How to Make Your Volunteer Group Effective

Are you a part of a volunteer group like a charity organization, a social service club, or a neighborhood group? How is your experience in the team? Are the results from the team below expectations, in-spite of having experienced members with a track record of success at work? Does it look lackluster or slow? Do you notice some of the following symptoms in your group?

• All members are not engaged equally. There are some members who are very active (and therefore are the workforce of the team), and there are others who are passive. There is a general lack of participation and initiative in the group activities.
• Different members seem to be running in different directions, hence there is a lack of concerted efforts.
• The team is unable to discuss anything amicably. There is such a ferocious argument and conflict on each and every topic that is discussed that it is impossible to reach any decision in a meeting. Consequently, to make progress, all decisions are made outside the meetings and then rolled out to the members.
• The team structure is very fragile. Every now and then, some member offers his resignation as he or she is not happy with the situation. To keep the team together itself seems to be a big effort.

It is not at all surprising. Getting a big team to perform at the peak of its potential involves keeping all members engaged and motivated, which is not an easy task; And the challenge gets multiplied when it is a voluntary team with no clear leader, in which the motivation of the members is diverse and different from a team at work. How do we get such a team to perform more effectively? Here are a set of suggestions that may be handy.

Start Right
Before you form the team, make sure to articulate its purpose and mission, and take time to align all the members to this purpose. This may not sound important, but it is the vital force that drives a team. This exercise defines a true North and points everyone towards it. Once each member has a clear view of North, it will be easy to navigate the group in the desired direction.

Clear Roles and Responsibilities
Take time to define the roles and responsibilities of the team members with complete clarity. A volunteers team usually has an elaborate organization, so this is not a problem. The real issue is that due to the informal nature of the team, people do not take the roles seriously and inadvertently step onto other people's toes. This can cause skirmishes, and even conflicts that are blown out of proportion in the extreme case.

Here is an anecdote to illustrate my point. A social group had a designated chairman, and they treated him with a lot of respect. In meetings, every agenda items got discussed with the permission of the chairman and so on. However, very soon, different people in the team started taking decisions about the group programs without even informing the chairman, which was a clear violation of the chairman's circle of influence. After watching it silently for some time, the chairman finally decided to express his objection, hoping that the team will listen to him and correct the behavior. However, the team was convinced that the chairman had no role to play in making these decisions, so they argued with the chairman. Finally, the chairman had to put up with the situation. This is a good example of unclear roles in the team.

Maintain keen Focus
Define short and mid term goals for the team and keep a keen focus on the goals. Nothing energizes a team more than a sense of achievement. Also, make sure to signup for goals that are realistic. Having big stretch goal may sometimes work as a motivator, but make sure not to bite more that what you can chew as a team. If you do that, you will be compelled to nag your members, and this will sure be a big de-motivator.

Adequate Communication
Communication is the key to a team's performance, and it has to be a two way communication. Make sure all important information reaches the members in a timely manner, and make sure every member gets a patient hearing. When you do not listen to the team members, you pave the way for them getting demotivated and disengaged. In the past, face-to-face meetings used to be an effective way of ensuring communication in the team, but in the modern age, we can leverage technology to to it more effectively. Why not use social media platforms like Facebook groups or Whatsapp groups for ensuring communications on the go. Even if you hold a meeting, send the meeting notes on Whatsapp so that those who could not attend the meeting will come on-board as well.

Make Decisions Together
This may be the trickiest part for many of you. Always discuss the issues within the team before arriving at a decision. Why? The reason is two fold:

• When you discuss a decision well in the team, the team is more likely to align itself on the decision and rally behind it.
• The principle of synergy states that one plus one can be three, five, or even eleven. When two people combine their ideas in synergy, the outcome will be far better than what any of them could do himself. However, the process of arriving at synergy requires lots of discussion in the team. As a team, do not avoid conflict, but actively encourage difference of opinions and discussions. Do not try to suppress the contradictory opinion. It may help you make a decision quickly, but the quality of the decision will be much richer if you allow discussions and dissent. You need not be too concerned about the resulting slowdown in the decision making. Use the discussion to collect all the facts and opinions about the issue at hand, and in case the difference of opinion persists, let the team leader take a call.

Organize Finances Well
Most teams have to deal with some receipts and expenditure, and because of the informal nature of the team, this is one area that most team tend to take lightly. Avoid this pitfall and make sure to keep a detailed account of all your receipts and expenses, check your balances often against the expected, and share the account regularly with the team. I know a neighborhood team that does it very well using a spreadsheet to keep the account and a printout is circulated every month to all members.

When you do not keep a clear account, the indirect implication on integrity can cause undue complications, even if the intentions of all involved are good. Here is an anecdote to illustrate this point. A social group organized a very big event that had huge collection and expenses. In the hustle-bustle of the big ceremony, the team could not manage to keep account of every receipt and expense. When the person in charge of finance was asked about it some time later, he obviously did not have the required account details, so in an effort to cover up, he claimed that there is no savings as some people have not yet paid their dues, and he produced a list of people whom he saw as 'defaulters'. None of these people were real defaulters, because they either did not agree to contribute, or had paid to someone else in the team that went off-record. Also, none of them were ever reminded about the dues. You can imagine the kind of mistrust it would have generated among those contributors. It would be an uphill task to get them to contribute for the cause again.

Don't Shoot the Messenger 
If there are members who are criticizing a certain decision or action, accept their feedback with grace, and don't think of them as trouble-makers, and try to bulldoze them into silence. It is not difficult to silence the critics as it is a volunteer organization, and they are not likely to persist if they sense that there feedback is not getting accepted in the right spirit. This will buy you harmony in the group in the short run, but will deprive you of the crucial feedback from members in future, as all members will get the message that honest feedback is not appreciated in this team.

Take Time to Appreciate People
This is such a simple principle, yet it is ignored very often. When you take time to appreciate team members for their contribution, it has two positive impacts on the team. It makes the person feel good that his efforts have been recognized, and it creates a positive atmosphere in the team that motivates the members to contribute with more enthusiasm. This one action, if practiced well, can make a huge difference in the energy level of the team. However, as a member or leader of the team, prepare to be self-motivated by the results you obtain and don't rely on explicit external appreciation to be the only source of your motivation.

These are only some of the points that comes to my mind. There can be more, but taking care of the above factors should help you make your volunteer team more effective and cohesive than what it is today. Once the team has learned how to do constructive discussions, it can find ways of improving on its own.