, that is absolutely true.

You know, when we were facilitating our session, I was really asking folks to think about what breaks or builds community. And I believe that the way that these best practice guidelines were developed was very much a community-centric way, a volunteer-centric way. So I want to dig into that a little bit. In the event that you’re curious about what best practices you might develop in your own organization, and how you might do it from a volunteer-centric way, there’s lots of ways to look at what we’re gonna talk about today, but I think let’s get to it. So Marg and Heidi are here from Volunteering New Zealand, and I’m gonna introduce them in a minute, but welcome ladies, welcome to the pod. So Margaret McLaughlin is Communications Manager at Volunteering New Zealand.

Margaret McLachlan: Hello.

Tobi Johnson: She has over 20 years experience in marketing and communications with local and central government and not-for-profit organizations. She’s a volunteer matchmaker with the Community Comms Collective. Marg oversees our Volunteering New Zealand’s communication strategy and much of the regular communication with their audiences, including newsletters, social media, and media liaison. She is passionate about using her comm skills to support volunteering and further the goals of Volunteering New Zealand. So welcome, Marg.

Marg: Thank you. Good to be here.

Tobi Johnson: And then Heidi is a sector lead. She’s worked in the voluntary sector for over 15 years, holding national volunteer manager roles across government and NGOs. At Volunteering New Zealand, she runs multiple projects, including their National Volunteering Mentoring Program and organizing their national conference. Heidi is passionate and driven about the volunteering sector and is happy to share her experience with others, be that as a keynote at an event, running a workshop or a coffee catch up. She is also an avid volunteer in her community. And both of you are fantastic people. It was so much fun to get to know you and spend time with you when I was there in January. So welcome to the pod. I’d love to start off our conversations with our guests about their volunteering birth stories, how they got involved, where they, how they caught the bug of volunteering or volunteer engagement, the world of volunteerism. So let’s start with either one of you. I want to hear from both of you, but how did you get into the world of volunteerism?

Heidi: Oh, I’ll kick off. Hello, welcome. This is my first podcast. It’s quite exciting. I just want to point out we are unintentionally wearing the same colors for those who are listening. Apparently this color is called Mulberry and we’re just bizarrely wearing the same color on the same day. But not to worry. It wasn’t intentional, but it looks quite cute, isn’t it?

Tobi: Yeah, I like it. Yeah, the color is mulberry. Yeah, it’s like so precise. It’s like a purple for those that are just listening. Can’t see the video on YouTube. It’s like a purple, kind of a wine color, I would say. It’s like a burgundy.

Heidi: Lovely, I like that. I approve of the word wine with clothing, wonderful. I was thinking Tobi, as you read out my bio, I need to update that because it’s actually 20 years now I’ve been in the voluntary sector. How scary is that? I’m actually getting really old. It’s 20 years and I got into the sector bizarrely 20 years ago. I have an environmental degree, science degree and I needed to get experience to try and use my environmental degree so I ended up volunteering for a conservation charity in Scotland. And my manager got pregnant, left to have a baby and I got paid maternity cover role and when she came back I was basically employed to work for them. So I was thinking as well at Volunteer New Zealand, I’ve been here six years, I also got into this role through volunteering for VNZ. So I just wanted to make a point that you don’t know what doors might open when you volunteer. So for my key pivotal career points in my life have come about from volunteering for the organisation I want to work for. Isn’t that cool? So volunteering opens doors. Yay.

Tobi: That is so cool. That is so cool. Yeah, Marg, what about you? How did you get into the volunteer world?

Marg: One of the pathways was through skilled volunteering with the Community Commons Collective. That was, it’s an organization that’s been going in New Zealand now for over 10 years, and it matches skilled communications people with not-for-profits. So I joined, I guess in a volunteer management role, as my bio, as a matchmaker to match those organizations with the volunteers who could help them with their skills. So that was part of the passion and development that I went through and then I was lucky enough to join Volunteer in New Zealand about five years ago.

Tobi: Yeah, that’s great. That’s like really aligned with what you do. You kind of know because you do comms for a nonprofit. You know, you can kind of quickly probably get to what a nonprofit needs and what skills that person has to offer.

Marg: Yeah, exactly. And it’s a real adjustment from coming from more of a corporate or government space to less money, but lots of willingness and ability to crack on, get stuff done. Yeah.

Tobi: Yeah, I would totally agree with that. The time in a corporate space, talk about like the days and weeks it takes to get anything approved. In volunteer space, we just like write it up and put it out there. Hope for the best, you know? So for why do you think, you know, the other question I always like to kick off this pod with is why do you think volunteering is important in today’s world in particular? Certainly there’s a legacy of volunteering in New Zealand. But why right now should people be thinking about volunteering or why should we be working on improving our volunteer best practices? So why now? Why is volunteering important now?

Heidi: That’s a really big question and I think we could spend a podcast on talking about it. I think for me, I heard someone recently say this at the conference and I wrote it down because I liked it so much, especially for New Zealand with a small population. We’ve got about 5.28 million people. We are a small population and that I think helps with community cohesion because we are smaller and this person said, sorry I can’t remember their name, I’m going to quote, I think that volunteering binds our society together, it’s the glue that binds us, especially in a country with such a small population. And also as a side note, I think given what’s happening at the moment, volunteering gives us hope, it helps us create the community and the world that we want to live in, so I think it’s a really important time to be involved in community action in some way.

