How Christine Leads a Large-Scale Volunteer Program with Confidence  

Valerie: To start off, can you give us a quick overview of your organization and how you work with volunteers?  

Christine: I work for the Florida Park Service, and I’m the program manager for our Friend groups and our volunteer program. We have five districts and I work with the district staff on a daily and weekly basis to manage volunteers. 

I set the policy and the guidance for the organization and, with my leadership folks, we implement that through the districts, down to the parks and the volunteer managers. 

Collectively the organization has 20,000 volunteers with 1.2 million hours of service a year. However, we are at our lowest level now, with about 3,500 active volunteers who’ve put in so far this year about 600,000 hours of service. 

So, we’re on track to hit a million by the end of our fiscal year, which is July 1st, even though we’re down to 3,500 volunteers.  

Valerie: Wow, that is an amazing accomplishment. If Florida parks are anything like the parks by me, they’ve been overrun with people because that’s all there is to do when everything else has been shut down.  

It’s great that people are getting out and exploring, but it puts more effort on volunteers to keep them up, which I imagine is leading to you to still have a large number of service hours, even though you don’t have the same volunteer workforce as before. 

Christine: We’re stretched very thin. We can’t do our jobs without working alongside volunteers. They’re critical to our operations. They touch every point of our operations, that’s why we call it the “Big Five” -administration, visitor services, maintenance, safety/protection, and natural resource management. We track our hours by the “Big Five”. 

Christine’s Challenge: Learning How to Professionalize a Large-Scale Volunteer Program 

Valerie: So, how did you first hear about Tobi Johnson and VolunteerPro? What drew you into looking for volunteer management resources, training, and support?  

Christine: Three years ago, I came back into my position and I was looking for ways to improve the program. I’m very removed from the day-to-day activities of the volunteers. My job is to support out staff and develop policies, and I wanted to know how I could be better at my job. 

And so, I was looking for resources to do it and I must have taken one of the free courses and felt drawn to Tobi’s energy and the resources she provides are relevant to what I was looking for.   

I have a library of all the things that I’ve downloaded and I keep going when I need a resource or someone asks me from the field, how do I delegate? Or how do I write a position description? Those resources are my go-to’s.  

Valerie: Do you find that not having that day-to-day interaction with the volunteers was one of your biggest challenges coming into this position? You know, not having that touchpoint to guide your volunteer program strategy?  

Christine: Absolutely. I just felt like that was my weakest point. I struggle with knowing what they need in their day-to-day work. I wanted to know how to professionalize and improve the volunteer program.  

In addition, I wanted to know how to go beyond the day-to-day volunteer management tasks. I wanted to know how to manage all of the deadlines, all of the reporting, without it taking up all of my time.  

The Florida Parks are nationally recognized as one of the best park services, and that’s a big responsibility to uphold. Even though we’re the best service, I’m trying to figure out how to manage the 175 parks from headquarters.  

Christine’s Objective: Using Volunteer Management Best Practices to Structure a Program and Provide Support to Staff 

Valerie: Outside of learning how to overcome those challenges, what was your biggest goal or objective when you started in your role?  

Christine: My overall objective was to find out about volunteer management best practices that I could use and pass on to our park staff. We have 120 volunteer managers in parks, and I wanted to provide them with effective resources so that they feel comfortable in their jobs  

Valerie: Have you heard from any of your volunteer managers about how these resources you provide has made their daily volunteer management practices easier? Or if they are feeling more confident in their capabilities?  

Christine: One of the first things that we did as a team was complete a survey of our volunteer managers. It helped me figure out what their needs were. And since gathering that feedback I have implemented and provided a volunteer management toolkit that our volunteer managers can go to and explore the resources. 

Christine’s Results: Measuring and Showing Volunteer Successes  

Valerie: You mentioned that your park services is recognized as one of the best managed in the nation. I imagine volunteers have a lot to do with receiving that distinction. Do you have any specific results of your volunteer program that you’d like to share today that you’ve been able to accomplish in your role?  

Christine: Yes, we’re one of the largest volunteer programs in the nation as far as state park services systems. We are on par with Texas and California in the size of our volunteer program and the number of parks by land area.  

The number of volunteers we have is one way we measure success. Also, we’ve collected tons of photographs and testimonials which has been one way I have improved the program.  

As far as volunteer recognition and providing tips to volunteer managers on how to best do that, I’ve improved the resources available to the park staff because recognition is sooo important. It is how we pay volunteers.  

Valerie: And I know you just have a very successful virtual volunteer celebration, right?  

Christine: Yes. That was just unbelievably amazing. We had the best team of people handling the technology part of it. You have to have a team behind the scenes to support virtual events. Although, I hope we’re not doing virtual again because it does miss that personal touch of saying thank you.  

Valerie: And what kind of feedback did you receive from your volunteers or your volunteer managers?  

Christine:  After the event, from the staff perspective, we got very positive feedback. Even though at first, staff were like, are we really doing this? This is not going to go well.  

Our success really had to do with the staff MC doing such a great job of filling gaps and making it fun. Also, staff who gave out the awards, they didn’t read from a script. Those little touches made all the difference. Made it more authentic.  

We did get positive feedback from the volunteers that they did feel appreciated. The parks followed up the virtual statewide event with safe in-person events to celebrate successes with their peers, providing certificates and pins and other swag. 

What Christine Wants You to Know 

Valerie: What would you say to someone who is just learning the ropes of volunteer management and might not understand how their practices have an impact on the volunteer program?  

Christine: Whether you or your organization invests in your professional development, it’s so beneficial to have access to resources. Find a community that you can learn from and feel like you’re in a safe space to fail and ask questions, get advice and resources. It’s the best way that I recommend to improve your volunteer management program.