Issues Of Volunteer Retention In Charitable Organizations: A Case Study On St John QLD

Volunteer Requirements at St John QLD

Question:

You are required to develop a well-referenced literature review which provides a background to your project. The literature review should examine the constructs, and discuss all relevant factors that have been identified by previous researchers which lead to the problem under investigation.

The main purpose of this literature review is to highlight the issues of volunteer retention, and along with that the paper dwells through various aspects regarding the issues that can the volunteers face in the charitable organizations. Volunteer retention can be defined as a chief indicator in the management of the volunteers. Following some basic rules and regulations of this theory the management acquires the ability to retain the volunteers of the organizations.

St John Ambulance is a nonprofit institution and the organization is self funded. The members of this organization dedicate their time to help the people who are in problems related to health issues. St John’s initial First Aid Training Center was established in Australia in the late 19^th century and by 1883, the organization emerged as an organization having several wings and branches to serve more people who are suffering from health related issues.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the fact that how ST John QLD can retain their volunteers to ensure they provide the best medical assistance to the people who need it and especially to the medically disadvantaged persons along with homeless and the elderly people of the country. Another major purpose of this paper is to attract the attention of the practitioners in the partner organizations of St John Qld in order to make them feel that their efforts as volunteers in those organizations are priceless and the organizations are blessed to have a volunteering workforce like that. Thus this paper projects the importance of these volunteer efforts and also highlights that currently for institutions like St John QLD, they are assets, and in any ways their services should be sustained.

It is seen that effective supervision and communication with the volunteers has been adopted chiefly among the majority of the volunteer organizations. A shocking fact for this generation is that only 35% of the charities have actually adopted publicly recognizing the works of their volunteers (Lasker 2016). The target audience of this paper is the youth of Australia who are interested to work for the society and especially those persons who have the basic idea about the medical science or physiology. The management of the organization highlights the fact that they want to attract the other practitioners in the same field and preferably practitioners in the partner organizations. The volunteers are the nucleus of the charitable organizations and years after years they invest their time for the betterment of the society. They provide help to the individuals selflessly whom they do not even know. Volunteers who invest time for St John Ambulance QLD, they raise funds from the First Aid training centers and by selling the products related to healthcare and invest that money for the benefit of the individuals in need of medical assistance (Kamimura and Christensen 2014).

Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers Effectively

Currently there are some specific requirements for volunteers and those are mentioned in this section. They need community care volunteers, who will provide assistance to the persons who are homeless, retired persons and who are disadvantaged. Apart from that the organization needs apart from that they need volunteer services from the individuals who have a medical degree (Kamimura and Christensen 2014). These individuals generally serve in the local hospitals, clinics and provide help to the individuals who are suffering from critical diseases. Lastly, the organization recruits individuals who serve in the first aid centers and bringing in patients to the clinics. For this they require only individuals who are over 16 years old and no specific academic qualification is needed for this. The organization provides a month’s training to the individuals before deploying them to serve the people in need for the best results. 

The organization should be able to identify the volunteers and encourage them to participate at an organization level in order to serve the people in problematic situations (Lasker 2016). In order to recruit effectively for voluntary purposes, there are certain ways and those are mentioned in this section;

• The members of the organization should ask enthusiasts to help in small tasks like bringing in patients to the institution or giving them the first aid as a first step.
• The management of the organization should proactively publish the roles of the volunteers who are available to work.
• The management must hold an annual day meeting in order to clarify things, discuss about the nearing events and apart from that they discuss about their future plans and distribute the duties of the volunteers.

The volunteers must participate in the meetings where they are required to take any decisions as a group regarding any events or the process they will go through for a particular task (Withers, Browner and Aghaloo 2013). It would be more beneficial if a person chairs the meeting for the meeting to be more effectual.  These types of meetings enhances the awareness of how the volunteers are feeling and the outcomes of these meetings can help to distinguish that who are doing excessive works and who are not getting adequate work to serve the people. These types of meetings actually enhance the motivation level of the volunteers and increase the productivity of them. The management should put extra effort in recruiting new volunteers and they can make the induction training process more effective so that the new entrants can learn how important they are for the organization and the severity of the services that they are providing to the individuals who are medically disadvantaged (Mwapasa et al. 2017).

In some charitable organizations there is one person who chairs all the meetings and takes decisions regarding the forthcoming events and regarding the action plans of the volunteers. In some cases in the meetings, all the volunteers and the members of the organizations participate and take decisions regarding these matters (Kamimura and Christensen 2014). In this way the effectiveness of the meeting gets increased. In these meetings the members can anticipate the problems that may arise in the future or the opportunities and the strengths of the organization (Lasker 2016). There should be a proper planning because without a proper roadmap, the charitable organizations like St John QLD would not be able to provide more assistance to the people who are in need. The management of the organization might take the examples of World Bank and following their footsteps; they can arrange some initiatives and arrange some events in order to attract more volunteers to join their organization (World Bank, 2017).