Marg: My thoughts were practically it’s a way of community organisations carrying out their work. Many rely on volunteers or even an entirely volunteer run. Then that volunteers of course gain from the experience as well. They gain connection and meaning from the work that they’re doing here. And maybe some skills development as well.

Tobi: Yeah, I think, I really think that volunteering has so many beneficiaries. Certainly the folks that volunteer, the organizations volunteers are supporting, the beneficiaries of that mission, whoever they are, whether they’re direct service or community members, people involved with that organization, or just local neighbors, and then the volunteers themselves, and then society as a whole, as you said, Heidi, it’s really about cohesion and community. And if you think about it, there’s not very many, especially nowadays, people don’t, in general, and I’m not gonna say broad brush stroke because I’m not sure this is true in New Zealand, but I don’t believe people are finding as many opportunities to meet people who are different than them, who they don’t meet through just workplace or their kids’ school or, I just feel like we’re not as close together unless something intense happens in our neighborhoods or in our community. Would you agree that in recent years it’s harder and harder to build community and volunteerism is a place where that can happen?

Marg: Yeah, definitely. People are joining clubs or societies less, and they’re not interacting in those third spaces outside the house or work with other people who might be just a problem. So yeah, think volunteering really gives people the opportunity to mix and see other points of view.

Heidi: I totally agree. And a lot of the community spaces have gone. They’ve been defunded or something’s happened and not happening anymore. So there’s lot less places for people to congregate. Less people are doing things like going to church services, less youth clubs, that sort of thing happening across the country here. And I think that’s happening around the world really. And I also, this is done in my own opinion, I think social media has made people less social. I think people have become a lot more introverted and stuck in their own little bubbles sometimes, which is a real shame.

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s not always very social.

Heidi: That’s pretty wonderful.

Tobi: Well, let’s jump in and talk about volunteering New Zealand for a minute. Give us a brief, so folks understand the context within which and your role within the country in terms of why your organization stepped up and worked on the best practice. So give us a brief overview of the infrastructure for community involvement in New Zealand, because I think people may not understand that as well. And then what is the role of volunteering New Zealand?

Heidi: Sure. Yeah, so I’m going to refer to my notes so I don’t miss any pertinent points.

Tobi: No worries.

Heidi: We have over 115,000 not-for-profits in New Zealand, which is mind-boggling. The majority of them, about 90% of those 115,000 not-for-profits are purely volunteer-led and run. There is also a network of 19 volunteer centres across the country and community organisations are members of those centres. So people volunteer through these organisations in their community. There’s also lots of community organisations and groups that operate outside of that structure as well, lots of more informal organisations are happening across the country responding to community need. With your other question, what is the role of Volunteering New Zealand as an organisation? So we’re a membership based organisation. We have about 106 national member organisations and 10,000 organisations sit underneath those national members and we support them to manage and look after their volunteers well, consistently and safely. So that’s kind of at Marlborough. Do you want to add to that?

I would add that our main roles are advocacy, research, we’ve just done a review of the last decade of the state of volunteering in New Zealand. We do a lot of training and we do promotion for things like National Volunteer Week. So we deal, one of our primary sort of audiences is volunteer managers because they’re so important as the kind of key conduit to effective volunteering. And we also focus on smaller organisations where they might not have as much support as the larger ones do.

Tobi: So would you consider volunteering New Zealand, the peak body of volunteering in, so for folks in the US, think Australia, New Zealand have the terminology peak bodies, and that’s not really something in the US we have. So can you kind of explain really quickly what a peak body is, just so people can kind of get a sense of the infrastructure?

Marg: I guess we do, it’s just like the overarching organization. The volunteer centers are part of the picture, we’re not their national body. They’re separate organizations. So we are at the level, but we’re actually formed by some of those volunteer centers and by others who were like, we need a national body to kind of advocate on our behalf to government, to funders, et cetera. 25 years ago actually, we were formed in 2001 which was the first international year of volunteer and then we now come around to the next one so we’re excited about that. So we’re only 25, can tell.

Tobi
Yeah, that’s. You haven’t been there since the beginning now. So, but I think that’s an example of people in community coming together and saying like, look, we need this advocacy body, this peak body that advocates on our behalf that can be more of an umbrella organization that doesn’t necessarily run what we do, but serves as a support. And I think that’s the distinction I think will help folks. New Zealand, let’s get into New Zealand’s volunteering rates because I think they’re really impressive. I mean, I know you all are like, you know, trying to work to improve them, but based on the most recent general social survey data in New Zealand, 53% of New Zealanders volunteered. This is an increase from 50.7% in 2021. And they contributed, volunteers contributed an average of about 18 hours over four weeks. So monthly volunteers are contributing about 18 hours a month on average. What do you think is driving this depth of community engagement in New Zealand?

Marg: So it’s partly to do with our history. The Māori were obviously the First Nations peoples here and New Zealand was then many people immigrated to New Zealand from about the mid 1800s. But the people who came were made a more egalitarian society than what they left behind in Russia, for example. So helping your neighbour was the norm. You had to do that to sort of survive in a settler economy and I think we have quite shared values across many of the cultures though it does look slightly differently, look slightly different perhaps between Māori or Pacifica people but for many of us I think it’s voluntary just becomes sort what we do as part of who we are and it helps to bring us together.

