Staff supervisors must also be prepared to oversee and evaluate the volunteer's work. Inadequate training of staff as managers can be frustrating for both the staff person and the volunteer. Supervisors should focus on articulating criteria for success, helping volunteers connect goals to tasks, and ensuring volunteers are integrated into the organization and communication channels.

Job satisfaction is one of the most important variables in volunteer retention. Job satisfaction can be increased by striving to meet the motivational needs of the volunteer, ensuring the volunteer has ownership of her projects and challenging assignments, giving the volunteer concrete and attainable objectives, and providing the volunteer with feedback on her performance. Vital to job satisfaction is also ensuring that the volunteers are made aware of the importance of their contribution to the organization.

The success of a volunteer program can be augmented by thorough follow-up and evaluation with the volunteer at the end of her tenure. This evaluation can be a vehicle for providing the volunteer with final feedback on her work, for seeking the volunteer's assessment of her volunteer experiencing and eliciting suggestions for improvement, and for thanking the volunteer for her contribution.

Volunteer recognition is an essential part of volunteer retention. Many organizations recognize their volunteers with a small gift of some kind, or an annual event. As Jeanne H. Bradner notes, however, in Leading Volunteers for Results:  Building Communities Today, everyday methods of recognition are just as important. Bradner describes some of these everyday strategies:

• Learn what motivates each volunteer and make your recognition appropriate to what he or she thinks is important.
• Give volunteers tasks in which they will be successful.
• Give volunteers whatever training is necessary to perform well.
• Thank volunteers genuinely and appropriately.
• Give volunteers feedback.
• Invite volunteers to participate in decision making.
• Promote volunteers to other roles that take better advantage of their talents.
• Ask volunteers for their feedback.
• Ask volunteers to recruit others.
• Make sure the volunteers are doing work that is meaningful to them and the community.
• Let the volunteers know about the outcomes from the program.
• Never forget the power of a simple thank you, oral or written.

Other volunteer resources are available through Energize, Inc., including Sue Vineyard's emphasis on tailoring recognition to the volunteer in Recognizing Volunteers and Paid Staff:  The Art, the Science, and a GAZILLION Ideas! (2001).

Finally, volunteer records should be centrally located to ensure that the organization retains a record of the volunteer's contribution and participation. Volunteers may later call on the organization to provide a job reference or other confirmation of their volunteer experience. In addition, volunteers are people who are already committed to the organization and can be a valuable source of continuing financial or other support. It may be worthwhile to stay in touch with former volunteers through a newsletter or listserve.

Adapted from Stehen McCurley, Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers, The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management 511 (1994).

Interesting and useful perspectives on volunteer management, including ways to develop creative volunteer roles, can be found in the frequently asked questions at Nonprofit Genie. At Idealist, NGOs can post volunteer opportunities, search for volunteers through the Volunteer Profiles listed at the site, and sign up for nonprofit career fairs. Energize, Inc. has compiled a wealth of additional resources on volunteers, including useful pages on volunteer training programs and tips for the volunteer's first day. Managing Volunteer Programs, by the Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits (MAP), also contains useful links on topics ranging from volunteer recruitment to internet-based volunteering. The Internet Nonprofit Center also maintains a list of frequently asked questions about volunteer programs. The United Nations Secretary General's report, Support for Volunteering, U.N. Doc. A/56/288 (2001), contains useful recommendations on ways in which governments and the United Nations can encourage volunteerism.