Girl Scout Volunteers: How to Approach Adult Volunteer Training and Retention

Girl Scouts USA currently has more than 1.7million registered girl members and 750,000 registered adult volunteers as of 2020; however, there are often well over 30,000 girls per year who are put on waiting lists due to lack of adult volunteer participation to lead troops in thousands of communities. (GSUSA) Not only is there a lack of new volunteers, but the retention rates for experienced volunteers falls every year. Without volunteers trained in safety and curriculum, the Girl Scout program will simply cease to exist.

Girl Scouts is a fantastic experience for the girls involved. Girls in organizations that foster safe and supportive relationships with adult mentors are much more likely to develop adaptability, independence, and resilience. (Herrera et al., 2011) The Girl Scouts own organizational motto is: Building girls of courage, confidence, and character. Unfortunately, due to today’s busy parent schedules and the demanding requirements of volunteering, many girls will never get a chance to experience these benefits.

So how can Girl Scouts stop this leaking volunteer ship? Nonprofit organizations often find that their volunteers will be more likely to contribute positively and be retained if the organizations they are working for undertake careful, informed, data-driven volunteer management seriously. Organizations with limited insight of why their volunteers initially sign up and poor volunteer management often see high turnover rates. (Crisman et al., 2020) GSUSA volunteers are found to have some of the highest demands placed on them of all nonprofit volunteering, and with ambiguous roles, poor delegation, difficultly defining responsibilities, lack of resources, and personal obligations to contend with, many of these well-meaning parents drop out of their volunteer roles in less than a year’s time. (Goerisch, 2016) Considering that the vast majority of these volunteers are usually only extrinsically motivated to take on these roles to help their own child have a positive experience, any negative feelings about the position might lead to higher turnover even more quickly.

With some thought out goals and motivational direction, GSUSA can use the benefits of adult learning concepts to help recruit a new generation of parents, and retain the existing volunteers on which they rely so heavily.

(GSUSA)

McGregor’s X & Y Theory

Douglas McGregor, a social psychologist from the 1960s developed a two group theory about what motivates employees through specific management styles. (Heil et al., 2000)

The common workplace idea at that time was that all workers (the X Group) were resistant to doing any kind of work (volunteer or employed) and would slack off if they were not constantly micromanaged or threaten with punishment if work was not handled in a very specific, tightly organized way. Not only is this a poor perception of an average worker at a paid position, but an extremely unfair way to assume the actions of a volunteer who offered up their time willingly.

McGregor felt that there could be a Y Group who had the same jobs and positions as the X Group, but had a much stronger feeling of job satisfaction and retainability simply by involving the employees/volunteers in creating the goals and the job processes themselves. (Heil et al., 2000)

Volunteers who are the “boots on the ground” for a large organization often want to share insight or problems they have uncovered while volunteering. But if management is unwilling to listen, or ignores pleas for help or change, their volunteers will feel underappreciated and discounted by the organization they are trying to help. (Silva-James, 2013) Offering time for feedback or brainstorming, and showing volunteers that their experience and knowledge is valuable, can go a long way in retaining volunteers and encouraging new ones.

Additionally, even though the majority of volunteers in GSUSA may be extrinsically motivated on behalf of their child, reminding them that they can personally reap the benefits of obtaining personal growth, new skill sets, and professional development while also helping their community, will hopefully ignite a sense of personal reward and intrinsic motivation. (Crisman et al., 2020)

Self Determination in Adult Learners

When training GSUSA volunteers, curriculum is often based off the simplest, easiest way to get information out to the members as quickly as possible. This often consists of dry lectures and long, complicated training manuals with very little direction for upper level volunteers to pass this information along to others. It is understandable that a small nonprofit might not have the funds or the time to create a robust learning process, but when you are as large as GSUSA and rely so heavily on your volunteers, treating this process as secondary can be a huge mistake.

Adult learners most often want to learn through autonomy, competence, and relatedness. (Grabowski et al., 2021). Volunteers are taking these jobs on as an extra task in their life and need the resources for their position, and how to execute it, in a way that works for them. Every troop of girls is different, so a flexible approach to training would work best for the most people while still getting across the necessary lessons for the group.

