How can we successfully manage volunteers in our libraries? On this show Maggie Rose, PR & Marketing Associate at the Barberton Public Library in Ohio, shares strategies for success on how to recruit, integrate, and recognize volunteers and even thoughts on what to do if something goes wrong.

Transcript

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Adriane Herrick Juarez:

This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. You’re listening to Library Leadership Podcast, where we talk about libraries, and leadership, and speak with guests who share their ideas, innovations, and strategic insights into the profession.

How can we successfully manage volunteers in our libraries? On this show Maggie Rose, PR & Marketing Associate at the Barberton Public Library in Ohio, shares strategies for success on how to recruit, integrate, and recognize volunteers, and even thoughts on what to do if something goes wrong. Enjoy the show!

Maggie, welcome to the show.

Maggie Rose:

Thank you for having me.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #1: I’m glad to have you here. Today we are talking about successfully managing volunteers. As we begin, will you please share why it is beneficial and important for libraries to think about utilizing volunteers in our organization?  01:20 

Maggie Rose:

I’ve never met a library that had enough staff, and I’ve never met a library that had enough funding—that is one of the ways that volunteers can help us in libraries. We can utilize them as a resource to add, or expand library services to help relieve some of the burden of staff, to help install embedded services within our community, to expand our library community. Volunteers are a resource, and libraries need to be using all of our resources. 

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #2:  What can libraries do to successfully recruit volunteers?  02:09 

Maggie Rose:

If you’re starting a library program, or if you already have one in place, and you’re trying to refresh it and get more volunteers, you really want to spread the word that you need more volunteers for your organization. You can do that on social media. You can do that with your local newspapers. If you have a big advertising budget you can do an advertising campaign, and get it up on billboards. You would, pretty much, advertise as you would for any other program. 

You could invite regular patrons to step into that volunteer role. Check with groups that use your library meeting rooms. These groups, sometimes, really love the library. Ask them if they would like to participate in any of these volunteer roles. 

Then again, you can always just contact the schools. Lots of schools, nowadays, have programs where these teens need to give volunteer hours. You can contact the school’s art club and see if the art students could come in, maybe, and do some decorations on the windows for a program. Or, you could contact the football team to see if they wanted to do any painting in the study rooms, or pull any weeds in the garden, that kind of thing.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #3:  Those are good strategies. Once people are brought on board, how should libraries train and integrate volunteers into what we do?   03:27 

Maggie Rose:

Well, before you get volunteers you really want to have a system in place already. You want to have everything documented in advance, especially if you are reinvigorating an established volunteer program, or starting one fresh. You want to make sure you have all the documentation in place that outlines every step of the way. 

You want to create volunteer handbooks so that volunteers know what to do in regard to patron safety—trade secrets for example. You want to ask volunteers to not tell anybody about that book truck in the corner with the broken wheel, and dust bunny underneath it, those kinds of things—how your volunteers are going to be expected to dress, how they will be expected to behave when they’re volunteering and representing the library. You want to have an onboarding checklist ready for them, which is basically just a list of things you do to acclimate your volunteer to your library system and to their new role as a volunteer. 

For example, will they get a name badge? Are you going to give them keys? Will they have a tour? They should always have a tour, and a meet and greet with everybody that they’re going to be working with—and even people who you don’t think they’ll be working with. Because they are part of the team. You want to be sure that they feel welcome.

This onboarding checklist just gives you a list of things to do to help welcome them. You want to have all of this in place before you get the volunteers. Your handbook is really important. Your volunteer plan is very important. The goal is to have everything in place before you get the people to jump in.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #4: What role do communication and contact play in successful volunteer programs?  05:16 

Maggie Rose:

As with most things, communication is key. In Libraryland, we are all communicators. We communicate information. So, if you are in charge of—or running a volunteer program, you want to be able to communicate to your administration. You want to be able to communicate to your supervisors. You can do that with your volunteer plan, which is just a document that outlines the goal of your volunteer program; the roles of your volunteers; how you expect to measure success; the benefits of having volunteers; and your plan for anything that happens if it goes south.