Heidi: And I think having emigrated here myself 15 years ago from the UK, I’ve just noticed it straight away. It’s just way more civically engaged population, just way more involved in their community. And again, I think it’s, well, to be blunt, less taxpayer based, less money, more gaps in community need. So we naturally fill the gaps with people to help us, to help whatever that means. So, but yeah, I mean, compared to the UK, it’s just a completely different concept of volunteering here, it’s just part of their DNA which I really love. Just what you do. Just what you do.

Tobi: Yeah, I noticed that when I was, this was my first trip to New Zealand, my first visit. And I did notice the, you know, I spent some time going to museums and just learning about the history of the country. And, you know, everybody’s a newcomer because there was never, even the First Nations folks who came first, there was no human life on the islands before that time. And then there were issues with people coming and colonization, et cetera. But over time, it’s been a country of newcomers. I actually met somebody from the US who had, we were in Christchurch at the Botanic Garden, we were just walking around looking at the dahlias and they were insane how many they have in their collection and my husband and I are just like wow look at all the dahlias. And this gal came over and she said to me, you know, hey, are you guys from the US and we said yeah, and she said, I moved here with my two sons because I wanted them to grow up in this environment in this type of community. And so, you know, one of the things, the reasons I called this episode community, you use the term community spirit because there really seems to be that community spirit. And I think as people come to the country, they absorb and, you know, create part of that. What do you think are the core values that are driving that community spirit? Obviously coming together, but you talked a little bit about collectivism, but what do you think are the values that are driving volunteerism?

Marg: Most people are motivated in some ways to give back to society. And it does look slightly differently, I think, across different cultural groups. Pacifica, for example, we have a quite large Pacifica population from all of the Pacific Islands. And they’re very motivated by service. They grow up in the family who belong to the church and they’re just part of giving back. They’re always helping others. In the Māori culture, hospitality and welcoming people to their spaces is very strong and still evident today. I mean, Marae, the sort of home place in places that traditionally Māori have lived but still are quite actively involved in. For example, after disasters they welcome people there to be asleep and to be fed and people just would turn up and help in the kitchens or do whatever they needed to be done to help out.

Tobi: Interesting. So let’s talk about current challenges for leaders of volunteers and volunteering. What are the, in the sector, where are folks finding challenges? You’ve got a community that has values around collectivism, around supporting one another, around welcoming. You’ve got a huge, really impressive volunteering rates. You’ve got necessity. I mean, after I left, I was, we were trying to book this interview and there was a cyclone coming through. And while I was there, there was a landslide due to weather. So the change in climate is really impacting communities. And I was seeing people come together to help out because it’s just necessary. Like you said, Heidi, there’s not always infrastructure readily available. And these types of events are happening more rapidly than in the past, as far as I understand it. So what are some of the challenges that you’re seeing from leaders and volunteers that you’re supporting and organizations you’re supporting in the field?

Heidi: Sure, I’ll answer that initially. So being sector lead, I regularly engage with our member organisations so I hear about the challenges and things and the frustrations that they’re having. So there’s a real distinct lack of uptake of technology to support, coordinate and manage volunteers. It’s really lacking. Even in our research over the last decade, it reveals that’s an ongoing issue. We often hear that organisations do not have enough volunteers. There’s a growing trend for people to volunteer more informally versus through an organisation and again that’s revealed on our latest data, the state of volunteering report in 2024. I think it’s about 40% of New Zealanders are volunteering informally and it’s about 27% are volunteering formally through an organisation. So there’s a real disconnect as well where a lot of volunteering involving organisations are not quite evolving to meet those changing demands at the moment of volunteers. So there’s a bit of a tiff in there.

Tobi: Mm-hmm, and I think others who are listening from other countries may be saying to themselves, huh? We have those same problems. The more I travel around, the more I see we’re more alike than different. The move towards more informal, more flexible volunteering roles, the continuing need for recruiting new volunteers, technology lags, those are all things that folks are struggling with globally. So it’s so interesting that no matter what the infrastructure is or the resources or lack thereof in a country, these are endemic sort of challenges around the world for leaders and volunteers. It just always blows my mind. It just seems like we would be different in some way, but we’re not. We’re not really different, which is in some ways a positive, because we can help one another. Hence the best practice guidelines.

Tobi: Let’s take a quick break and after the break we’re going to get into our chat with Volunteering New Zealand and about the best practice guidelines, give you a little bit more detail how they were developed because I think there’s a very distinct way that you went about it that I think people could benefit from learning from and we’ll get into it after the break. So don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back with Volunteering New Zealand.

Okay, we’re back with our discussion with Volunteering New Zealand with Marg and Heidi to talk about the Volunteering New Zealand’s new best practice guidelines. First of all, congrats, because I know that this type of work is, especially the way that you have involved stakeholders, is a long process and takes a lot of patience and a lot of community building and a lot of sort of staying the course, right? Because it’s easy to have scope creep and go off into different directions. But tell us a little bit about the history and the methodology of building these best practice guidelines. What was the story? Why did you decide to undertake something like this when it is challenging?

Heidi: Sure, sure. So our previous best practice guidelines, because there was a previous version, were created in 2011. And I just remembered that I was involved in creating those previous guidelines. So they were looking a bit dated, a bit old. And also the ethos behind them, they were very organisationally led, organisational focused. We wanted to flip it on its head. We wanted to put the volunteers right at the heart of the new guidelines. Really making that volunteer voice and that volunteer experience a whole part of those guidelines. And yeah, we wanted to also sort of make the perspective for more smaller organisations as well, because we know the majority of volunteer involving organisations are not complex national organisations. They’re small local responses. So make sure these guidelines really talk to those smaller organisations as well.

