Exciting Team Development Pilot Project to Launch
From AFSWiki
Volunteer Development – The Next Phase
Early in 2011 AFS USA will pilot a team based strategy for volunteer development recently approved by the National Council and the Board. The “Team Development Specialist” pilot will give AFS-USA an opportunity to field test a new way of deploying staff in support of volunteer teams, which we believe could help AFS USA to overcome some of our most critical challenges. Please read on for background information and a description of the pilot. Also please consider joining us for a webinar discussion of this pilot on one of the following dates:
Background:
For the last three years, the number of participants we have sent on outbound programs has declined. Although we have decreased the number of participants we host by more than 600 since 2006, we continue to struggle as an organization to place at the 2500 participant level that we have maintained for the past few years. We continue to face a number of serious compliance challenges, particularly in hosting and participant support. Through careful management of expenses we have been able to avoid year end budget deficits for the past two years, but with little to no reserves, our ability to make investments in areas such as training, marketing and IT are extremely limited. These are all trends we need to reverse if AFS USA is going to remain a viable and healthy organization. One means of reversing these trends lies in the strengthening and growth of our volunteer force.
We have amazing, dedicated and extremely hard working volunteers but many, like their staff counterparts, are struggling to keep up with the demands placed upon them to maintain the current program volume. Our challenge is to find a way for staff to better support and work with volunteer teams to ensure their future health, vitality and growth. Some volunteer statistics may help to illustrate this point.
- In December of 2009 we had a total of 5822 volunteers registered throughout the U.S.
- Today we have 5264 volunteers registered.
- 1521 new volunteers registered during the past year.
- Our total volunteer loss in 2010 comes to 2079 volunteers.
This shows that despite our current recruitment and integration efforts, we are not able to bring in enough new volunteers to make up for the number of volunteers who leave. Understanding whether this is a normal level of volunteer turnover or whether improvements in volunteer development can retain more volunteers from year-to-year will be a central question in the pilot.
The Team Development Pilot:
The “Team Development” pilot will involve 6-7 selected Teams or clusters of contiguous smaller teams in 2011. Each of these teams or groups will be assigned one full time staff person as their “Team Development Specialist”. This full time staff person will become the primary staff contact for hosting, sending, and volunteer development. Our national participant support staff will remain in place and will continue to work much as they have over the last several years on specific participant support cases.
Working in close collaboration with volunteer leadership, Team Development Specialists will develop new and existing volunteers, ensure that team goals for hosting and sending are met, strict adherence to compliance is maintained, and ultimately that sustainable program growth can be realized. The Team Development Specialists will assist teams to work more efficiently and effectively across the many different departments within AFS USA and better utilize the many tools and resources that the organization makes available.
The Team Development Specialist is not intended to replace any of the roles that currently fall under the volunteer purview such as host family and outbound student recruitment, interviewing, participant support and orientations, etc. The Specialist’s success will be evaluated not primarily based on whether the team he or she supports ensures a certain number of students are hosted and sent, but rather, on the strength of his or her team in terms of volunteer numbers, leadership, compliance, and ultimately the team’s capacity to carry out the mission of AFS through expanded participation in our programs.
The Team Development Specialist will work alongside team leadership to assist in the development of a healthy team that can:
- Operate in accordance with AFS USA policies and procedures
- Successfully utilize tools and resources available to teams and;
- Continually attract and retain new volunteers.
How will this initiative differ from past staffing reconfigurations? We believe this pilot will be different for a number of reasons.
- As an organizational we have better knowledge and experience today in regards to what works in volunteer development.
- These staff members will have a more limited scope than staff in the past had in terms of participant numbers and number of teams they will be asked to support.
- The Team Development Specialist will be hired at a manager level allowing us to recruit people for this position who have demonstrated skills in volunteer development, managing teams, interpersonal communications, conflict management, project management, etc.
- We will be placing greater emphasis on “how” the job is done and not simply on whether or not the staff member’s team reaches its numeric hosting and sending goals. Equally important will be whether or not the team has more volunteers, better volunteer retention, and high volunteer satisfaction.
- We have a clearer understanding in the organization today that the only way to grow AFS program numbers is to grow our volunteer teams.
To succeed, the Team Development Specialist will need to become an integral part of the team(s) with which they work and ultimately share equally with volunteers the responsibility and accountability required for the success of the team and the AFS program.
Roll out and Timing of the pilot:
We intend to place 6-7 Team Development Specialists in selected Teams or clusters of smaller teams by mid-February 2011. These Specialists will become the single point of contact for volunteer teams for hosting and sending. The 6-7 Team Development Specialists will report to a Senior Manager of Team Development who will in turn report to me, Kerry McCollum, Chief Organizational Development Officer for AFS USA.
For the purposes of the pilot, the 6-7 Team Development Specialists will be new and additional staff positions. This will allow us to launch the pilot while maintaining the same number of hosting, sending and volunteer development staff that we currently have who will continue to support all other teams (not engaged in the pilot) in the same manner they are currently being supported.
We hope to see positive indicators of success by next summer which would allow us to begin to move more staff positions to the pilot. Our goal would be to convert the majority of our current hosting, sending, and volunteer development positions to the Team Development Specialist model at some point in 2012. We will continue to maintain a small number of national hosting, sending and volunteer development staff positions to focus on the administrative support of those functions including volunteer registration, team and chapter chartering, training and curriculum development, application distribution, international matrix management, etc.
We will soon post the Team Development Specialist position and hope to be able to fill these positions from within our current staff and volunteer ranks. A draft job description for this position can be found using this link: Team Development Specialist Position Description. In addition, we will be inviting all volunteers interested in learning more about this pilot to attend a webinar meeting in early January. Please stay tuned for dates and times. I encourage you to send your questions and comments to me at kmccollum@afs.org so that I can share them with my colleagues on the National Council. We truly hope this pilot will mark a new beginning for AFS USA, forging a future built on a true partnership of staff and volunteers to the benefit of the organization.
Kerry McCollum, Chief Organizational Development Officer