You want to be able to communicate with your colleagues, your teammates, the people who are with you in this challenge every step of the way. You want to communicate with them to keep them in the loop. You can do that with emails. You can do that with newsletters. You can do it in meetings. Most importantly you’re going to want to communicate with the volunteers.

Volunteers—they’re doing us a service. When you communicate with volunteers you really want to do it at their level. If they prefer to receive texts, then you’re going to whip out your cell phone and you are going to text them. If they prefer to do emails you’re going to do it with email. If a phone call is the way they want to be contacted you’re going to have to pick up a phone and actually talk to someone on the phone—old fashioned way. 

Then keep in touch with everybody. Keep everybody in the same loop with a newsletter—with a volunteer-centric newsletter. So, it’s going to be on volunteering, whether it be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly—that kind of thing. You want to let your volunteers know ahead of time what is going to be expected of them. We don’t want to surprise a volunteer. So, communicating with them is really important—letting them know ahead of time what their role is, what is going to be expected of them, how much time this is going to take from them. Then, tell them what to do if certain situations arise. You have to communicate all of this in advance of actually having the volunteer come into the building.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #5: Fantastic. So what happens if a volunteer doesn’t prove to be a good fit in our organization?  07:36 

Maggie Rose:

Well, you want to have a plan. Then you want to have a back-up plan, because not every volunteer situation is going to be rainbows and daisies all the time. You could have a situation where you have a very enthusiastic volunteer, but they just can’t do the job correctly. In my personal experience, I had a volunteer who—she wanted to help me read books, but she could never read the call numbers correctly. She was choosing the wrong books off the shelf to bring to us. So then, we tried moving her to a different task. We tried having her digitize these old newspapers. I didn’t think they were that fragile, but she sure made work of them. But, we did get them digitized. It just got to the point where—she was a lovely person, but every task we needed her to perform she just wasn’t able to do it up to the standards that we needed.

If that happens there are certain options when a volunteer situation goes south. You can ask them to move to a different volunteer day. If it’s a situation where the volunteer doesn’t get along with a staff member, work them in different spaces, work them at different times. If it’s a situation where a volunteer just isn’t working out, you have options. You can say, Well, why don’t we put you in a substitute position? Then you have to tell them what a substitute position is. You can say, A substitute volunteer position is very important because you fill in the gaps when and where we need them. You become a piece on our chessboard. If we need someone to help unload materials this day, we’re going to call you. If we need someone to do this, this day, we’re going to call you. Being a substitute is a really important volunteer position. 

Then, if that doesn’t work sometimes you just have to say, I’m sorry, this isn’t working out. That’s really hard to do, and you say it with compassion, and you say it with kindness, but you can say, I’m sorry, we just don’t have any jobs for you. Or, I’m sorry we don’t have any work for you. Or, I’m sorry this volunteer position just isn’t working out. Then always feel free to hand them information about volunteering for your partner organizations—for the Salvation Army, for your local soup kitchen. Give them other avenues in which to volunteer if your library doesn’t happen to be the best avenue for them.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #6:  On the whole, volunteers can do so much to enhance the mission goals and programming in our libraries. How do we acknowledge and appreciate their contributions?  10:30 

Maggie Rose:

My favorite event happens during National Volunteer Week, which is April 16th through 22nd in 2023. That is where we take an evening, and we invite everyone who has volunteered at the library in the past year. We invite them to have an evening—we call it our Volunteer Tea Appreciation. We serve tea, lemonade, coffee, and drinks. We have little cucumber tea sandwiches, and cookies, and all sorts—just like a buffet of stuff. We had to put it on hold during the Pandemic, but it came back last year, and it’s coming again this year. It’s one of my favorite events. We put a slideshow together of all the pictures of volunteers, and library staff waving and saying thank you to the volunteers. We put inspirational quotes up there so the volunteers can see themselves, the impact that they’ve had on our library. It’s really, really a beautiful event—a beautiful evening. 

Throughout the year you can do spotlights on social media. Say volunteer of the week, or volunteer of the month, or however you want to do it. Or, if you just see a volunteer that’s doing a good job—like it’s a major unpacking day. Your PR department will love it if you take a picture and be like, Volunteer so-and-so is over here unpacking thirteen boxes we got in delivery today. Look for your holds coming soon. It’s a great way to make sure that they’re integrated into the team. Because once they become a library volunteer, they’re part of your team.

