Selforganization with a mix of volunteers and staff
(This section is an excerpt from my upcoming book “Collective Power. Patterns for a self-organized future” to appear in October 2023. The concept of the common ground is explained there with more detail, but this section should be accessible also without the conceptual underpinning from the book.)
Every organization needs to find some balance between centralization and decentralization. Hierarchical organizations can’t centralize 100% of all decisions, and decentralized organizations have to centralize at least parts of their organization for cohesion and alignment. So all organizations have to learn to exist in a hybrid space where the balance between decentralization and centralization is “just right”.
A complicating factor here is when there is a big power differential between members of the organization — a dynamic that is very common when there is a mix of staff and volunteers. That has less to do with the fact that only some are paid but more with the dynamic that paid workers can often spend more time in the organization than volunteers.
So how do those situations affect decentralized organizations that attempt to institute a power-with governance?
The main issue is that power-with works so much better in situations when all members are on equal footing — equal understanding of the operations, information and systems. But that’s not true when full-time workers are in a circle with people who only spend a few hours per month within the organization. The staff people are often involved in many of the operations while volunteers might only have contact with one department of the organization. So it’s not really a dynamic between volunteers and staff but a dynamic between less and more involved people.
The issue is that the less involved don’t have enough shared common ground with the staff person which means they will either have to defer to the staff person or just trust them when they make decisions they don’t know enough about. Or the staff person needs to fill everyone in, taking up precious meeting time. For collectively held power, a shared common ground is an essential starting point.
Sometimes this is mixed with a power differential, for example, if a minister of a spiritual congregation works in full-time while the rest of the organization is run by volunteers. In those cases, the difference in hours is exacerbated by the reputation that comes with being a spiritual leader. Or a consultant that is in a circle with workers from the organization. In those cases, the laypeople might not say no because they fear losing the affirmation from the beloved leader which means that shared decisions by consent are not guaranteed if not all objections surface.
In extreme examples, groups can also lack the multi-perspectiveness in the organization that makes decentralized organizations so strong because volunteers might simply only know one small part of the organization and not much from `behind the scenes.’
All those factors contribute to a setup where the capacity for shared power is diminished.
There are several ways to mitigate these issues but honestly none of them is a silver bullet.
- Involve volunteers and invest time and energy to educate them.
If the power differential is not too big, then the staff people’s job is to fill volunteers in and give them a chance to have insight of their own. That might mean visualizing financial information, taking time to report extensively, giving volunteers access to survey results to have some unmediated insight into the organization etc. - Involve volunteers as workers, not as decision-makers.
Some volunteers simply want to contribute. They want to plant, clean up, serve, and support but not necessarily sit in meetings. In that case, a self-organized organization might not consider the volunteers decision-making workers but `worker bees’ who simply do operations. In this scenario, the organization is in essence a provider of volunteer opportunities and it doesn’t mean much to volunteers how the workers of the organization are organized.
In some cases, more involved volunteers might be asked to join a related circle, as a bridge builder. The dynamics will be the same as in the previous point because those hand-picked volunteers will likely still be less informed than staff, but they can serve as bridge builders between those volunteers who are only involved in operations and those who also influence decisions.
In either case, feedback from volunteers should be invited and considered. - Include volunteers as decision-makers only where they are involved.
If the volunteers of an organization are motivated to shape the decisions that affect their work, teams can be formed that make decisions autonomously. This can happen with or without staff support, but volunteers here are making decisions about the work they understand and are directly affected by. For example, in a congregation, maybe the kids’ education program is run by volunteers and therefore the Education Circle is volunteer only with one staff link.
In those cases, staff will still need to work extra to provide infrastructure, for example by working that volunteer-based circle into the budgeting system or by proactively keeping them informed about policies made by staff that will affect them. - Volunteers are in communities of practice, staff runs the organization.
I’m adding this pattern because it’s not uncommon. In some organizations, volunteers are involved in communities of practice — groups of people who meet to support each other individually, not to accomplish a shared aim around an output that is achieved together. For example, there might be book clubs or discussion groups that are connected to an organization that hosts volunteers. In those cases, quite often, the staff hosts the communities of practice and volunteers `receive’ the service of having a network of other like-minded volunteers to exchange ideas with or to do activities with.
In my experience, the hardest dynamic about mixing volunteers and staff is being honest with each other. Too often, staff feels like they have to work extra to lift volunteers onto their level, but that often leads to frustration and overwhelm on the side of the volunteers who feel like the bar is too high to contribute meaningfully, and staff who are frustrated when volunteers slow down operations around infrastructure or products and services.
Better to be honest and clear so that we can support each other with whatever people are ready to bring.
