How to Handle Challenging Situations in Volunteer Management

Volunteers are crucial to your nonprofit organization’s success, supporting your mission with their time, resources, connections, and more. But working with volunteers can also pose some major challenges. In this interactive workshop, we will learn best practices for managing the most difficult challenges that volunteer coordinators often face, including:

• Ethical and legal challenges in volunteering – theft, harassment, conflict of interests, etc.
• Disciplinary actions for volunteers, and designing a volunteer disciplinary policy
• How to fire/retire a damaging volunteer
• Grievances from volunteers, and designing a volunteer grievance procedure
• Building volunteer accountability
• Preventing/addressing volunteer burnout

Participants will leave the workshop with an increased knowledge of volunteer management best practices and applicable strategies to address their particular volunteer challenges. If you want to prevent and address the real challenges of volunteer management, this workshop is for you!
About the Presenter:   Julie Strassman, M.Div
Julie Strassman is an experienced volunteer engagement professional and educator, dedicated to helping organizations build mutually beneficial relationships with volunteers. She currently works as the Volunteer Coordinator with Bethesda Hospice Care, where she has increased volunteer participation by 66% since 2018. Previously, she worked with Kingdom House, where she achieved volunteer engagement goals such as a 78% increase in volunteer groups over 2 years. She passionately believes in engaging volunteers for the improvement of nonprofit organizations and the communities they serve.
Julie currently volunteers as the VP of Programming for the Metropolitan Volunteer Management Association (MVMA), and previously served two consecutive terms on the Certification Committee for the United Way of Greater St. Louis’ Volunteer Center. She has presented workshops and webinars on volunteer engagement best practices for many nonprofit organizations, including Network for Strong Communities, We Raise Foundation (previously Wheat Ridge Ministries), Cover Missouri Coalition, Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, Community Service Public Relations Council, Send Me St. Louis/Lutheran Foundation of St. Louis, and the St. Louis Episcopal Service Corps. Julie has a Master’s of Divinity from Eden Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing her doctorate.