Why do people volunteer?

People volunteer for reasons that benefit them as well as others. Once you know those reasons, you can offer more of what people are looking for, and get more volunteers as a result.

Nobody gives for nothing

The common misconception is that volunteering means contributing altruistically and receiving nothing in return. Don't get me wrong: volunteering is a worthwhile and noble thing to do. But as the great philosophers Joey Tribbiani and Phoebe Buffay once established, there is no such thing as a selfless good deed. Watch the clip.

That is good news, not a cynical view. If people get something out of volunteering, then we can ask what it is, and make sure they get more of it. Luckily most of that work has been done for us. Researchers have studied volunteers' motives for decades, and I'd encourage you to look up the Volunteer Functions Inventory, which sorts them into six: values, understanding, social, career, protective and enhancement. This article covers four that matter most in a community like a shul: values, status, belonging and competence.

Values: the reason organisations overlook most

People volunteer for organisations because we can only achieve so much as individuals. Suppose you are an organisation to save the whales. How many whales can one person save while also holding down a day job as an accountant? I don't know, but I'd guess very few. So if I really value marine conservation, how do I feel that I am living a life true to my values? I join the organisation, and let it do collectively what I can't do alone.

Most people hold several values at once, often in tension with one another, and they feel them more than they express them. Have you ever asked someone to describe their values in a job interview? You would get the impression that time management is a major world religion. Getting people to clarify their own values is high effort with a low chance of success. But there are two things you can do with your organisation's values that will help.

1. Clarify, clarify, sharpen, clarify. Be clear on what your organisation stands for. Not its mission, its values. (How to do that is a topic for another article.)
2. Publicise. Everyone should be able to see what your values are. That doesn't mean making people sit through a PowerPoint presentation. It means the values sit in the background of every event, in the language you use, and on your publications.

Do both and you will attract people whose values resemble the organisation's. The more convinced they become that those values match their own, the more likely they are to give you their time. This is the same value fit from the last article, seen from the volunteer's side.

Status: say thank you in public, by name

No one will admit this. It is a little uncouth, but it is true: people like to be seen doing good. Publicly acknowledging volunteers, with individual, named kudos, works.

Two cautions. Do it consistently, because the person who is left out of the thank-you list notices more than the people on it. And let people opt out, since a few would genuinely prefer a private word. For most, though, a name on a screen, a public mention or a line in the newsletter is worth more than any amount of generic gratitude.

Belonging: does volunteering help people make friends?

Ask whether the experience of volunteering in your organisation makes it easier to make friends or feel part of a group. Picture an organisation with a helpline. It could have thousands of volunteers, all well trained, all doing the same job at desks in separate cubicles, and never doing more than nod at one another. Each of them is giving their time, but none of them is getting the social reward.

If belonging is part of why people volunteer, design for it. Put people in pairs or teams rather than alone. Make time for a cup of tea afterwards. Notice who is working next to whom.

Competence: using people's skills well

The last motive for this article is competence. Are volunteers putting their skills to good use? Do they feel they are making a difference? There are two main ways to tackle this:

• Better matching of people to jobs. Find out what people are good at and what they would enjoy, rather than filling whichever gap is most urgent.
• Training and coaching. Teach people how to do the job well. Someone who feels competent keeps going, and someone who feels out of their depth quietly disappears.

What about the small jobs?

Stacking chairs, setting up the kiddush, and locking up do little for anyone's sense of competence, and nobody joins a community to do them. So lean on the other motives instead. Some ways to do that:

• Make a squad. Give a small team the job of being superbly efficient at it, with a name, a target time and pride in the result. A ten-minute turnaround is a game as well as a chore.
• Make it a community behaviour. Everyone puts away their own chair, and everyone is responsible. This works best when the leaders do it first and visibly.
• Rotate and bound the job. "One Shabbat in eight" is easy to say yes to. "Whenever needed" is not.
• Do it together. Small jobs done in pairs or with children give people the belonging motive, and let families model the value of contributing.
• Remove the work. Better storage, trolleys and labelled shelves mean fewer jobs to fill in the first place.

Keeping it fresh: every role needs a deputy

A good way to keep things fresh is to make it normal for people to train someone to follow in their footsteps. Each role holder has a deputy. When the primary person wants to step down, there is a ready-made replacement who already has the skills.

This also builds in the competence and belonging motives, because the deputy is being coached by someone who cares about the job. It needs a culture where nobody feels replaced by having a deputy, so say plainly that it is how every role works here, starting with the most senior.

In short

Nobody gives their time for nothing, and that is no bad thing. Offer people purpose, recognition, friendship and the chance to do something well, and you will rarely need to beg for volunteers.