Then you also want to consider—your volunteers have perks. There are certain perks to working at a library. You get to see all the new books as they come in. You get to touch them, and sometimes you get to be the first one to open the new book. 

You want to consider—do your volunteers have access to the staff room? Do they have access to those new books? Is there a staff collection that they have access to? Some libraries have collections of popular items that are just for staff use. Do volunteers have access to that? Do they have access to the library before, or after hours? 

You want to think about what perks are right for your library system, and your library volunteers, because you want to make them feel like it is worthwhile, and you want to make them feel as special as they truly are to us. You do that with perks, and highlighting them all year long.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #7: That sounds lovely. Is there anything else you’d like to share?   13:15 

Maggie Rose:

Unpaid labor is not free. You really must work hard to put together a volunteer program before you get those people knocking on your door wanting to come in. You have to work hard, and you have to plan in advance, and you want to have everything documented down. It’s very important that you anticipate what your volunteers are going to be doing. What your volunteers are going to be needing, and how you would like your volunteers to react in certain situations. There’s going to be a training program, and an onboarding program. You’re going to want to interview volunteers. You want to treat volunteers with as much gratitude, kindness, courtesy, and respect as you would any other library employee. 

If you do it right, your volunteers will become your biggest library ambassadors. They’re going to go out into the community and they’re going to say, Whoa, ho, ho, I spend my time volunteering at the library. Did you know that the library does this, that and this? They’ll buy your library swag. They’ll wear it out there. Word of mouth is really the best, free PR that libraries can get. Having a good volunteer program, and making these people feel as special as they are, and they’ll take that feeling out into the community with them.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #8: Do you have any favorite management, or leadership books, or resources, and why?  14:44 

Maggie Rose:

One of my favorite ones is called Managing Library Volunteers. It’s the second edition from Preston Driggers, and Eileen Dumas. It came out in 2011, but it’s still one of my favorites. It has pretty much everything you need to create, or revitalize a library volunteer program. I would say it is the one book that you should not discount when it comes to researching your library volunteer program. It has examples of forms in it. It’s really, really a wonderful book. 

For a quicker read, I do recommend PLA’s Do’s and Don’ts of Supervising Library Volunteers, by Michelle Fernedez. You can just get that on a quick internet search. That’s a really short, quick read. I recommend both of those, highly.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #9: Those sound very useful, thank you. Maggie in closing, what do libraries mean to you, personally?  15:48 

Maggie Rose:

Personally, libraries are everything. I grew up in this library where I work, the Barberton Public Library. This is where I went to storytimes as a child. This is where I was first hired as a shelver when I was in high school. This was my first professional library job. I worked at other libraries in between. I keep coming and going, but I always end up back here at my library. It is so central to my life. Libraries in general are so central to my life that I can’t imagine a world without them. 

I love how libraries continue to be the welcoming place that they are, where everyone, no matter your socioeconomic status—no matter who you are, you’re always welcome at a library. You don’t have to buy anything to get in. You don’t have to have a membership to get in. You have to have a library card to access some resources, but at most places you can just walk in and pick up a magazine, or a book, and read it right there in the library. Really equitable access for all is what I think libraries really stand for, and I am just so blessed to be a part of my library system. I think everyone needs a library in their life.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Oh Maggie, I love that full circle story of you being the little kid in storytime at your library and now being the librarian, and successfully integrating volunteers into your organization to bring new ambassadors for what you do. Volunteers can help us in many ways, and bring valuable skills, and insights to our libraries. Thank you for sharing this with me today.

Maggie Rose:

Thank you for having me.

You’ve been listening to Library Leadership Podcast. This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. For more episodes tune into LibraryLeadershipPodcast.com where you can now subscribe to get episodes delivered right into your email inbox. Our producer is Nathan Sinclair Vineyard. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We would like to thank the Park City Library for their dedicated support of this show. The opinions expressed on this show are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of Library Leadership Podcast, or our sponsors.