Spirit of Volunteering: managing staff and volunteer expectations

This presentation was given at the BGANZ NSW Conference themed ‘Management of Regional Botanic Gardens – Towards 2050’ held at the Albury Botanic Gardens in 19-21 May 2006.

The success of the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the celebration of the International Year of Volunteers in 2001 brought volunteering into sharp focus and spawned much valuable research data. With my extensive experience developing volunteer policies and managing volunteers in botanic gardens, I was asked to look at ways of managing volunteers and staff expectations in the workplace with best outcomes. The content applies equally well to the work of all cultural institutions.

Janelle Hatherly 2021

Most presentations on volunteering, and all I’ve ever given or seen, espouse the benefits of having volunteers in an organisation. And rightly so as our society is built on people doing good works, for the benefit of their fellow adult and child, without expecting financial recompense.

Whenever I have asked at a conference “Who here volunteers?” anyone who helps out at the school canteen or sports day, sits on a Board, does bush regeneration in their local area or takes part in Keep Australia Beautiful clean-ups … or simply works more than a 40-hour week in their paid jobs, puts their hand up. This is always a significant number and I am never surprised. A recent UK report Giving Time: Volunteering in the 21st Century states ‘volunteering is one of the best expressions of active citizenship. It is a powerful measure of the health of civic society’.  Recent findings by Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) support this.

In 1999-2000 the ABS surveyed people aged over 18 years on their work and volunteering activities. The number of volunteers grew between 1995 and 2000 from 3.2 million to 4.4 million. ABS found the volunteering rate was highest for the community welfare sector, just ahead of sport and recreation (Olympics and Paralympics were excluded from the survey). The rate was higher outside capital cities.

In that five-year period, the proportion of the population volunteering increased from almost a quarter (24 per cent) to almost a third (32 per cent). There were increases across all age groups and for both sexes. The total amount of voluntary work performed also increased: annual hours totalled 511.7 million in 1995 and this rose to 704.1 million in 2000.

Volunteers in botanic gardens

The ABS report also revealed that by the year 2000 there were 11.8 million visitors to 123 botanic gardens, arboreta and herbaria in Australia.

By noting that at the end of June 1997, there were 1,129 employees and 1,493 volunteers and that at the end of June 2000, there were 1,250 employees and 1,991 volunteers working for botanic gardens, we can deduce a total workforce of 3,241 persons with 1.59 volunteers for every staff member.

Our organisations are very dependent on government funding (80%) yet this is not enough. It needs to be supplemented by income from other sources and the figures show that fundraising has more than doubled over this period.

Other figures tell us that 75% of all gardens have less than nine paid persons and are predominantly run by volunteers. And the six largest gardens across Australia account for 70% employees and 42% (nearly half) of all the volunteers, as well as 62% visits.

We’re all clearly dependent on volunteers in our organisations but what exactly do the volunteers do? Everything. I suspect the smaller the garden the more horticulture volunteers do and the larger the garden the more their focus is on facilitating the visitor experience.

What is the relationship between volunteers and paid staff?

At the Botanic Garden Trust in Sydney (BGT) we recently revised our Volunteer Policy and as Chair of our Volunteer Program Committee (VPC) I contacted colleagues around Australia to see what their situation was like. I spoke to staff and volunteers at small, large and medium-sized gardens and came up with this list of positives and negatives associated with paid staff working alongside volunteers.

When asked about the relationship between volunteers and paid staff, unanimously everyone (both paid staff and volunteers) explained: “We couldn’t function without them! The commitment to each other is strong. We wouldn’t be able to do what we do. It’s unimaginable not to have them.”

That volunteers aren’t clock watchers can be a negative because they might forget paid staff work set hours.

Here are the positives from a volunteer’s point of view:

Negatives from a volunteer’s point of view relate to the way staff deal to them. If asked courteously, volunteers will do anything. They just want appreciation as they do this activity for pleasure so want to enjoy the whole experience. They want to learn … and socialising is often the most important part.

In 2006 Volunteering Australia, the national peak body for volunteering, conducted a national survey to gather information about issues and volunteer management practices as experienced by volunteers and not-for-profit organisations. They consulted 600 volunteers and 572 organisations.