Tobi: I love that you have pivoted towards a more volunteer-centric, volunteer-forward approach and that you’re acknowledging the reality that 90% more or less are tiny organizations that don’t have resources to do all of the things that we’re training on that are like this entire infrastructure that often there’s really actually a small group of organizations overall that can actually take on and implement all of these things. And the way that a smaller organization might approach volunteer engagement will be very different than a larger organization. And the types of concerns are just completely different. So how did you go about? So what was the impetus to decide to do this now? You had Best Practice Guidelines from 2011. It’s been a while, it’s been a minute. Why right now did you say, you know what, we need to do this now? And then how did you involve stakeholders and get the process started?

Heidi: So we looked at statistics from how people are using our website so we knew they weren’t being well used. They’re also paper-based. So we just did a review of all our resources and realised these are just really dated. We also did a survey with volunteer managers. You know, extraordinary, hardly any of them were getting any professional development at all in the past year. And we also asked them about what practices they really needed support on. And things like we also were getting phone calls from people saying we have problems with the exiting process. And we realized that, okay, things weren’t happening upfront when people joined an organization to make their journey a better one. And so that when it came time to exit, they were… that were made for them. Totally. And how we went about sort of creating them, it was really fun, a really enjoyable process. We did a co-design process online and we used a tool called Mural, I think it’s a worldwide platform now, which has a not-for-profit rate for using it. So volunteer leaders and volunteers from across the country came together to work on some draft guidelines and then we, they worked really well. We captured input from across all different size organizations, from the whole sector and from volunteers. We researched other countries existing best practices and that helped us draw up these seven key practice areas we wanted to embed in the guidelines and we also wanted to build it on a volunteer life cycle model which we saw was really popular and well respected across the world. So that’s kind of how we started but I can’t recommend enough a co-design process basically online with digital post-it notes, 60 people in a virtual room. It was just fantastic, really engaging, really fun and really creative. It worked really well for us. Especially for a small not-for-profit, being able to harvest that data from a platform really helped us. And then taking that idea with a huge amount of data and actually crunching it and distilling it down to just some key points and some key principles and some key ideas because the thing about it is it’s non-prescriptive really. It’s like these are things you could do, here’s some ideas, here’s some principles that you could apply. So yeah, it’s a useful tool that people can adapt to their own needs.

Tobi: So you used Miro, is that it?

Heidi: That’s another one, but we use Mural, which is M-U-R-A-L.

Tobi: Mural, I’ll link to that in the show notes. So did you do these facilitated conversations live or did you put up a mural and say go to the mural and post your ideas? And how did that work? Walk us through that.

Heidi: They were live. Yeah, so we hired a project management specialist, understanding it wasn’t in our own wheelhouse, so getting someone who’s really experienced in running online co-design processes and he managed those sessions. So he created basically a graphic mural and then people came in, were given some framing and some guidance and worked on certain questions and literally typed post-it notes which we moved around on the screen. It was like a live workshop, like what we did with you Tobi in January, but just a digital version and it was nice in a way because you didn’t have to speak if you didn’t want to, so it was a good space for people with all different learning styles to come together and contribute in a way that was comfortable for them as well. And we obviously gave them the project manager running the session so you get them training on how to use the mural. We did a practice session where you came up with your little avatar and made it really fun and engaging. It was really cool, yeah, it was highly worthwhile.

Tobi: So did you have volunteers and employees, like paid staff, coming together? Did you do several sessions with smaller groups so it wasn’t 60 people post-it noting at the same time?

Heidi: I think we did about between eight and ten workshops in the end and we tended to limit it to maybe 20 or 30 people ideally just so everyone got a voice. It took a few months. Apparently what it’s called when you’re taking the data out is called synthesizing the data. We did a lot of synthesizing because we had 54 or some tens of thousands of words. It was unbelievable. We paid a contractor to synthesize the data where she removed duplicates and combined stuff and it came up with the common themes and fitted under each of those practice areas. It was a really interesting exercise. I do recommend an online co-design process if it’s something that’s going to work for you.

Tobi: Yeah. Did you set the tone, the intention around a volunteer centric process or did that bubble up from the facilitation?

Heidi: A bit of both really, because we knew, because people registered, we knew who was coming in the room. So we knew if it was more volunteer centric or we knew if it was more VI, volunteer involving organisations, and the project manager leading it would frame it to the relevant audience at the time. So yeah, speaking to the right audience in the right way was an important part of that journey, definitely.

Tobi: Yeah, and I imagine a lot of the people who had roles as volunteer managers probably were wearing a lot of other hats as well.

Marg and Heidi
Well, most volunteer managers also volunteer in their community in New Zealand as well, so it’s pretty common. Also, probably why our rate of volunteering is so high is the majority of volunteers volunteer for more than one organisation in New Zealand as well. So very, again, very civically engaged people, often paid to be volunteer managers and contributing as a volunteer in their community. That gave us those two perspectives which were really helpful in those sessions.

Tobi
Yeah. So let’s go into a little bit more in depth of the best practice guidelines. What was the purpose, aside from having a set of standards, like just having the standards for standards sake, what was the overall purpose and who do you feel is benefiting or can benefit most from them?

