Volunteer management - VM - G - 2.20 - governance - metrics
Metrics, numerical data with real values measuring characteristics or activities, is of enormous importance to management overall. The metrics gathered in volunteer organisations are possibly different from those gathered in other organisations but are no less vital. The aphorism that "what you can't measure, you can't manage" is possibly not entirely true; however this is accepted wisdom in the management field for very good reason. In management literature you will also see references to KPI or key performance indicators and this is, essentially, talking about metrics.
(I mention real values because numbers and digits are sometimes used simply as arbitrary identifiers. We are talking here about the measurement of characteristics, activities, measurable outcomes, and other real factors. Performance is often mentioned here, such as in the key performance indicators, but performance is a rather vague term with regard to metrics and metrics should be specific. In the next piece I will be talking about a very useful set of guidelines for determining what can be considered metrics and what shouldn't be.)
One factor in regard to choice of metrics that I should mention, right off the top, is that you should choose metrics that are relevant to the operation and objective that you are pursuing. The collection of numbers simply so that you can have numbers to store and/or report is contrary to the entire idea behind metrics. If you are just collecting data for no particular reason, your volunteers will definitely understand that and will resent having to collect numbers "just for show."
W. Edwards Deming was a significant name in studies of management during the 20th century. He is also seen as the father of the concept of quality engineering in regard to management. He is credited with the saying "Without data you are just another person with an opinion," and that is not only true but significant to management. It's also significant to your specific management of your volunteer organisation. Having the right kinds of data allows you to understand how well you are doing in pursuit of the organisation's objective. This allows you to justify proposals that you have for modifying your operations. Having the wrong kind of data, or having no data, usually means that everyone is pursuing their own opinions and agenda and also usually means that you have no management of your organisation and volunteers at all.
I mentioned the importance of having real and relevant data. It is also important to present this idea to your volunteers. As noted with regard to having relevant data, the volunteers will understand what is useful and what isn't. If they don't, or just in general, it is a good idea every once in a while to go over the statistics that you are asking them to collect and report, and to point out why this is significant.
One of the metrics that volunteer organisations very frequently collect is simply that of volunteer hours. That may seem to be an oddity to volunteers because they are aware that in other jobs, with a paycheque, the importance of clocking in and clocking out is that it determines the number of hours for which you get paid. Volunteers are not paid for their volunteer hours within your organisation, but you should point out to your volunteers that volunteer hours are very often used in submissions for grants and funding, to funding agencies and to governments. Being able to show that you have a large base of volunteer hours and that your volunteers are putting in the hours towards your objective works in support of your requests for funding.
Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents
No comments:
Post a Comment