Using volunteer motivations for effective mentor recruitment and retention
Abstract
Functional volunteer theory is built on the simple premise that individuals volunteer for a reason (or combination of reasons) and that volunteers doing very similar work (such as mentoring) may have come to that experience in an effort to realize rather diverse personal benefits. Functional volunteer theory (as developed by researchers such as E. Gil Clary, Mark Snyder, and their colleagues) attempts to link people’s beliefs and their subsequent behaviors. This effective practice examines how mentoring programs can use this theory, and the Volunteer Functions Inventory tool itself, to create more powerful mentor recruitment messages and frame the volunteer experience to meet mentors’ personal expectations and motivations for getting involved. Submitted by LEARNS at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in April 2008.Issue
Youth mentoring programs often struggle to find sufficient numbers of committed, skilled mentors. Frequently, this problem is related to the intensive and personal nature of mentoring itself — many potential mentors do not have the time or personal resources available to commit to mentoring as a volunteer experience. Some of these struggles are the result of volunteer recruitment practices which place an emphasis on recruiting from large heterogeneous groups of people (such as employees of a corporation) — a "quantity over quality" approach that may reach many people but is unlikely to really connect with individuals at a more meaningful, personal level.Further complicating this recruitment dilemma are issues related to retention of volunteer mentors. Many mentors who do not stick with their volunteer commitment cite unfulfilled expectations and disappointment with the experience as key reasons for opting out (Spencer, 2007). Even when programs acquire recruits to begin serving as volunteer mentors, they run the risk of losing them if their experience does not meet their personal goals and expectations.
In an effort to find suitable mentors, many programs engage in "targeted" recruitment, where specific groups of potential mentors are courted using focused presentations, media, and recruitment slogans. This targeted approach can focus on demographic traits (an emphasis on male mentors, for example) or personality traits (such as individuals who are good listeners, or who have a desire to "give back to the community"). Targeted recruitment aims to find those individuals who are likely to have a personal affinity for the experience of being a volunteer mentor, replacing mass recruitment with a narrow search for those who are a "good fit," and improving retention by only recruiting those who are likely to find the experience rewarding.
Action
One key concept that can help mentoring programs with targeted recruitment is that of functional volunteer motivations. This theory is built on the simple premise that individuals volunteer for a reason (or combination of reasons) and that volunteers doing very similar work (such as mentoring) may have come to that experience in an effort to realize rather diverse personal benefits. Functional volunteer theory (as developed by researchers such as E. Gil Clary, Mark Snyder, and their colleagues) attempts to link people's beliefs and their subsequent behaviors. It examines the internal motivations that have caused them to take action, to get involved (and stay involved) in external volunteer activities. (Clary, Snyder, Ridge, Copeland, Stukas, Haugen, et al., 1998.)
The Volunteer Function Inventory (or VFI) itself is a survey that can be given to volunteers to examine their motivations for volunteering.
The six main categories, or functions, identified by Clary and colleagues are:
- Values: to express humanitarian and prosocial values through action;
- Career: to explore career options and increase the likelihood that a particular career path can be pursued;
- Understanding: to gain greater understanding of the world, the diverse people in it, and ultimately, oneself;
- Enhancement: to boost self-esteem, to feel important and needed by others, and to form new friendships;
- Protective: to distract oneself from personal problems or to work through problems in the context of service;
- Social: to satisfy the expectations of friends and close others.
Although there are slight differences among specific demographic groups, these motivations are present across gender, class, race, and other lines. It is also worth noting that the highest rated functions, as indicated by volunteers across the board, are values, enhancement, and social, followed by understanding, protective, and career.
The good news for mentoring programs is that each of these motivations can be capitalized on, both in terms of initial recruitment and how programs frame the experience of mentoring over time to match participants' motivations.
Creating Motivation-Based Recruitment Language
The best way to use the VFI is to administer it to your existing volunteer mentors to see what common motivations exist. This will tell you the types of individuals your volunteer opportunity currently appeals to (or not) and may highlight the success of a particular recruitment message or advertisement. It can also tell you how your current matches view their experience and whether it matches their initial motivation.
If you wish to administer the VFI to your mentors, download it, complete with scoring instructions, here:
http://www.oregonmentors.org/files/library/Volunteer Function Inventory scale _Clary et al_.pdf
If your program is brand new and still trying to bring in its first batch of volunteers, the VFI can still be of value to you. Administer it to your staff to get an initial read on the reasons they are involved in mentoring, which can help in brainstorming recruitment messages. You can also analyze current recruitment efforts to see how they might connect with volunteers in each of the six functional categories. Think about the types of individuals you want as mentors and see how that description looks from the perspective of each of these volunteer functions.
