How Lisa Beat Overwhelm and Built a Strategic Volunteer Orientation Program 

Valerie: Can you give us a quick overview of your organization and how you work with volunteers?  

Lisa: Sure! I work for Southeastern Guide Dogs, which is located in Palmetto, Florida. We breed, train, and place guide and service dogs with the visually impaired and also with veterans who suffer from disabilities.  

In my position, I am in charge of supervising our on-campus volunteers. It’s a group of about 300 or so active volunteers who come to our campus at least once a week. Typically, those folks will be working in our kennels, helping do early education with our puppies, helping our trainers, working in our canine university, and doing enrichment with our dogs. They lead tours, they answer the phones, pretty much anywhere you can imagine there’s an opportunity for me to plug in a volunteer! 

Valerie:  It seems like you use volunteers in almost every aspect of the organization, which is definitely something that we encourage!  

Lisa’s Challenge: Putting all the Volunteer Management Pieces Together 

Valerie: Now, you work with a lot of volunteers. Was there ever a time you found yourself facing any kind of particular challenge in your role? 

Lisa: Certainly. My background is in zoos, aquariums and nature centers, and that’s where I had spent most of my career prior to moving to Southeastern Guide Dogs. When I was in those positions, I would do volunteer management, it was a portion of my job but on a much smaller scale than what I experience at Southeastern Guide Dogs.  

When I first began working at Southeastern Guide Dogs, I was in a couple of different roles. Most recently was as a large-scale event planning role. And then when I had the opportunity to slide on over into the Director of Volunteer Services position, which is where I am now, it was a really exciting time for me. It had taken a lot of my experience that I had in the past and then moved it forward into a position that was solely dedicated to the volunteer services portion of our organization.  

So, it was really an exciting time, but also very intimidating! In the past, Southeastern Guide Dogs had been a much smaller organization, and they had dealt with their volunteer base much more informally. Somebody would wander in off the street and say, “hey, can I help out?” And they’d say, “cool, do you like puppies? Yes? Then head on down to the puppy kennel!” And that was kind of how it went.  

Around the time that I started the organization was making a big series of increases as far as building some infrastructure. Our budget got a lot bigger. Our staff got a lot bigger. And even though we had a volunteer department, we didn’t have many policies, procedures, or infrastructure.  

The orientation process was hit or miss when it came to the actual experience of the volunteers in various departments, there was no rhyme or reason to how certain volunteers were getting assigned to different roles. 

I had a really big job of taking this thing and putting some guidelines on it and turning it into something that was consistent, something that we could duplicate across campus, making sure that the volunteers would have a consistent experience no matter where they were. And I just kind of made it up as I went!  

I utilized a lot of my background from the zoos and aquariums to start, but a lot of it was just off the top of my head.  

It was very much like, well, what would I like if I came here?  Probably a tour, we should do a tour!  

But I had the burden of basically inventing a process for every little thing I want to do. 

Valerie: I feel like your experience kind of mirrors a lot of what I experienced when I was managing volunteers that kind of fell into the position. It had been in a lot of hands before I came into it. And so there were no policies or procedures, no rhyme or reason to how the organization was working with volunteers. 

 Lisa’s Objective: Establishing a Welcoming and Effective Volunteer Orientation Process 

Valerie: Do you recall how you heard about VolunteerPro? 

Lisa: I think I was probably just kind of blindly searching for something. I know that I had, looked at some of the professional organizations here in Florida, but found that they deal with networking and nothing was really exactly fitting my needs.  

I wasn’t looking for just the networking opportunities that these in-person groups would be providing.  

I think I had originally stumbled on a VolunteerPro blog post and I as I dived into it and I thought it was really usable information.   

A lot of the things that I had found before were very lofty in terms of their language, but when it came down to the pragmatic piece of it, it’s more just like, go change the world, the end. And sure, I felt all fluffy and happy inside but I didn’t get next steps. 

And I think that was the thing that really drew me into VolunteerPro. What I learn is very usable. I can take it and very quickly implement it in a real time, effective way. 

Valerie: When you were researching the resources that would help you in your role, did you have a specific goal or objective in mind?  

Lisa: Initially I wanted to create a consistent orientation process because the first thing that I wanted to tackle was those first impressions and getting people-oriented and trained and set off into the correct direction. 

Once we tackled that project, we were able to grow along with the community to where it was like, okay, check, we’ve got orientation done. Now let’s talk about like our volunteer placements. And then, okay, now let’s talk about retention. Okay, now let’s talk about training the staff members to have some accountability. 

Lisa’s Results: Establishing Infrastructure

Valerie: So, do you have any specific results that you’d like to share with us?  

Lisa: Well, I definitely am very pleased with what we’ve done in terms of our infrastructure.  

We finally have created a process for bringing on volunteers, placing volunteers, utilizing volunteers at different levels, from entry-level to advanced roles. It’s taken a long time, but we’ve built it exactly the way I wanted to build it.  

This process has freed up my department to be able to operate more like a human resources department than a volunteer department. We’ve been able to concentrate our efforts on things like recognition and retention and continuing education and support. And the vast majority of our volunteers have been with the organization for at least three years, a lot of them much more than that.  

We’ve been able to focus on making the experience for those folks as good as possible, rather than constantly running on that hamster wheel of how are we going to get these shifts filled?  

What Lisa Wants You to Know 

Valerie: Now, what would you say to somebody who might be working through some similar challenges?  

Lisa: I think the challenge that we all run into is the fact that because we are money savers, not money makers, the difficulty comes on the financial piece, right? But I think that in reality, when you start to think about the amount of money that you’re able to save your organization with having the appropriate policies, procedures, infrastructure recognition, etc., it really is a no-brainer.  

It’s one of those things where you can either work very hard or you can work very smart. And I think that by making an investment in your education for yourself, for your employees, for the other staff members that you pass along, what you’re learning to, it saves you so much time and headache.  

Valerie: That’s a great way of putting it. You’re saving, as you said, so much time. You’re not having to reinvent the wheel every single time here bringing on new volunteers or running a volunteer recruitment campaign.  

Lisa:  Exactly. And the thing that I found too is that we go through spurts within our individual organizations, and in the projects that we’re working on.  

One thing I’ve learned is that volunteer management is really cyclical. Sometimes you’re head down, doing your own thing, then you’ll have to make a volunteer satisfaction survey, for example. And then you’re left wondering, how do I do that?  

It’s in that moment you have the opportunity to become more invested in your volunteer program. 

And then, sometimes it’s just as simple as giving yourself a little pat on the back. Like, I know what I’m doing, or I actually did that correct! For a department that often feels lonely because you’re often a foreigner within your own organization, it’s nice knowing that you can operate and function with support behind you.