The growth of the project management profession has created dozens of new PMI® chapters and increased the membership of others. However, there has not been a corresponding growth in volunteers to help run those chapters. Successful organizations must recruit and develop new leadership to stay viable. That means getting some help—an increasingly difficult task in today's world of “time poverty.” Here are some recruitment tips.
Know what you want. People want to know what you expect from them, so make assignments as specific as possible. Asking someone to “help with chapter communications” is vague, but asking someone to “rewrite and redesign the chapter brochure” is stronger and more specific. Be prepared to provide an explanation of the job content in terms of the skills and tasks.
Draft volunteers at meetings. People motivated enough to attend a chapter meeting are more committed to their careers and, therefore, make the best volunteers. Use the social hour before the meeting and mealtimes to build rapport with attendees. Find out what they want to gain from the chapter—education, professional development or networking contacts—and offer them assignments that match their motivations.
“It may not be the stated purpose,” says psychologist Mark Hayes, “but the best reason for volunteering is to help yourself.” Hayes speaks from experience— he shifted his career from steel mill worker to psychologist by volunteering for the mill's employee assistance plan as a way to explore his interests in helping others.
Ask for assistance one-on-one. Pleas from the podium, e-mails and newsletter articles begging for assistance are not as effective as a personal request.
Be sure to phrase it carefully. “We've found that a person responds better to a request to help someone vs. ‘volunteering to do some work,’” says Dave Russell, president of the Southwest Ohio PMI Chapter. When one of my co-workers passed the PMP® exam, I congratulated her at a meeting and then asked her to help me (as vice-president of communications) by rewriting and redesigning the chapter brochure. I also mentioned that she would earn some professional development units (PDUs) in the process.
Sell the benefits of volunteer work. Many sales methods use a “feature/benefit” technique in which the seller describes a facet of the product and its benefit to the prospective customer. The most important benefit is PDUs. My chapter's first year exhibiting at a student career fair was staffed by a few of our officers. Before exhibiting the second year, the chapter contacted PMI Headquarters and received approval to offer PDUs for the staffers—and got 25 volunteers.
There are other benefits in volunteering: leadership experience, peer recognition, networking contacts and the chance to make a contribution toward both the chapter and the profession. These are real benefits, but they are intangible. To sell them, you must know a person's motivations—and it's a good idea to know their skills and interests. That's why it's important to know the members attending meetings, because you can use that information to tailor your request for help.
Thank those who help. Chapter leadership should routinely thank volunteers. “Helping others by sharing my expertise makes me feel pretty good about myself,” says Hayes, “especially when that is acknowledged either by the individual I‘m helping or the sponsoring organization.” Chapter leaders also should routinely recruit volunteers. “Our chapter recognized some time ago that if we were to deliver member satisfaction at the local level, we could not continue to ‘burn-out’ the few board members who were doing all the work,” says Russell. When the same people do all the work, the result is poor-quality meetings, lackluster attendance and, eventually, the stagnation or maybe even the death of the chapter.
Project management lives and breathes at the local level. Each chapter, via its educational offerings and peer interactions, sustains the profession of project management. The volunteers sustain the chapter. If we are to have a profession to serve, we must first serve each other.