Work Effectively With a Volunteer
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Name the best practices for managing your project.
- Describe a good working relationship with a volunteer.
- Explain how to maintain IT security during your project.
Keep Your Information Safe
With our experience matching thousands of Salesforce pro bono volunteers with organizations, we have made a careful study of how to manage a pro bono project successfully. In this unit, we recap some of the advice about earlier phases and offer more tips for guiding your project to success.
So, you’ve found a Salesforce expert to help your organization through a pro bono engagement—congratulations! Pro bono volunteers can be an invaluable resource in helping you optimize Salesforce. Now, you might be wondering: “What do they need access to—and how do I ensure this is not a security risk?”
Rest assured, effective collaboration on a Salesforce pro bono project should never require you to take any security risks for you or your organization's data. Here are some high-level guidelines for best practices in maintaining security:
- Keep your login information separate from your volunteer’s by using a sandbox.
- Restrict data access to the most necessary areas.
- Document any and all changes the volunteer makes to your system!
Check out Security Best Practices With Pro Bono Volunteers in the Resources section for detailed ways to preserve your information.
Guide Your Project to Success
For the best long-term results, we recommend that your project volunteer works alongside you, not in isolation. Seize this opportunity and ask questions! You will benefit from their knowledge and expertise because they will teach you how to do what they’re doing as they’re doing it.
Keep in mind that your initiative began this process, and it’s your initiative that will fuel it both during and after. If you’re proactive about knowledge growth, you can learn what the volunteer did and how they did it—that way the skills won’t leave the building when the volunteer exits.
Ultimately, remember why you’re doing this: working with a pro bono volunteer helps you get unstuck and prevents small problems from transforming into system challenges.
Keep these tips in mind when you kick off your project:
- Align from the start. In your first call with the volunteer, review the project together and ensure you and the volunteer build a shared understanding of the project goals, milestones, and deliverables. Be sure to clarify concepts and terms you are unfamiliar with as you speak with your volunteers.
- Stay engaged. Volunteers and organizations that stay engaged throughout the process are more likely to deliver a successful project. Build momentum for your project by scheduling and attending regular check-ins, and by responding to email in a timely manner. And make sure to realign on project scope periodically to stay on the same page. It’s almost inevitable for your project scope to change or grow as your volunteer learns more about your needs. It’s not uncommon for overeager volunteers to take on more than they have time for.
- Take the long view. What happens when your project is complete? Have you and your volunteer documented their work in a way that you and your team will understand later? Thorough, detailed documentation captures what the volunteer did, how they did it, and why. Screenshots and videos are invaluable!
- Foster a connection. Be ready to cultivate a human connection with your volunteer. Find ways to remind your volunteer how their work connects with your mission. You want them to see how their contribution is vital to your organization’s work and impact. This will keep them motivated, and cultivate a sense of ownership and accountability.
Create the Best Partnership
We all know how valuable a working relationship can be to creating the best results. Once you have found a volunteer for the project, the success of the project will come down to relationships.
Click on a tip to see more how-to’s for creating the best partnership with your volunteer.
Naturally, there are some issues to avoid if you can. We’ll point out a few of the big ones here.
| Issue | Suggestions |
|---|---|
|
Assumptions |
Come into this project with a clean slate. Don’t presume certain work hours or availability (in these changing times we all have had to flex our understanding of the workday) and be ready to do the heavy lifting at the beginning to onboard the volunteer. As always: communicate! |
|
Lack of Responsiveness |
All too easily things break down when communication breaks down. Don’t neglect this! Answer emails and check in with your volunteer regularly. As you learned in the previous unit, it’s important to set communication expectations up front, but you also need to stick to them. If a pressing work or personal matter comes up, let your volunteer know! They’ll be more understanding if you’re up-front about why you might be slow to respond or need to reschedule a meeting rather than if you don’t respond at all. |
|
Scope Creep |
Here is where we gently and firmly warn against treating the volunteer like a catchall, and why we emphasize that defining your project specifically and clearly from the start is so important. It can be tempting to bring someone in to work on one project, but then add more and more side tasks to their workload, which can make them feel taken advantage of. You’ll achieve more if you keep your project scope restricted—if you finish one project, you can look into another, but stay focused on accomplishing one thing at a time. |
By taking these steps, you will set yourself up for a successful engagement with your volunteer! What’s more, you and your team will complete the project, feel successful, and know with confidence that your skills have leveled up significantly. This opportunity with a skilled professional makes you a more knowledgeable admin going forward, and you will depend less on external resources.
Remember, as you wrap up your project, to document everything. The volunteer won’t always be available to adjust or explain what they did, so thorough documentation is critical to enabling the ability of you and your colleagues to manage Salesforce.
Add a Little Human Touch
Kindness takes you everywhere, so thank your volunteer. If you’ve built in milestones throughout the project, you’ll have had some opportunities to remind them along the way how important they have been to your organization—but project completion is also a meaningful moment to appreciate the volunteer for giving their time and skills. Of course, you know they are volunteering because they want to support their community and causes they care about, so this is a win-win for everyone, but a thank you is always great for building future relationships.
And now give yourself a pat on the back for following the path to a successful volunteer project, from discovering pro bono’s potential, to assessing your readiness to host a volunteer, preparing your project scope, finding and onboarding the right volunteer, and guiding the project to success. Nice work! These best practices will help you effectively tap into the world-class talent of the Salesforce community to make the most of your investment in Salesforce! We wish you much success in your volunteer engagements.