Heidi: Sure, sure. So the guidelines are very much guidelines. We’ve made that really clear from the beginning. They’re not prescriptive. We’re not telling you what to do. We’re telling you what you could do. They are guidelines, principles and examples of how to consistently manage your volunteers well. So volunteers themselves can also use the guidelines to help them understand what they can expect or what they should be expecting from their volunteer experience. They’re a really useful advocacy tool and the guidelines have tons of uses but they’re mainly used by volunteer managers involved in a volunteer involving community group or a more formal organization. Also, they’re also really, what we didn’t know, the nice silver lining out of these guidelines has become a really useful advocacy tool for volunteer managers to actually advocate for their role, the importance of a volunteer manager, to get more resources, more respect, more appreciation by their organization, realizing and respecting that there are guidelines to support the sector because it’s really important and it deserves guidelines and support to look after volunteers.

I remember a person who worked as a volunteer manager in a hospital and she was like, you know, in a hospital there are clinical guidelines for every discipline and for her to then say, well, actually for the volunteers we have here, here are our guidelines and here’s how we’ve used the best practice guidelines to adapt to our situation. It gives a real elevation and support for the volunteer management role. Yeah. And sometimes we know from our research and we know from anecdotal speaking to organisations, volunteer managers, they’re often really isolated in their roles, they don’t get a lot of professional development and these guidelines can help them identify gaps in that volunteer life cycle in their organisation. And what I like as well is you can just dip into the practice area you need help with at the time, you don’t need to do that whole review if you don’t need to. So I do really like that they’re kind of an on-demand guideline, you just use them as you need to at the time, which is kind of cool.

Tobi: What are other ways your guideline, you did some literature review when you were in development. So you looked at other countries’ standards and guidelines. What do you think makes yours unique? Obviously the focus on volunteers, but is there something else that gives your best practice guidelines a different flavor than maybe others that you’ve seen?

Marg: Yeah, I think that they are quite unique. We referenced the literature review. If you Google volunteer management, there’s just millions of hits you’ll get. But we found that only about 11 that actually had best practice proven words. And we refined those a little bit to apply to our situation. I think that the whole value of them as being a cycle, that at the end, thinking of the exiting isn’t necessarily the end of the involvement with that person. You know, keep in touch with them. They might become your focus supporter. They might be a donor. When the time’s right, they might be able to come back and support you again.

Tobi: Yeah, I just jumped off a conversation with Ruth Leonard in the UK. She’s one of our guest advisors in the Impact Lab. And we did a podcast episode and a discussion around volunteer offboarding. And the Fawn Farewell, and how the Fawn Farewell, you know, we’re so focused on volunteer retention and keeping our retention numbers up that we, you know, and sometimes we take it personally that people leave and have lives and they have other things going on. And we were talking about the alternatives of the way of thinking of an ending and how we might think of an ending as maybe a good thing and how we can keep connection in different ways. So most people don’t even talk about offboarding. It’s not a common area of conversation, I think. It gets mentioned, but it’s not, we focus so much more on recruitment than we do on offboarding.

Heidi:I think exit is a normal healthy part of volunteer life journey. It’s a reality and it’s going to happen at some point and that’s okay.

Tobi: Yeah, it’s okay. That’s right. It’s okay. Well, let’s focus on your key pillars. You focus those pillars, as I understand it, on the areas where you knew there was proven practice, that there was research that had proven practice. Let’s dip into a few of them. What are the seven key pillars to begin with? And then maybe we’ll pull apart one or two of them. And how do you structure them?

Heidi: Sure, sure. Cool. I’ll read through them, so bear with me. Again, they’re on that volunteer journey right from the very moment they hear about a volunteer opportunity right through to when they exit an organisation and all the steps in between. So the initial practice area on the cycle, if you go to a website, have a look at the life cycle model and how it all fits together. The first one’s recruitment and onboarding. So what good looks like, clear role descriptions, accessible information, inclusive recruitment, why only volunteer experiences set the tone. Number two, so they’re not really in any order, just read them out in this order. Support, development and recognition. How ongoing training, leadership, support and recognition help retention and impact. The next practice area is impact and exit. Celebrating volunteer impact with stories, data, recognition. Thinking about volunteer transition beyond active service. And then, what the other ones? I think we’ve kind of rolled them all together. So yeah, and then you’ve got how do organisations practically use the BPGs to strengthen voluntary involvement is embedded in there as well. So there are seven distinct areas and those three I mentioned kind of encompassed in those three.

Tobi: Right. And they’re in these three basic topic areas, but you have seven specific best practice areas. So how have you been rolling these out and how are people using them to improve their practice?

Heidi: Yeah, so we’ve really encouraged adoption of these BPGs initially by running some best practice guidelines one-day workshops all across the country, so face-to-face with a learning and development contractor for us, delivering all over the country. Those have been really well attended, really well received. We’ve also been running short two-hour sessions for organisations like volunteer centres and I’ve been delivering those with the trainer-trainer model, so going along to volunteer centre, running a session for them for their community organisations for two hours on the BPGs, leaving the volunteer centre then to deliver it themselves like most of them are doing like twice a year for example those two hour sessions. And we’re also running a free series of one, I run those two one hour online sessions on each of the seven practice areas. So our intention is to run that series of seven every year and those are free open to anybody at all who wants to learn about a particular practice area. And we know they’re really being well used because they’ve been accessed nearly 20,000 times on our website, which is pretty cool. So just being really well used. We hear a lot of anecdotal evidence as well from volunteer involving organisations of the value and how they’re finding it. Almost like reassuring that those guidelines have kind of got their back, which is an interesting observation from volunteer managers.

