Reading List: Volunteer Management 101: How to Recruit and Retain Volunteers by Allen Madding and Dan King

A few weeks before COVID-19 became so widespread in the Seattle metro area that businesses began closing their doors, the Education/Volunteer Coordinator at the museum I work at took a job at a different museum. To fill his position until a new coordinator could be hired, a number of our staff members took on various parts of his job, and the Volunteer Coordinator responsibilities were given to me (Yay!).

Fast-forward a short two weeks, and our museum closed “out of an abundance of caution” to protect the employees and public from the COVID outbreak. With a new – albeit temporary – role at the museum, and unexpected time on my hands, I took the opportunity to pile up a bunch of volunteer management books that I’ve been wanting to read.

First up is Volunteer Management 101: How to Recruit and Retain Volunteers by Allen Madding and Dan King.

This is a tiny book, and an extremely quick read. This is like the introduction to the introduction text on volunteer management. If you’ve managed volunteers before, been around volunteers before, been a volunteer before, have common sense, or have read or are planning to read probably ANY other volunteer management book, this one isn’t necessary. It’s got great tips, but stuff that should come up in most other volunteer management training or books.

That said, if this IS your first time managing volunteers and you need a quick book to get you up to speed, this is a fine one to start with. It’s super short, has bite-size pieces of advice and guidance, and will give you enough of a start until you need to get a bigger book to cover meatier topics.

I will say that even though a lot of what Madding and King say is old hat for experienced volunteer managers, there are some good quotes and inspiration, things experienced managers might have forgotten if they’ve gotten jaded or complacent in their jobs. A lot of it is commonsense, but nice reminders.  

The upsides:
• Some good quotes and inspiration, things to keep in mind
• Easy to skim for later reference  

The downsides:
• Example scenarios can be too long
• Grammatical and spelling errors! There aren’t really that many, but they still made me twitch.
• Some chapters are organized in a way that doesn’t completely make sense to me, and some chapters seem like they should be placed elsewhere in the book.
• Some reviewers online were bothered by the number of God/religion references. The authors are volunteers/volunteer managers for different church groups, so yes, a lot of their references end up being about church. I don’t really have a problem with this, since this is where their experience comes from, other than going back to the previous point that their example scenarios can be too long. I don’t mind reading about their church groups and volunteering with them; I mind there being so much unnecessary text about their church groups and volunteering. Edit!
• Their “case studies” are also a weird mix of Bible stories forced into the “a good leader does…” mold. Once they analyze the passages and tell me why they’re relevant, okay maybe; but… get there, and get there faster. And was this even needed to begin with? (And still, some never seemed to get to a relevant point.)

Volunteer Management 101: How to Recruit and Retain Volunteers, 2018
Allen Madding and Dan King
114 pages

Overall: Good advice for newbies, reminders and inspiration for others. A good starter kit for people who have never been in charge of volunteer management before, but for experienced volunteer managers, this isn’t one that needs to be read.