The volunteer dance can be difficult but rewarding

Charlie was the kind of leader who wouldn’t say a bad word even when warranted.

He was my tap-dancing godfather who brought me into the world of volunteerism. Since then, my nonprofit/volunteer work has a promenade history that shimmies from agriculture to the underserved.

When Charlie led a campaign for a man running for California’s Assembly, he had some rough moments with the opposition. Charlie never yowled and cursed the way folks do today. Instead, he said something like, “Well, they must say what they must say to get their man elected.” And when Charlie worked to bring a state-of-the-art hospital to our community and had a rough time with one of the other volunteers, he simply said, “That lady’s a pistol.”

“Pistol” was a polite synonym for a few bad words commonly used today.

Which brings me to this month’s subject. Opposite to my January column about difficult leaders, what can leaders do about difficult volunteers? You know, those pistols.

Volunteers are gold. But sometimes, volunteers shuffle in with other agendas, or they simply are so out of step with the nonprofit that they become a liability.

Volunteer problems can include sobriety, troublemaking, honesty issues, lack of people skills, dependability and even personal hygiene. It’s not easy for a leader to choreograph a solution to these challenges.

Most nonprofits have written standards. From my experience, however, those standards are filed in a three-ring binder that is stuffed in a box stacked in a dusty storage shed. And because volunteers are the inner mechanics of most nonprofits, the volunteer that insists on his way or the highway, may have to hoof it to the highway.

I have condensed the following suggestions from Energize Inc., a website for leaders of volunteers at www.energizeinc.com. Apply as if this were a pas de deux in a delicate ballet:

▪ Don’t ignore the problem. It may go underground and be more difficult to confront.

▪ “Fixing” volunteers will drain your energy, time and effectivenesss, and you will ignore the 98 percent of volunteers who are doing a great job.

▪ There are some nasty people. “Savior” is not in your job description. Time won’t fix everyone and, in the meantime, you’ll lose good people and possibly hurt some clients.

▪ Confront them carefully and calmly.

▪ “If I’m really the caring and all-accepting person I should be, I can handle them.” STOP IT! You are beginning to believe your own press clippings. You’re a volunteer administrator, not a saint. They are the problem, not you.

▪ If the volunteer becomes angry, so be it. You did what was best for the program and the people it serves.

Fortunately, difficult volunteers are the exception, not the rule. Not every volunteer can dance to the same rhythm as the rest of the volunteer lineup, so it may be a simple change of moves on the part of the leader to bring that volunteer to the front of the chorus line.

Dancers By the Sea

After writing all these dance analogies, I stumbled into a Cambria woman who gives her time to coordinate Dancers by the Sea for surprise entertainment at the Cambria Farmers Market, or anywhere, unexpectedly, during fall and holiday events. Dancers by the Sea is a volunteer group of Cambrians who follow the dancing lead of Deanna Voelker.

Voelker started dance lessons at age 4. Beginning at age 12, she pirouetted with the San Gabriel Civic Ballet Company for four years. Even as a professional speech language pathologist at age 25, she was a principal dancer in another dance company for about six years.

Now retired from 35 years as a speech pathologist, Voelker volunteers her time staging and training flash mob dancers for every October weekend, and other Cambria events. It started three years ago when the first zombie flash mob suddenly appeared at Farmers Market and zombie-danced to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

“Through emails, exercise classes, neighbors, and any way I could think to get volunteers to join in on the flash mob idea, I gathered all kinds of people excited about the project,” Voelker said. “Gym One donated an exercise room for rehearsals two times a week. Many of the participants had no dance training, but I told them that as long as they move in the right direction, we’re good.”

The second year, Dancers by the Sea performed a country-western dance, and last year it was disco. “I’m thinking about this year already,” Voelker said, who researches the music, and then the choreography.

But what caught my eye were the charms. Voelker purchases a silver chain for each dancer with the first charm that reads “Dance.” Each seasonal theme warrants a new and appropriate silver charm.

Clearly, not a bad word to be spoken here. And the worst volunteer that Deanna would have to manage might be a klutz like me.

This story was originally published February 24, 2016 at 10:35 AM with the headline "The volunteer dance can be difficult but rewarding."