Tobi: Yeah, think sometimes we need validation from outside our organization. Unfortunately, it just is what it is sometimes. And it helps to have, you’ve been beating the drum around we need technology or we need to figure out our exit strategy or we need to figure out. And then, here’s the best practice guidelines. And look, they are saying the same thing. Interesting, isn’t it? So what are any examples of great practices or ways people have implemented these to make change? Do you want to share with folks?

Marg: Yeah, I’ve got an example. There’s an organisation called Ballyful, which is a nationwide charity that delivers meals to families who need a bit of extra support. They’ve got branches all across the country and all run by local volunteers. They’ve really embraced the volunteer guidelines and they’ve used them in many aspects of their work. For example, they introduced a new volunteer development program which they called Filling Bellies Filling Minds, which is quite interesting. That’s really to support their volunteer management, their volunteer managers through leadership training, wellbeing tools and practical schools as well. They’ve told us that actually by running this program and by using the other aspects of the guidelines, it’s really helped build connections between the volunteer managers, the volunteers, the whole structure of the organization. And there’s a real sense of willingness and commitment to buy into what the organization’s trying to do.

Tobi: It’s kind of nice to have a shared language, right? And they’re not, you know, we’re going to link to the BPGs in the show notes, but you’ll see that they’re not… It’s purposefully, I think I’m going to say I’m going to put this in you guys. Correct me if I’m wrong. But it feels like they’re purposely inclusive in their language. Like it’s not, you’re not using a lot of jargon that only a volunteer manager would understand. You know, I remember, you know, when my husband and I first met, he came with me to a conference, a volunteer management conference, and he came out to dinner with some of us and I go, well, how’d you enjoy the dinner? And he said, well, this is what I heard. Wah wah wah wah wah. He had no clue. He has a PhD. He’s a scientist. Like he’s an academician. Like how would he even, no clue what we were talking about. Because everything was just jargon, jargon, jargon, you know? Similarly, when I go to science conferences with him and I go out to dinner with his science guys, that’s what I hear. Wah wah wah. But these guidelines are very approachable. They’re very like, anybody can understand what’s being said and what the practice that’s being described, I think. Would you say that was a purposeful thing? Was it hard to really, and I’m not saying that the language is dumbed down because I think it’s difficult to speak in plain language when you’re immersed in a sector and in a profession that is full of acronyms. It’s hard work to get something to a plain language space or place. Did you purposefully work on that or are you just really good at communicating?

Marg: We actually did refine them after the first release to make them more plain language. So that was something that we consciously set out to do. And I think another key thing we haven’t mentioned yet is that alongside the guidelines on our website, there’s curated a set of resources that fit within each of those areas. So if you’re looking, and we’ve again tried to make those very accessible, not long wordy academic articles, but more, here’s a template that you could use for signing someone up or here’s a business case that you could make for if you want to to your organisation if you need to get a volunteer management platform. So really practical tools that people can use as well. I just want to give Marg a plug because her English is so clear. For context in New Zealand, don’t know maybe you have this in the States, we have something called the plain English campaign and every year they have a national award ceremony and we were nominated to be the best plain English website for the country and we I think we’re in the top three and we didn’t win but we’re in the top three for the country that’s pretty amazing and the other two people were like organisations that really had loads of budget and we like we managed to do this little smell of an oily rag with the plain English campaign lens over it so we’re pretty chuffed and that’s thanks to Marg’s amazing wordsmithing I call it, wordsmithing we call it Margsmithing.

Tobi: Okay, boom! Fist bump!

Heidi: So they’ve been recognised as being really clear, but also not patronising, it’s not belittling people’s knowledge of the sector, it’s just clear, easy to understand and really digestible. Perhaps that’s why they’ve been used so much, because they are really easy to use and digestible. So yay, Marg!

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think language matters and words can be exclusive or inclusive. Words can like, as when we were doing our session, we talked about building and breaking community. I think words and the way we communicate with others can build or break community, whether it’s written word or spoken word. So I, you know, I was really impressed with that. They felt there was a kind of ease about them, you know, that it was like, yeah, I could give this a go, right? And I think for folks who are developing standards, whether it’s for their organization or on a national level or regional level, whatever, I think looking at what y’all have done is really, would be really helpful to folks. What do you recommend? What advice do you have for whether it’s a country or an enterprise level, large enterprise level organization, or even a smaller organization, if they’re developing standards for volunteer involvement or guidelines for volunteer involvement, what are your best tips? What works well? What would you say, don’t try to do that because we tried it and it didn’t work or this is going to be difficult, beware of this?

Heidi: So we were quite lucky in that what we decided to do worked really well. So our early experience is a positive one and that was an online co-design process. Over 300 people contributed in some way through that process. So I think it’s really important that you appreciate there needs to be sector buy-in for what you’re doing. It can’t come top down and be prescriptive and telling everyone what to do. You need to bring people on a journey with you and whether that’s a co-design process for you or maybe it’s practical in-person workshops for you depending on the scale of what you’re doing. But get that buy-in, get people’s voices across those guidelines and standards as well because then it will really resonate with people if they hear and see themselves represented in those guidelines or standards as well. So get buy-in as soon as you can. Consult, speak to people, interview them, workshops, co-design as much of that as you can that’s practical for your reality.

