Evaluating Your Personnel
So, who can do what? That may be your first thought as you look out at an enthusiastic crowd of potential volunteers. Nonprofit organizations often have members with skills in various areas that can facilitate the success of your efforts. If you tap into what people enjoy and what they have experience in and an affinity for, you can get a feel for who will be best at a given task.
While you may want to utilize an accountant to help with your books and people in other professions to employ their business skills, you should also consider people's hobbies and interests. Someone who crunches numbers all day may have no desire to look at your budget on the weekend or in the evening. However, she may be a marvelous auctioneer, having run auctions for a civic group or in college. Remember, one of the reasons people work hard in nonprofits and for community and charitable fundraisers is because it allows them to use their other skills. Tap those interests and skills and you'll find great enthusiasm!
Newer and Older Members
Include newer members of your organization and have them work alongside seasoned members and even board members. Working together allows the senior members to help train the newcomers. It is also very important to let new members of your organization run with the ball on occasion. While they may fumble, they may also score a touchdown with a new idea.
Define tasks very early in the process and assign them quickly. The longer you wait to explain what people need to do, the greater the opportunity for volunteers to lose interest and slip through the cracks. Also, this way you can gather alternate volunteers in case someone changes his mind about being involved.
Tackling Tasks
Defining and assigning tasks is an important step in any fundraising activity. Each task should be written down and delegated to someone who feels comfortable handling that responsibility. This can be tricky because individuals may not have a realistic view of their own strengths and weaknesses. Personalities and character traits come into play, yet as a leader, you walk the fine line of not hurting anyone's feelings while finding the right person for the job.
For example, if the individual in charge of finding and securing the golf course for the tournament is known to be a procrastinator, then everyone else's tasks may be delayed until she completes the job. A good leader will assess, in advance, who might be skilled at doing a particular task and how the person goes about getting things done. In addition, you need to establish an open line of communication. Even if someone is doing a marvelous job, if no one else knows what she is doing, others may duplicate those efforts. Communication is key.
Selling is everything! If you say, “I think Michael would do a marvelous job at finding the site for us,” you have a better chance of getting Michael to take the job of site coordinator than if you say, “I guess that leaves site coordination to Michael” or “Mike, you're stuck with finding the site.”
Unity and Teamwork
When rallying the troops, you want to capture the initial enthusiasm and direct it into an activity before it fades. As the project takes shape, you will want to harness new ideas to maintain the enthusiasm and keep the tasks fresh for the people who are putting the fundraiser together. You can build on the unity the group feels by having tasks that overlap at various points. This will often be the case in your fundraiser, whether you make a concerted effort or not. By overlapping tasks, one group or committee will need to communicate with another to complete its work. Often, the programming and planning committees need to coordinate with the site committee to complete their tasks. All of them will also need to be in constant touch with the promotion and advertising committee.
By limiting stand-alone tasks, you increase the unity within the group, and you make people responsible to each other. This will often encourage someone to get the job done, if only to not let someone else down. Of course, this can be a double-edged sword. If one person, such as the procrastinator, has a task that affects the work of other individuals or committees and doesn't do the job, it can trigger a domino effect. However, if you are monitoring the work as it progresses, this can be avoided.
As the leader, you'll need to keep tabs on the work as it progresses. For this reason, it is also advisable to have a committee rather than one person handling key tasks. Therefore, if there is one weak link, the chain will not collapse and the work will still get done. Unity is also the result of frequent meetings and even social gatherings to discuss the progress of the fundraiser. Show your appreciation for the work the volunteers are doing as often as possible.
