Member Spotlight: Leading the Leaders in a Statewide Service Enterprise
Meet VolunteerPro member Christine Small, Program Manager of the Friends Groups and Volunteer Program for Florida State Parks. In this VolPro Member Spotlight, Christine shares the important work that volunteers do every day in state parks across Florida and how a small but mighty team of volunteer managers keeps it all running smoothly. It’s all part of Christine’s mission to support and “lead the leaders” in this statewide service enterprise.
Leading the Leaders: The Florida State Parks Volunteer Program
When I say 32 million visitors, I do mean 32 million visitors
Jamie: Thank you so much for joining me today! I’m excited to hear more about Florida State Parks, the roles volunteers can play, and what services they offer to park visitors.
Christine: Volunteers do everything! We absolutely could not operate without the individual volunteers who come and go daily.
For context, we have 175 state parks with 22,000 volunteers statewide. We’re one of the largest park service systems nationally, compared to Texas and California in terms of visitation, attendance, the money we bring in, the number of concessionaires we have, and our volunteer programs that all work together to provide the visitor experience.
Our visitation is larger than Disney—32 million visitors a year from all over the world come to Florida State Parks. And our goal is to give them a positive experience. That’s our mission.
Jamie: Wow! Of course, the state parks in Florida—the Everglades, the beaches, the shelling islands, the diving and snorkeling, all the unique wildlife—these are international tourist destinations that people save and specifically plan trips around.
Christine: (laughing) Oh yeah! When I say 32 million visitors, I do mean 32 million visitors.
Leading the Leaders: A Dedicated Team
Jamie: And you have a dedicated team to serve them when they arrive!
I got to meet a leadership group from Florida State Parks in a recent cohort of the Volunteer Management Fundamentals course, including one person who was there on a one-year AmeriCorps service term. I’m curious to know how those people come to you, and how your volunteer program is structured.
As you said earlier, it’s 175 parks across the state. How do you manage such a large footprint of volunteer teams?
Christine: Here’s how it’s structured: I’m in the Tallahassee headquarters office. My title is Program Manager of the Friends Groups and Volunteer Program. The state is divided up into five districts, and each district has a park program development specialist who handles staff training, the friends groups, and the volunteer programs.
Jamie: What are the friends groups?
Christine: Friends groups are nonprofit organizations that raise money for an individual park. They’re typically made up of those “super volunteers,” usually within that 50-60 mile radius of a park. They love their park so much that they not only volunteer, but they sign a contract to support their local park, and run a nonprofit to raise money.
They run programs and events. You will find donation boxes in the parks. And then all monies raised support that individual park.
Jamie: This is kind of along the lines of a volunteer board of directors who are responsible for donor development, no?
Christine: Exactly. I consider them our super volunteers because they show up daily, monthly for trash pickup, and for longer projects like removing invasive exotic plants. These are the supporters who beat the bushes and make connections within their communities to raise money. It’s a big job.
Leading the Leaders: Some History
Jamie: This touches my heart the most about volunteers. People will willingly do work like this—hard physical labor, mental work, detailed paperwork—just because they love the park so much. That sense of mission is what makes volunteers so incredible.
Christine: Yeah, these are incredible people. And we have 83 friends groups, one of the largest in the nation.
Jamie: And each person involved has their own story of why they got involved. So, how did you come to the Florida Parks department? Did you start as a volunteer?
Christine: Yes, I did. I’ve been a volunteer in the Florida Park Service since my twenties.
My husband is also with the Florida Park Service, and he just hit 30 years with the park service. Sometimes we look at each other like, “We have spent our entire adult lives in the Florida Park Service since graduate school!”
Jamie: I imagine that Florida is a pretty great place to study biology and ecology. What was your field of study?
Christine: Terrestrial land ecology and wildlife. I’ve studied bears and birds and cranes, and I did my master’s degree on gopher tortoises. After I got my master’s degree, I worked for Defenders of Wildlife for 10 years. I used to be known as the “Bear Lady” in Central Florida, where I went to school.
During my time at Defenders of Wildlife, I ended up coordinating all the volunteers for that effort. And that started me on the road to volunteer coordination. And at the same time, I was still a park volunteer.
Leading the Leaders: From Local Volunteer to Service Enterprise Leader
Jamie: When did you transition from a volunteer to an employee with Florida State Parks?
Christine: That didn’t happen until pretty late in my career. I think because I had done all that other work for a decade, and I was volunteering all the while with the Florida Park Service, that when my husband and I moved to Tallahassee, they hired me to do volunteer coordination and manage the friends group.
Jamie: You know, that brings up an important point. There are a lot of reasons to volunteer. Most of them are altruistic, but there’s also great value in volunteering from a career standpoint.
Often, you can get in as a volunteer in a place that you’re interested in, and then make those relationships and make those connections. And more often than you think, it is a leg up in a very competitive job market.
Christine: Oh yeah. My dad always said, “Volunteer; you’ll probably end up with a job.”
Leading the Leaders: VolunteerPro Resources for Service Enterprise Leadership
Jamie: I’ve got one more question for you. You’re in a different position than some other VolunteerPro members, in that you’re one step removed from direct volunteer management at the local level. As a service enterprise leader, what VolunteerPro resources do you find most helpful in your work?
Christine: I’ve been a member now for about four years. And it’s because I needed to step up my game. Nobody becomes a volunteer manager knowing how to do it. We’re all winging it to some degree, and at some point, you get good at it. I want to be a resource to those 170 park volunteer managers. I want to professionalize their abilities because it’s a step to management in the park service. A lot of them become assistant park managers and park managers. Well, how do you train people in leadership? Is it by osmosis?
I didn’t want to leave it up to chance. I thought, “There has got to be some best practices out there that I can learn and then translate to them.” That’s been my goal. How do I support volunteer managers, and how do I give them the tools and the resources to do it?
I don’t even remember now how I learned about VolPro, but I chose you and have stayed because the resources are so good. If there’s a topic that I need to know more about, it’s likely there. I sincerely appreciate the high quality of resources. It’s even inspired me to do webinars for our volunteer managers! I’ve probably been doing webinars for our volunteer managers for three years, and I took the format from VolunteerPro.
You know, the volunteer management cycle of plan, recruit, train, orient, supervise, communicate, and evaluate. That’s what I’ve been training my volunteer managers on. And building a resource toolkit for them, customizing everything for the Florida Park Service: our experience and our workflow.
I don’t even remember now how I learned about VolPro, but I chose you and have stayed because the resources are so good.
Leading the Leaders: Keep Up The Good Work
Jamie: I love that! And really, that’s the whole mission of VolunteerPro. Helping leaders do volunteer management better. And it’s an honor to serve leaders like you and your amazing organization out in the field.
Thank you so much for your time today, Christine! I will join those 32 million other visitors to the Florida Parks soon, and I’ll make sure to tell the local volunteers how much we appreciate them!
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