Programs can brainstorm recruitment messages based on the six volunteer functions:
Values: expressing humanitarian and prosocial values through action
Recruitment message:
- Young people need your support
- Everyone needs a helping hand every now and then
- Mentor a child: It's the right thing to do
- Make the world a better place one child at a time
Enhancement: boosting self-esteem, to feel important and needed by others, and to form new friendships
Recruitment message:
- "I get as much out of mentoring as she does!"
- Make a friend while making a difference "I never thought giving back would give me so much in return."
- Mentoring: The best part of two people's day!
Social: satisfying the expectations of friends and close others
Recruitment message:
- Mentoring: all the cool people are doing it!
- Show your boss you're a people person: mentor a child
- Women dig men who mentor
- Be a mentor, because everyone loves a hero
Understanding: desiring to gain greater understanding of the world, the diverse people in it, and ultimately, oneself
Recruitment message:
- Life happens when you connect with others
- Think there's a generation gap — Close it by mentoring a child
- Mentoring a child can open your eyes while opening up their future
Protective: seeking to distract oneself from personal problems or work through problems in the context of service
Recruitment message:
- Did you need someone to care about you when you were that age?
- Don't let a young person make the same mistakes you once did. Share what you know.
Career: exploring career options and gaining career-related experience
Recruitment message:
- Mentoring a child opens a world of possibilities, for both of you.
- Mentoring: Creating skilled communicators for over 100 years.
Notice how many of these messages appeal to several motivations. The best messages speak to multiple motivations while also targeting demographic groups, such as men or recruits from a specific business or industry.
While the language of your recruitment messages is important, don't forget the prominent role that visuals play. Are the graphics on your Web site and brochure hopeful? Or are they illustrative of the serious issues your youth may face in their lives? What types of people do your materials show serving as mentors? What types of values are expressed in the imagery you choose? An on-target message may be less effective if accompanying imagery does not also connect with that volunteer motivation.
Using the VFI for Volunteer Retention
The six motivations can also be used as a framework for recognizing and reassuring mentors throughout their participation. The following strategies can frame the mentoring experience and provide appropriate forms of recognition for volunteers that fall into each motivational category:
Volunteer Function/Motivation is Values: expressing humanitarian and prosocial values through action
Recognition/Forms of Match Support are:
- Share a lot of information about the progress of their mentees and the outcomes of the program as a whole.
- Highlight long-term impacts, such as youth moving on to college or changes in the community that happen because of the work of the program. This is valuable information for all volunteers, but the "values" volunteers will have a special interest in the impact of their efforts.
Volunteer Function/Motivation is Enhancement: boosting self-esteem, to feel important and needed by others, and to form new friendships
Recognition/Forms of Match Support are:
- Build in many opportunities, whether through conversation or activities like art projects, for mentees to say thank you. These volunteers will really need to feel appreciated, and your staff can help through simple gestures like thank you notes and big acknowledgements such as annual recognition events.
- Group outings and other fun activities are also likely to have increased importance for volunteers looking for a happy, positive experience.
Recognition/Forms of Match Support are:
- These volunteers are likely to find value in recognition targeted at specific people, such as their employer or family members. Recognize corporate volunteers in their company's newsletter or in a letter to their boss. Reward mentors by providing an opportunity to involve their family, such as a mentor-mentee picnic. Work with congregational leaders to publicly acknowledge and reward volunteers from faith communities.
- Give mentors a certificate or plaque that they can display for all to see. Find out who is giving that social approval on a mentor-by-mentor basis and get those individuals involved in saying "thank you."
Volunteer Function/Motivation is Understanding: desiring to gain greater understanding of the world, the diverse people in it, and ultimately, oneself
Recognition/Forms of Match Support are:
- Reflection activities that allow mentors to reflect on what they have learned and experienced are key for this group.
- Ongoing training provides an opportunity to discuss how the mentoring experience has helped them grow and how they can apply the knowledge they have gained to other relationships and situations in their lives.
Volunteer Function/Motivation is Protective: seeking to distract oneself from personal problems or work through problems in the context of service
Recognition/Forms of Match Support are:
- These mentors may be volunteering for very personal reasons that they may wish to keep that way. If you think you have mentors who are volunteering to help work through personal experiences, try to emphasize the impact they are having. Talk with them about the changes you see in the young person they are working with.
- Also share your observations about the mentors' own personal growth, if appropriate. Let them know that your program is part of their system of support too, not just the mentees'.