Tobi: Anything else you might offer as advice? How long did the process take?

Marg:I think it was probably a good year. From doing the survey, as I mentioned, to find out need and then to the series of the sessions where we did the nuts and bolts and then to real synthesizing and getting it. I mean, just sort of post-session checks with some key people as well. So yeah, it was a good length of time. And I think the thing to say is we have kept evolving them as well. They’re not static, we’ve reviewed them, we keep adding the resources that support it. We’ve done this training and keep tweaking how we’re offering that. So yeah, they’re not a static thing, they’re evolving. They’re alive.

Tobi: They’re alive. Did you send out to all stakeholders who’d had input? Did you send them out a draft and say, here’s where we’re thinking, any other feedback do y’all have?

Marg: I think we did that. Yeah. Yeah. Good on them.

Tobi: Yeah.

Heidi: With the mural tool we used, I should get commission from mural for this, but you own the data for as much time afterwards so people could go back into the mural and add stuff. We had a slightly different part of the process for further along the line of the synthesisation. That was really helpful as well. So it made it so easy because people could respond on their phone or just really, really straightforward and really engaging. People enjoyed the process. I think it was really well attended throughout because we made the process engaging and fun.

Tobi: Yeah, that’s rare to hear for projects like this, that it’s fun, right? Most people are like, no, it’s not fun, it’s analysis paralysis. That’s what it feels like. Like, there’s no momentum. I mean, I think a key takeaway is to hire a professional facilitator to help you. I think another key takeaway that I’m learning is to have some type of value-based sort of guiding star, which yours was keep the volunteer at the center of the process. Another value is keeping using plain language. That’s a focus or a practice. So there’s some real key takeaways here that I think the audience, if they’re interested in developing standards, whether it’s again for their organization or on a national level or regional level, that are really helpful and really sound. Did you all, was there anything that you did that you thought, you know what, or let me ask this because I’m curious about it. Were there any things that surprised you about the themes that bubbled up in terms of, you know, you ended up with seven best practice areas. Did any of these surprise you? Did you think like, wow, I didn’t think that would come up or, yeah, that or that we’re confirming like, of course this would go. I mean, I imagine recruitment would come up.

Heidi:
I think for me, because I was in those co-design sessions as well, managing registrations, but the lack of interest in coming to the exit session was really interesting. And having learned from delivering best practice guidelines workshops now, so we’re having conversations and part of those workshops, you’re supposed to work on practice area seven, which is exit. No one wants to do it. And it seems to me that the sector is a little bit afraid to learn about exiting volunteers because they want to hold on to volunteers forever and ever and ever. That was really interesting, but it was a lack of buy-in for that part of the life cycle and that’s even an ongoing issue now as well, still people not confident in how to exit because they don’t want to lose volunteers, they’re holding on to them forever.

Tobi: Yeah, I mean, you know, if you don’t plan purposefully, you’re not going to do succession planning. You know, there’s so many reasons. And if it’s not done well, you think about I always think about this, and we were talking about this with Ruth. You know, how do you want people to remember their volunteering? Because they’re going to leave your organization at some point. And we remember first impressions, and we remember beginnings and endings more than anything as human beings. And so they will remember. And do we want our volunteers to feel like, well, you just got deleted from our VMS, our volunteer management system. Goodbye. Don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. You know, I mean, come on. You know, we were talking about this on the other podcast. I was laughing about it like, you know, give me, you know, people like I said to Ruth, people are with you for a reason or a season. You know, it’s okay to give people the gift of goodbye or for them to give you the gift of goodbye. And if you are really doing this with care and compassion and really acknowledging volunteers for what they’ve contributed, whether it’s a very small amount or a lot, that in the end you are creating these ambassadors who are going to speak about your organization well and probably going to donate to you financially if they have the means. And anytime somebody asks, what about this organization or where should we, we’re pulling our money for a family. We’re going to, you know, our family used to pull money every holiday season and we would choose together as a family which organization we wanted to give our money to. And if people know your organization and had a fun farewell, you’re going to come up in that conversation.

Heidi: Yeah, and the organization, so for context, I did a bit of work in the past with Salesforce, which is quite a complex IT CRM, customer relationship management platform. And we were using it in my government role at the time to manage volunteers. It’s not perfectly designed for it, but Salesforce and Blackbaud as well, another CRM, it has a volunteer portal and a donor portal already built into the CRM because they distinctly understand that if someone’s a volunteer, it’s very likely at some point they’ll be a donor. They recognize that and it’s built into a multi-billion dollar platform. I think that’s really interesting that we need to appreciate that someone leaves your organization, they will become an advocate for you. If they had a good experience, they’ll tell potentially hundreds of people about their volunteer experience with you. And if they can’t volunteer for you anymore at some point, it’s very likely they will donate to you in some shape or form. So it’s really interesting though about those CRMs knowing that they understand that dynamic better than the sector does.

