Volunteer management - VM - G - 2.04 - governance - organizational roles and structure
Organizational roles and structure
Organizational structure, for a volunteer organization, tends to be a bit flatter than in a business enterprise. Even a small business might have senior management, middle management, frontline management, and the employees. However, even rather large volunteer organizations will tend to have only senior management, volunteer management, and the volunteers.
As a volunteer manager, very often it is just you, and the volunteers. And, very often, because you are managing the volunteers, and the volunteers are doing all the work, you may start to hold the view that senior management is less important than you are. After all, it is a volunteer organization, and you are managing the volunteers. The volunteers are doing all the work. So, what is it that senior management is doing? It is easy to come to the attitude that you are of primary importance to the organization, and senior management is just there because somebody has to talk to the Board.
Actually, there are some areas of normal business enterprise that operate in quite similar fashion, and I have worked in one of them. In the field of information technology, we are quite used to the fact that senior management, very often, doesn't actually understand the technology that we are dealing with. If we are working in a technology company, we are dealing with the technology, and so, what the heck is management doing? In information security, this separation is even more apparent. Information security is a very small population within even the information technology world. So, those of us who work in information technology not only have to understand the technology that senior management doesn't, but even the security aspects of the technology that our direct managers don't understand. It is quite easy to start to take the attitude that we are the only ones who actually understand what is going on, and that all the levels of management above us really have no idea what we are doing, and do not understand the situation that we see, and the risks that the entire enterprise is facing.
It's easy, but of course, it is wrong.
Senior management is responsible for everything in the enterprise, whether it is a business, or a volunteer organization. Senior management understands the objective, and understands, overall, the larger risks that the organization is subject to. Senior management understands the finances, and the ability to obtain more finances, and the ability to obtain other resources necessary to the objectives of the organization. They probably have a better grasp on that than we do, even though we understand, in far more detail, what the organization is doing in pursuit of those objectives. But our objectives, in the organization, are not simply our frontline tasks. We are accomplishing those tasks,. But sometimes the tasks might even need to be set aside, for a time, in pursuit of the larger objectives.
As a manager of volunteers, your job is to manage the volunteers, to support the volunteers, and, particularly, to support the volunteers in pursuit of the tasks that they accomplish in pursuit of the larger organizational objective. Your job is not, necessarily, too decide on, or finalize, or even pursue that larger objective. Your task is to manage the volunteers. You have a complicated task in doing that. Your job is big enough, and difficult enough. Sometimes senior management may not give you the resources that you feel you need. And, of course, in directing the volunteers, you are closer to the front line, and the tasks that are being accomplished there. But senior management, and the Board, need to look at the larger picture. They need to look at the overall objective, and whether or not that objective even still exists. They also have to ensure that the organization, itself, continues to exist and to pursue that objective if needed. They have to, in a sense, ignore the immediate needs of the front line tasks, in pursuit of the larger objective. They have to understand the larger environment within which your organization exists. The community, that has the need, that the organization's objective pursues. The community, and especially the business community, that can support the organization with resources and finances. The overall community, and the general population, within which they have to build goodwill, and promote the objectives of the organization, and fundraise. That's *their* job. You do yours.
Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents
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