Volunteer Function/Motivation is Career: exploring career options and gaining career-related experience
Recognition/Forms of Match Support are:
- You may want to provide group activities or other networking time for mentors who work in similar fields or have similar professional interests.
- Ongoing mentor trainings can be a great way to get mentors talking with each other. They also provide opportunities to practice many skills that are applicable in the workplace, such as effective communication, problem solving, building consensus, and dealing with difficult situations.
- Emphasize that mentoring relationships can teach them skills they can use in the workplace and in all their other relationships.
- If your program works with peer mentors, you can use the mentoring experience to help mentors explore careers in teaching, counseling, or other helping professions. Help them identify skills they are learning and think about how they can apply them in future careers.
As you incorporate these volunteer motivations into your recruitment messages and recognition activities, keep track of their effectiveness. Keep asking new mentors: Why did you decide to volunteer? What did you hope to get out of the experience? Did it play out the way you expected? Chances are that over time you will settle into a common "profile" of the type of volunteer that sees a way to fulfill personal motivational needs through your program.
Just remember that within that common profile, each volunteer is unique and has very specific reasons for wanting to mentor a child. Do what you can to speak to those motivations, before, during, and after recruitment. After all, mentoring is a very personal experience, made all the more powerful if a volunteer's vision of the experience becomes reality.
Context
The Volunteer Function Inventory (or VFI) is a survey that can be given to volunteers to examine their motivations for volunteering. Since its development, subsequent research (such as Clary, Snyder, & Stukas, 1996) has proven it to be very accurate in predicting the types of volunteer work people will gravitate to, as well as how rewarding they will find the experience upon reflection (Snyder, Clary, & Stukas, 2000). It can be a powerful tool in determining why individuals are volunteering, as well as the likelihood that they will value the experience and keep doing it.The VFI tool was developed as a tool for gauging motivations and involvement across a wide spectrum of volunteer activities and organizations. Its usefulness is that the principles of functional volunteerism can be applied to any volunteer activity, including youth mentoring.
Outcome
Mentoring programs that use functional volunteerism and the VFI tool are likely to develop diverse and increasingly-effective mentor recruitment messages. They attempt to connect with volunteers at multiple levels and will use many different slogans, themes, and images to tap into those personal motivations for volunteering.Programs that are successful at crafting targeted messages may actually see a reduction in the amount of time and resources that go into volunteer recruitment, replacing mass-marketing, large group style recruitment with a "smarter-not-harder" approach that maximizes the investment by focusing on only the most viable potential candidates.
Evidence
The VFI tool has been validated in many research studies showing its accuracy for measuring motivations (Snyder, Clary, & Stukas, 2000) and potential volunteer satisfaction (Starke & DuBois, 1997). The six categories of functions are well-established in the research — although there are slight differences among specific demographic groups, these motivations are present across gender, class, race, and other lines. There is even some research indicating that the values function determines whether someone will volunteer (or not) but that their choice of volunteer activity may be driven by the other functions (Clary, Snyder, & Stukas, 1996).One prominent study (Clary et al., 1998) "demonstrated that volunteers who reported that they received benefits relevant to their most important motives were both more satisfied and had higher intentions to volunteer in the future than volunteers who did not receive relevant benefits or volunteers who received irrelevant benefits" (Stukas, & Tanti, 2005).
This evidence indicates that mentoring programs will be well-served incorporating concepts of functional volunteerism into their recruitment messages and volunteer recognition activities.
Posted On
May 6, 2008For More Information
Resources
Clary, E.G., Snyder, M., Ridge, R.D., Copeland, J., Stukas, A.A., Haugen, J., et al.(1998). Understanding and assessing the motivations of volunteers: A functional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1516-1530.
Clary, E.G., Snyder, M., & Stukas, A.A. (1996). Volunteers' motivations: Findings from a national survey. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 25, 485-505.
Mentoring Resource Center. (2006). Volunteer motivation and mentor recruitment [Fact Sheet #8]. Folsom, CA: Author. Retrieved 4/28/08 from http://www.edmentoring.org/pubs/factsheet8.pdf .
Snyder, M., Clary, E.G., & Stukas, A.A. (2000). The functional approach to volunteerism. In G.R. Maio & J.M. Olson (Eds.) Why we evaluate: Functions of attitudes (pp. 365-393). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Spencer, R. (2007). "It's not what I expected": A qualitative study of youth mentoring relationship failures. Journal of Adolescent Research, 22(4), 331-354.
Starke, M.L., & DuBois, D.L. (1997, Fall). Characteristics of mentors with successful relationships. The MU McNair Journal, 9-14.