1. Creating Performance Measurements for Your Volunteer Program
Steve McCurley
SMP/SHIP TA Centers

2. Some opening comments
ACL has relatively few requirements for how or what you measure in relationship to your volunteer program. It does require that you measure effectiveness in reaching beneficiaries.
The VRPM policies don’t require that you measure anything in your volunteer program.
I’ll point out some of them as we go along.

3. Why not?
Performance measurements have to be tailored to exactly what you are doing and how you are going about doing it.
Anything else wouldn’t let you really figure out what you were doing and would simply require you to do work that probably wouldn’t help you and would definitely irritate you.

4. So
So this is a session just for those of you who have ever wondered “how am I doing?” or “is there anything I really need to worry about?”

5. “The unexamined life is not worth living…”
As Socrates put it:
“The unexamined life is not worth living…”
This doesn’t guarantee that the examined life, or volunteer program, will be any better.

6. Form a Group Intelligent, alert faces 3-4 people
People whose brains you haven’t already exhausted

7. We don’t have time for real introductions.
Look around and say ”hello.”
We do need to pick a group leader very quickly, so I’m going to impose a method for selecting that person whose primary virtue is that it is very quick.

8. “Point!”
If you’re the appointed leader, “Congratulations!. Your job is the lead the group in having a complicated discussion in a far too short amount of time.
In return for this you get to report out whatever you thought was important or just interesting from the discussion.

9. Discussion Questions
What facts, factors, processes or other things might tell you how you were doing in operating a volunteer program?
What could you measure or track that would provide you with some reliable data on this subject?
Try to settle on 1-2 things to share with the rest of the groups.
This isn’t a brainstorming exercise, so quality is better than quantity. I’m about to provide you with more things to measure than you will believe.
You’ve got 10 minutes.

10. The point of performance measures
To tell you what is happening
To explain why it is happening

11. The basic process for performance measurement
Establish a base number
Record changes, so you can compare with previous history
Compare your numbers with other programs
If you’re either lucky or good these will suggest why something is happening and how you might improve it.

12. ”I’d just like to have a clue about what is going on…”
Two basic techniques
Strict research
”I’d just like to have a clue about what is going on…”
Strict research is usually very expensive and requires professional help.

13. Possible performance measurements for volunteer programs
Quantity measures
Shape measures
Satisfaction measures
Process measures
Retention measures
Effectiveness measures

14. Quantity Measures # of volunteers # of volunteer hours
# of beneficiaries served
# of volunteers passing credentialing
These are rough outputs of what a volunteer program does. ACL requires that you keep the first three and report to them. They basically tell you that you’re doing something, but not whether you’re doing it very well.
They also require that all SHIP team members be properly trained and certified, but that’s not quite the same as figuring out how many aren’t making the cut during training.

15. Shape Measures Average length of service per volunteer
Number of hours per volunteer per week/month
Volunteers in different categories of age, race, sex, geography
Sources of new volunteers
Range of volunteer roles
Amount of volunteer turnover
Shape measures are intended to show you different aspects of what is happening in a volunteer program, which can be very revealing. I’ll show you the greatest disaster in volunteer program management at the end of this session, which might have been avoided if someone had done some intelligent analysis of shape management.
The SHIP data system will allow SHIPs to track the length of service because they have an “end date” field. It will also allow them to track the info in the 2nd and 3rd bullets. ACL requires the info in the 2nd and 3rd bullets, but not necessarily the rest.
Shape measures are most valuable at a means of comparison with other volunteer programs, especially those in your same area of service.

16. Satisfaction Measures
Volunteers with volunteer role, management
Staff with volunteers
Beneficiaries with volunteers
These are basic opinion surveys. You’ll see some samples in both the SMP and SHIP TA Centers libraries.

17. Process Measures Intake Training Communication Supervision
These may provide the best and most useful information on what is happening with a volunteer program. You basically break down the area under question into parts and then ask knowledgeable people what they thought of the experience. Questions include things like: How well are we doing? What worked for you? How could we make this easier? It’s a bit more focused version of an opinion survey.
BB/BS example: intake reactions. Applicants hated the BB/BS intake process.

18. Retention Measures Overall departure statistics
Departure by time, stage of involvement
Departure by demographics
Retention statistics are crucial to determining if you have a hole in your volunteer management system. They are best analyzed by looking for patterns:
1. Geographic
2. Events: departure of highly-liked coordinator of volunteers

19. Effectiveness Measures
Outcome evaluation
Cost effectiveness
Donations by volunteers
Outreach to new populations
The most important of these is whether volunteers actually do a better job than paid staff, but that’s too big for any one program to track.

20. Questions or Comments?

21. What you might miss if you don’t track some things: demographics
In 1960 volunteering in a hospital was the most popular form of volunteering in the United States, with almost 25% of the US volunteer population involved.
By 1995, this percentage had shrunk to less than 5%.
Today it is under 2%.
Any theories why?

22. An odd thing
If at any point during the 30-year period between the 1960’s and the 1990’s you had conducted a volunteer satisfaction survey or a volunteer retention tracking system you would have found only outstanding results: these volunteers didn’t quit and they were happy to be there. They also invited all their friends to volunteer.

23. So what happened? 1950s: Volunteers were in their 30s
2000s: Volunteers were in their 80s, if they were still around
For those of you who have heard my session on “Dealing with the Decliner Volunteer,” this is what prompted it.

24. A brief warning:
Typical volunteer programs with a wide age range of volunteers can survive this experience because they have time to notice it and to react.
Programs that focus on involving seniors need to figure this trend out as quickly as possible or they can fall over the edge of the earth virtually overnight.
Guess which group you fall into?

25. A final word, from one of my favorite people, Sir Josiah Stamp:
“The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.”
Josiah Stamp: during a Parliamentary debate on policing strategies in India in the mid 19th century.
Which is to say don’t get carried away with this stuff.

26. Finding me: shm12@aol.com
The production of this presentation was supported by grant numbers 90SATC0001 and 90MPRC0001 from the Administration for Community Living (ACL). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the SMP Resource Center & SHIP TA Center and do not necessarily represent the official views of ACL.