They found that:

‘Relations between paid staff and volunteers is an issue that is often ignored or swept under the carpet. It can be challenging, and further help with it would be good. It can create tensions in an organisation.’

A case study – Volunteerism at the BGT

Volunteer Guides started at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney 27 years ago followed closely by the establishment of a Friends organisation four years later. Friends’ groups began in Melbourne and Adelaide 25 and 23 years ago respectively.

In Sydney we’ve had a Volunteer Policy and Procedures Manual since 1998 and we review it every two years. From time-to-time paid staff, especially Union representatives, have felt volunteers were threatening their jobs but the lead up to the Olympics where we took a whole-of-organisation approach, helped alter this perception.

For the duration of the Sydney Olympics and Paralympics, staff, volunteers and Friends united to man six information booths around the Royal Botanic Gardens as well as welcome visitors to the Tropical Centre and a State of the Waratah exhibition in the Palm House. A total of 3,500 hours of customer service were provided to approximately 250K visitors between 13 Sept and 14 October 2000.

This was followed by the International Year of Volunteering in 2001 where more positive benefits of volunteerism and best practices were showcased.

During this time the Trust’s Volunteer Programs Committee oversaw the drawing up of position descriptions for most volunteer programs and new initiatives were supported with best practice documentation. There was also State-wide training for managers of volunteers. Everything was going so well that the VPC only needed to meet twice a year – to plan new initiatives (e.g., volunteer enrichment programs) and to oversee annual reviews.

Our VPC comprises representatives from Senior Management, Public Service Association of NSW and staff with volunteer responsibilities from specific work program areas. Our group now meets quarterly to consider strategic directions for new volunteering initiatives and to review existing programs. Our policy formally recognises the importance of volunteers to the BGT’s operations and provides a framework for their management. It applies not only to new initiatives, but also to existing volunteer programs.

It outlines the range of opportunities volunteers can be involved in, recruitment, training and management procedures; volunteer rights and responsibilities; reporting and feedback mechanisms; acknowledgment of volunteer services and how to set up new volunteer programs. All staff and volunteers have access to this policy and all volunteers are issued with a Volunteer Reference Manual.

The vulnerability of staff and their concern about volunteers taking jobs resurfaced about three years ago when the State government restructured and BGT joined their new Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC). Awards are still being negotiated and the government public sector keeps being reduced. This was exacerbated by the following alarming quotes before the election in March 2007.

This led to lengthy discussions at the BGT and the end result is that we’ve tightened up our volunteer policies and procedures, streamlined our meetings, made sure we’re counting our volunteer contribution accurately, reviewed all Position Descriptions (PDs) and talked openly with staff about what volunteering meant for them personally and the organisation as a whole.

We established a Spirit of Volunteering framework that is now prominently at the top of our policy documentation.

We also clarified what we mean by Work Experience and are exploring Corporate Employee Volunteering – the way forward for sponsor relationships.

Lessons learnt from 2000 Olympic experience

The Sydney Olympics in 2000 brought volunteering top of mind across Australian society. Volunteers were vital to the successful staging of the Olympic and Paralympic Games with 47,000 Olympic Volunteers and 15,000 Paralympic Volunteers contributing in this way. No-one in Australia will ever forget Juan Antonio Samaranch, President IOC declaring at the Closing Ceremony of The Games of the XXVII Olympiad the Sydney event as “the best Games ever!” with “the most dedicated and wonderful volunteers ever!”

 Of these 62,000 volunteers, 40,000 had never volunteered before. They added significantly to the skills bank as they provided six million hours of service. It cost $40 million ($750 per person) to establish the volunteer pool but this saved $100 million in overall costs. Everyone saw that recognition is a powerful motivating force. However, we also learnt that recognition isn’t as important as satisfaction to the modern volunteer and that our niceness will enable us to recruit them but our competency will keep them.

We’ve reached a point in time and established once and for all the need for qualified well-trained staff to integrate volunteers fully into an organisation’s structure and ensure volunteers are accepted as vital links with the community. What could be more unifying for all than paid positions being created as a result of volunteering!

©  Janelle Hatherly

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