Member Spotlight: How Cultivating the Right Volunteer Leadership Skills Can Scale Your Volunteer Program’s Impact 

Welcome back to another member spotlight, where we feature some of the ups and the downs and everything in between of what it’s really like to work as a leader of volunteers.  

Follow along and learn how our members are taking action and getting traction with their volunteer management strategies! 

This month, I had a conversation with Kelly Furnas, Director of Operations for Operation Kindness.  

Valerie: Welcome Kelly! I am excited to learn more about Operation Kindness and how you work with volunteers. Can you give me a quick overview?  

Kelly: Operation Kindness is one of the oldest no kill shelters in the North Texas area, and we are celebrating our 45th anniversary this year. Our mission is to care for homeless dogs and cats in a no-kill environment until each can be adopted out into responsible homes. 

Valerie: Wonderful! So, how many volunteers do you engage in the space of one year?  

Kelly: Before the pandemic we had about 1,600 volunteers that helped us in the shelter or in support of the shelter work, whether that was walking dogs, answering phones, helping at offsite adoption events, fundraising.  

And we had probably about 400 to 500 foster volunteers on tap to be able to help us with foster needs as they came and went.  

Now, these numbers have kind of swapped, if you will. Our foster pool has gone up to about 700 people who are willing and able and ready to take in any animals that we need. And our shelter pool has dropped down to 1100. 

Valerie: I’m curious how the pandemic has affected your work. I have seen so many acquaintances get “pandemic puppies”, and now those people are going back to work or school and they’re not sure what to do with their puppy all day. Have you seen a rise in numbers of people surrendering their pets to the shelter?  

Kelly: It’s really interesting. When the pandemic first hit, suddenly everybody was working from home and so everybody wanted a new dog or cat in their house and they were willing and interested in helping us foster. So, what’s been really intriguing is that the number of animals across the system has actually decreased, which is kind of strange. You would think with municipal shelters not doing as many pickups that there would be a lot of animals running around, but there isn’t. 

The biggest challenge that we’ve seen is as those folks now have to go back to work, there’s a lot more separation anxiety. We have phone calls coming into the shelter, “okay, they won’t let me leave the couch. How do I make them okay with this?” 

So, our behavior team works really hard to help people that are dealing with those challenges. 

Kelly’s Challenge: Cultivating Volunteer Leadership Skills as Someone New to the Field 

Valerie: So tell me, how did you hear about Tobi Johnson and VolunteerPro?  

Kelly: Well, I got to know Tobi through her podcast Time and Talent. The timing of me learning about her and VolunteerPro coincides with coming into my role here at Operation Kindness, so she’s been a part of my journey!  

Valerie: Wow, amazing! So is this your first role in volunteer management or had you had experience before?  

Kelly: I was a volunteer here at Operation Kindness for five years before joining staff, I was the head trainer, so I did that training for our volunteers, as a volunteer.  

I’ve done leadership training, sales training, systems training, all kinds of training for the last 20 plus years. So that was a great way for me to be able to give back during that time period. I was already in a leadership role amongst the volunteers and we as a volunteer group were a little frustrated with some things happening between our volunteers and our staff. 

There was a lack of appreciation and communication issues, and I got the opportunity to spearhead a volunteer forum and that put me in front of our CEO. And I got to know him through that volunteer forum, and about two months after we created it, he offered me the job! 

So no, I did not have a background in volunteer management!  

Valerie: You clearly have the leadership skills, which is very important in volunteer management. And then the training background, which I imagine helped you dive in. But I’m sure jumping in you didn’t realize everything that goes into volunteer management. What were some of your biggest challenges when you took on this new role?  

Kelly: When I came into this role I was brought in as a director, so I reported straight to the CEO, so I already knew I had the support to come in and do what needed to be done. I felt a lot of confidence in being able to help and make a difference. 

So, it was really just about learning how to be a volunteer leader faster and soaking up as much knowledge as I could from other members of VolunteerPro and from Tobi’s webinars and podcasts. 

Kelly’s Objective: Mending Relationships  

Valerie: What encouraged you to join VolunteerPro as a member? Did you have a specific goal in mind?  

Kelly: The volunteer forum that I helped spearhead was bringing to light a lot of what this role needed to be focusing on. So, I came into it with an agenda. 

Because I really hadn’t been in a volunteer leadership type of role before, and I wanted information and knowledge.  

I knew I wanted to mend the broken relationships that were in existence with our staff and our volunteers.  

I knew what I wanted to tackle, but I wasn’t exactly sure where to go. And that’s what VolunteerPro gave me. Access to people and tools and resources, more than I could’ve ever imagined, to be able to get that structure much faster.  

Seeing how other organizations that work with volunteers definitely helped speed that process up for me quite a bit.  

Kelly’s Results: Using Volunteer Survey Results as a Catalyst for Change 

Valerie: What has changed since you’ve taken action and learned more about the volunteer leadership skills you needed to succeed in your role? Do you have any specific results that you would like to share with us today? 

Kelly: I do. One of the webinar guests, Kendra Baumer, who is from New York – New Jersey Trail Conference has the same story as me. How she came into the field and the challenges that she had. So,  she did a volunteer survey, and I stole everything humanly possible from that discussion! I even reached out to Kendra. She was great.   

I rolled out a volunteer survey in January of 2020, just a couple of months before the pandemic happened. We wrapped it up and had all of our data towards the end of February. And now I have a real game plan to work from. And we then shut down. 

You mentioned silver linings. And that for me, it was a gift that we had this time.  

I launched a new volunteer management system during that first couple of months. I haven’t really used it on the volunteer side yet, but I had all this time to do committee work. And so, I put together several committees of volunteers that helped build an entire mentor program. 

I have built what we call our Culture of Kindness that we’ve launched to our staff. I will launch it to the volunteers once they start to come back. 

I have built a bunch of training that was always a challenge for the staff to stop and take the time to show a volunteer how to do something. And it caused some of that friction between staff and volunteers. I’ve built the training so the volunteer can take that online and come in, ready to go.  

I really have a lot of work invested during this pandemic. I am just waiting for those doors to open and let them back in. Then I can really make good on the promises that I made as a result of that survey. 

So, all of that to say, I wanted to do that survey, get it up and running very quickly, ask the right questions and be able to make changes that are having an impact on my volunteer pool. 

Valerie: Wow you have certainly been busy! You’ll have to keep us updated as you bring volunteers back and roll out this new system.

What Kelly Wants You to Know 

Valerie: What would you say to someone who is just starting off in a volunteer leadership role?  

Kelly: When you fall into a volunteer management role, you don’t realize everything that goes into it. You’re doing budgeting, you’re doing your HR, your marketing, you’re everything wrapped in one role.   

In most cases, there are not a lot of volunteer management colleges or degrees that are out there. And I really look at VolunteerPro a little bit like your college. This is where you really can learn and grow in that space. So it is definitely worth it to be able to invest not only in yourself, but in your organization and your volunteer team, it’s really a win-win all around. Right? 

Gathering Volunteer Feedback: A Volunteer Leadership Skill You Can Master 

Wow, Kelly was able to achieve a lot in her volunteer program, all based on the results of a volunteer survey!  

Want to follow her lead?  

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Surveys.  

Once you learn how to design volunteer surveys, the data you collect can become a powerful source of reliable, valid evidence to support your vision for your volunteer program.