Tobi: Well, I think active volunteers are already donating. I mean, whether it’s in kind, you know, I remember we used to do letter writing campaigns and the organization would say, well, you know, let us know we can reimburse you for the postage or do you need us to give you stamps? And we were like, no, no, I’ll donate my stamps. I remember, you know, facilitating strategic planning sessions that, you know, I charge a lot of money for for the organization that I love and I support, I was going to do that for free. And I did it for our board that I was part of. And I did it three years later when the next board came along and said, you know what, could you come and do this again? Well, of course I can, you know. And so people are contributing to our organizations, their time and talent, but they’re also contributing their financial either in kind or making cash donations. And they’re often making it while they’re volunteering. And I think organizations also really hesitate to make that ask. They’re like, they’ve done so much already. Are you finding that with folks that that transition to making an ask of a financial contribution maybe at the end of volunteering is a barrier for folks, a mindset block? Like we shouldn’t be asking volunteers for money.

Heidi: It’s not something we ask the sector, but it’s something we probably should be when we do volunteer manager surveys about that. It’s not something we’ve been covering really, is it? I think it’s something to look into for us. It’s probably part of the New Zealand culture would be, oh, I don’t want to ask them for more.

Tobi: Yeah. Marg, was there anything that came up in these best practice guidelines that surfaced that surprised you?

Marg: I think one thing we haven’t mentioned is that we do frame them upfront with values and they are words in Te Reo Māori, our First Nations language and I think they are very important to set the tone. So before you dive into the practical, it helps you to think about what am I trying to achieve here with my volunteers, with my organisation, for the community to make the world a better place, because that’s what we’re really all about.

Tobi: Yeah, so folks can go online and I’ll link to in the show notes, can go read those values as well that are undergirding these best practices. I think that grounding is also super smart because it’s showing a kind of purposeful intention that these aren’t just simply the practices or ways we go about managing volunteers or leading volunteers, but there’s also a big why to this. There’s a bigger reason why we’ve chosen these practices and how they roll up into the values that we want to live as organizations. So I think that’s a really important thing to call out and say, you know, we’re including both of these. This has been a really good conversation, ladies. Thank you so much for joining me. I think it’s like late here and early there, right? The next day.

Marg and Heidi
Thanks guys. Yeah, it’s like 10, 12 a.m.

Tobi: Yeah, 6:12. It’s not too late here. But yeah, it’s always fun to try to schedule these calls when we’re halfway around the world. But this has been really fun. And it was so much fun to be there in New Zealand. And you know, that was another way you were helping with the adoption of these best practice guidelines. You know, we did journey mapping. So we took every step of the volunteer journey from first touch to Fawn Farewell. And we had folks putting Post-It notes on and really mapping out and thinking about, are the best practice guidelines reflected in this journey and what are ways specifically concretely people could… And there were so many great ideas that came up, I think, in that day. And I’d never really done it as a, usually I do this work with an individual organization. So it was an amalgam of ideas that came together and I just felt like I don’t know what happened afterwards but I felt like there were a lot of really good ideas that were coming forward.

Marg:That’s the thing we find, that people already have the ideas and the willingness and they’re already doing a lot of great things. It’s just a matter of kind of drawing it all together and making it work and reckless.

Tobi: Yeah, and cross-pollinating. We took photographs of the final murals and y’all sent them out to everybody. So people could refer back when they needed some ideas. So it was fun. So this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate it. It was so fun to get to know you both. And I hope I’ll see you again sometime in the future. I know it’s a long way away. Whether you’re here in the US or I’m there in New Zealand, hopefully we can get together IRL in real life. But one last question as we wrap up for both of you, each of you. What are you most excited about in the year ahead?

Heidi: Well, it’s our 25th anniversary because we’re only 25. So that’s a big deal. So we’re hoping to host a celebration event and I’m sort of pushing it to be like a cocktail, canapes, drinkies, nice celebratory event with guest speakers potentially at an important government representative’s house. Are we allowed to say that? I don’t know. Governor General’s house, which is a beautiful, beautiful stately home. So that’s one thing we’re hoping to do, but also we’ve got IV26. Yeah, we’re really supporting International Volunteer Year 26. We’ve chosen our theme, I think, similar for National Volunteer Week which is in June of “Your Year to Volunteer” which I think a few countries are doing that. So that month for us of June is always an exciting and fun time when you see lots of celebration and recognition of volunteers. So yeah it’ll be another busy year.

Tobi: Yeah, for a tiny team. Go you. You know, it’s always like, you know, I love what you’re doing. Let us know. I know we’ll post things in the show notes, but how can people learn more about your work and get in touch with you if they’re interested? Just tell me. We’ll share some links in the show notes, but what are ways to get in touch?

Marg: Yeah, probably the best way is our website, volunteeringnz.org.nz. There’s heaps of information laid out there and we really welcome any approaches or questions. There’s the contact form there as well.

Tobi: Excellent. And folks can go to the Volunteering New Zealand best practice guidelines, the value statements, all of that is on the website, free for you to look at and download. It’s all very helpful information. So I really encourage you all who are listening, if you want to see how folks do it around the world, if you want to see how best practice guidelines were built from the ground up, from grassroots to grass tops, with a real community spirit, the best practice guidelines at Volunteering New Zealand are definitely ones to look at. So I really encourage you to do that. And I want to thank everybody for joining us. Thank Marg and Heidi for being my guest this week. And if you liked us, go ahead and give us some five-star ratings. I’m just asking, it helps us build the knowledge about the podcast and reach more people. And if you think somebody could benefit from listening to the pod, please share it with your friends and colleagues and join us next week. Same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Thanks everybody.

Marg and Heidi
Thanks Tobi. Thank you. Bye.

Tobi
Bye!