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There are some key practical tips to bear in mind
if you want to use volunteers
You’ve now learned what volunteers can and cannot do and you have read of the many mechanisms to facilitate
such volunteering. But what practical tips are there for you to encourage volunteers in/at your asset? This section
pulls together the frontline tips about how to do just that.
Volunteer management is like any other HR management
As indicated earlier, the use of volunteers is a resource-intensive process. You need to recruit, train, and manage
such resources. The following section summarizes a range of practical tips for asset managers to manage their
volunteers.
In terms of finding volunteers, there are a range of common sources, with employees of larger local business
and university students among the most frequent. Unions are also a source of volunteers as long as they are not
displacing fellow union members. For example, the Minneapolis Building Trades and Construction Council
encourages its members to volunteer.
You can also do skills audits, whether within a company (see Box 4.4), community, neighborhood group, or
other type of organization. One strategy with people who do not see themselves as having many skills is to ask
them what they enjoy doing the most.
Box 4.4: Corporate skills audits can quickly produce a team of helpers — Wells Fargo and a
Baltimore Rec. Center
Well Fargo Bank in Maryland has shown that companies have much to give. Several years ago, United Way
of Central Maryland solicited area businesses to “makeover” the Robert C. Marshall Recreation Center
in Baltimore. Because the project was such a daunting and expensive undertaking, it was envisioned that
at least a half-dozen corporate teams would be needed. The president and CEO of Wells Fargo Maryland,
Andy Bertamini, instead agreed that his company would take on the entire project by itself. With 4,000
employees under his responsibility, he had little difficulty finding 200 willing volunteers with whom he then
ran a skills inventory. Over 100 bank employees duly turned out over several successive days to clean, paint,
install new sports equipment, and outfit a computer technology lab, game room, and library. Importantly the
relationship has endured. In 2010 and 2011, more teams of Wells Fargo employees returned in force to the same
neighborhood, establishing a garden, installing cabinets, and preparing rooms at a local elementary school.
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