Retaining Competent Volunteers

Within an organization, there are numerous members who get engaged in charitable works and they invest a lot of time for charitable purpose. In order to keep them motivated and loyal towards the organization the management needs to take some steps. For an example, in an organization like St John QLD there are many volunteers and out of them the majority are very competent and they are asset for the organization (Iddins et al. 2015). The management of the organization must take initiatives so that the competent volunteers are retained successfully. The management has to use some techniques like reward and recognition (Decroo et al. 2013). As the members are volunteering their efforts and investing a lot of time, thus the only thing that a volunteer can expect is the recognition of his or her hard work. At time the volunteers might get desolated and lose their motivation, but when these sensitive situation arise, the management has to be specifically cautioned to deal with that situation. In those situations the management has to deal with the situation very sensitively and try to retain those volunteers who are competent enough. This has to be done with taking extra care because in this way the society gets benefitted (Chamberlin et al. 2015). There should be a set of rules and regulations within the organization regarding these issues in order to maintain a healthy work environment within the organization. Apart from these, the management has to be extra cautioned regarding the issues where the volunteers may feel overloaded with work and at times they can think that they are not getting adequate work to do. When these situations arise, a potential disruption among them can take place and the management should work on it so that these types of situations never arise and make things problematic (Bennington 2017). Thus the main issue that these organizations face is retention of the volunteers and they should introduce new rules and regulations so that the volunteers feel that they are important for the organization as well for the society.

Conclusion

Thus to conclude, it can be said that retaining the volunteers in charitable organizations are always problematic and especially for the St John QLD.  This is because, this particular organization works for the individuals who are in problems related to medical issues and provide medical assistance to them. It is a matter of fact that if volunteers of these organizations are reluctant to work for them, then the management will face huge issues regarding the operations of the organization. In the particular field where this organization operates is highly technical and the work is quite complex. Thus it will be impossible to replace any competent volunteer within a short period of time. Thus the organizations need to be always aware o this issue and act accordingly so that their works to provide assistance to the people who are medically disadvantaged gets proper assistance.

References

Bennington, L.A., 2017. Why Do People Volunteer in Free Clinics?.

Chamberlin, M., Grasso, J., Molitch, M.E. and Toledo, P., 2015. Qualitative Analysis of Key Informant Interviews to Establish Barriers And Solutions for Diabetes Care In a Rural Bolivian Clinic. The Journal of Global Health Care Systems, 5(3).

Decroo, T., Rasschaert, F., Telfer, B., Remartinez, D., Laga, M. and Ford, N., 2013. Community-based antiretroviral therapy programs can overcome barriers to retention of patients and decongest health services in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review. International health, 5(3), pp.169-179.

Iddins, B.W., Frank, J.S., Kannar, P., Curry, W.A., Mullins, M., Hites, L. and Selleck, C., 2015. Evaluation of team-based care in an urban free clinic setting. Nursing administration quarterly, 39(3), pp.254-262.

Kamimura, A. and Christensen, N., 2014. Maziar M. Nourian, Kyl Myers, AnnMarie Saunders, Silvia P. Solis, Jeanie Ashby, Jessica LJ Greenwood, et al. J Community Health, 39, pp.1186-1192.

Lasker, J.N., 2016. Hoping to help: the promises and pitfalls of global health volunteering. Cornell University Press.

Mwapasa, V., Joseph, J., Tchereni, T., Jousset, A. and Gunda, A., 2017. Impact of Mother–Infant Pair Clinics and Short-Text Messaging Service (SMS) Reminders on Retention of HIV-Infected Women and HIV-Exposed Infants in eMTCT Care in Malawi: A Cluster Randomized Trial. JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 75, pp.S123-S131.

 Mwapasa, V., Pro, G., Chinkhumba, J., Mukaka, M., Kobayashi, E., Stuart, A., Gunda, A., Joseph, J., Sugandhi, N., Chimbwandira, F.M. and Eliya, M., 2014. Mother–infant pair clinic and SMS messaging as innovative strategies for improving access to and retention in eMTCT care and Option B+ in Malawi: a cluster randomized control trial (the PRIME Study). JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 67, pp.S120-S124.

Withers, M., Browner, C.H. and Aghaloo, T., 2013. Promoting volunteerism in global health: lessons from a medical mission in northern Mexico. Journal of community health, 38(2), pp.374-384.

World Bank. (2017). World Bank Group - International Development, Poverty, & Sustainability. [online] Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/ [Accessed 24 Nov. 2017].