This is the third article of an occasional series on my blog where I dive back into the archives and surface some older content that, I think, is valuable for Volunteer Engagement Professionals today.

I’ve been writing for this blog for almost thirteen years and everything I’ve written is available, for free, online. I hope you find this ever-growing library of content valuable, and please do share it with others.

For this next journey into the archives, we’re going back to something I published on the 16th February five years ago, the article, “We need to talk about volunteer teams”.

The original piece came hot on the heels of the first Time Well-Spent study, and juxtaposed this with insights from Wharton Business School Professor, Adam Grant. In it, I tried to help us rethink our approach to recruiting and retaining great volunteer teams.

That was, of course, in the days before Covid-19, and so working with teams has changed. Lockdowns required us to embrace more flexible and hybrid approaches to working with volunteers.

Given these new dynamics, it is my hope that this article from the archives will help us re-think how we can adapt in a changed landscape.

As I said five years ago:

Shifting to group recruitment and retention strategies will present come challenges. We’ll have to try new approaches. Which means risk and the possibility of failure. Yet from such failure will come new ideas and approaches that will work better and better until we get it right.

Please give this article from 2019 a read and leave a comment either on the original post, or on this post, to share your thoughts, reflection, and ideas.

I look forward to reading what you have to say.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

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Consultant, trainer, speaker and writer specialising in volunteerism. Helping people around the world.

2 thoughts on “We still need to talk about volunteer teams”

  1. Thanks for flagging this blog again Rob, it’s really interesting.

    Since you wrote it we read Rebel Ideas at our Association of Volunteer Managers book club where Matthew Syed argues that diverse teams are the most successful. Does that, together with established teams being more successduo, lead you to any reflections?

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    1. You are very welcome.

      I love Matthew Syed’s books, and Rebel Ideas is a favourite of mine, just behind Black Box Thinking.

      His point about diverse teams is a really good one and a key driver for why we need to embrace IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity and access) in our work. If we can bring diverse teams together and get them established in working well together then we sit on a goldmine of potential energy and creativity to harness for our organisations and their mission.

      Of course, some teams get established fester than others, so I think we need to be careful to assume that only long-standing volunteer teams will be the goal, especially when so many people want more flexibility in their volunteering these days. But, if we can get over that hurdle of thinking, we can potentially develop some great new approaches to volunteer engagement.

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