Most of these volunteers are parents who work and often have very little free time. When you ask them to drive over an hour to attend a 4-hour slideshow on a Saturday morning, you are going to start with an unhappy group even before you begin. If the organization were to ask themselves, “Can this be done online?” or “Can I start with the basics and then ask if anyone needs to meet up for additional help?”, your volunteers will be more likely to think that you have their best interests at heart.

GSUSA local councils almost always has staff train a small group of volunteer leads that take over specific subjects and bring them back to their neighborhood Girl Scout communities. While this is a fantastic way to spread the load and create a learning community style in the relatedness realm, it falls flat if you do not give that volunteer the resources and tools to know how to lead in a teaching environment.

(GSUSA)

Motivational Hygiene Theory

The Motivational Hygiene Theory by Frederick Herzberg in his 1959 book, “Motivation To Work” explains that there are two parts to what creates a satisfactory work environment for employees. (Herzberg, 1993)

The hygiene part of the theory talks about the basic needs of every job. In a place of employment, you would most likely be speaking about pay rates, health benefits, hours worked – all the types of basic things that cover why a person takes on a job in the first place. No employer or organization should ever think that their staff, or volunteers, should be grateful and satisfied just because they are given the basics that they would expect from any job out there. This is the fair, zero-sum trade from employer to employee.

This situation becomes particularly tricky when you are dealing with a volunteer. You have nothing to give them in terms of pay or benefits. You are often expecting them to work long, odd hours with demanding parents and little help. If this is the case with your volunteers, organizations must up their game just to get these volunteers to feel that they are getting a level deal out of the situation. These volunteers will need to feel that their child’s needs are being met from the organization, they are given all the tools they need to complete their jobs, they are appreciated and valued for their work, and the amount of free time being sacrificed should not be dismissed lightly. All this, just to keep them at that zero-sum trade level.

To get these volunteers beyond this zero-sum level into a level of actual satisfaction with their position, organizations will need to go above and beyond this with things like possible additional benefits for the families of members, extra training and help when requested, public appreciation and recognition, and most importantly, a feeling that their experienced feedback and recommendations are being heard and taken into consideration by the organization. If all these are reflected to the paid staff as being highly important when dealing with volunteers, it will go a long way to retention numbers and good word of mouth to potential new volunteers.

Conclusion

When any organization that has their entire system built on the back of their volunteer force, it is imperative that they make those volunteers their number one priority. While it may be easy for organizations to imagine that they could always get new volunteers, or current volunteers are willing to “stick it out”, and then use their meager nonprofit resources elsewhere; they need to realize that without the volunteers the organization can, and will, fold under its lack of volunteer upkeep in the long run.

References

Crisman, T., Acevedo-Polakovich, I., Al-Zoughbi, L., Stacy, S., Ogdie, S., & Obeid, S. (2020). Monitoring the Experiences of OST Volunteers: The Mixed-Method, Open-Ended Volunteer Experiences (MOVE). Afterschool Matters, 33, 42–49.

Goerisch, D. (2016). “doing good work”: Feminist dilemmas of volunteering in the field. The Professional Geographer, 69(2), 307–313. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2016.1208511

Grabowski, D., Chudzicka-Czupała, A., & Stapor, K. (2021). Relationships between work ethic and motivation to work from the point of view of the self-determination theory. PLOS ONE, 16(7), e0253145. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253145

GSUSA. (n.d.). Facts - Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts USA. Retrieved July 25, 2021, from www.girlscouts.org/en/about-girl-scouts/who-we-are/facts.html

Heil, G., Bennis, W., & Stephens, D. C. (2000). Douglas mcgregor, revisited: Managing the human side of the enterprise (1st ed.). Wiley.

Herrera, C., Grossman, J., Kauh, T. J., & McMaken, J. (2011). Mentoring in schools: An impact study of big brothers big sisters school-based mentoring. Child Development, 82(1), 346–361. Retrieved July 25, 2021, from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01559.x

Herzberg, F. (1993). Motivation to work (REPRINT ed.). Routledge.

Silva-James, D. (2013). Ask Volunteers to Evaluate Their Experience. Volunteer Management Report, 18(6), 6.