Volunteer engagement often focuses on hard risks: accidents, past bad behavior, or access to confidential information. While these risks are real we often overlook the soft risks that also jeopardize the success and sustainability of volunteer engagement. This session will look at the soft risks associated with engaging volunteers including: “word of mouth” reputation, interactions on social media, lack of training being responsible for inaccurate information being given out, and how failing to screen for characteristics or “fit” can open volunteers, the volunteer engagement program, and the organization up to risk. Attendees will learn to identify these soft risks in their own program through examples, modeled interactions, & learnings from the HR and for-profit sectors, and develop a plan to mitigate the effects on their organization. Attendees will leave with a Soft Risk worksheet as well as action plan for addressing soft risk in recruiting, screening and training volunteers.

1. Convened by: Title Sponsor:

2. Convened by: Title Sponsor:
Understanding Soft Risk in Volunteer Engagement

3. We all think about hard risks…
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4. What is soft risk?
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5. And, why should we talk about it?
These stories illustrate how soft risk can affect
our programs and organizations
– We work to minimize hard risks: liability
insurance, workers comp, background checks
– We need to bring the same thought and
evaluation to the soft risks that occur in our
volunteer engagement programs
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6. While many of the things we do help minimize
soft risk – screening, training, policies – when
we review these activities through the lens of
soft risk we realize we may be exposing our
programs and organization to more risk than
we’re comfortable with!
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7. Determine Soft Risk
Your organization’s culture determines what
types of actions and behaviors are okay…
But, sometimes our culture allows, or even
rewards, actions that have negative outcomes
for
• our program, respect for the work of
volunteers, our clients, our organization’s
reputation
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8. Determine Soft Risk
Soft risk can happen when
• Volunteers are in the wrong role – screening
policies not aligned with the work
• Training and orientation are not designed
around real-life volunteer responsibilities
• Unclear where decision-making authority
starts and stops
• Volunteers are poorly – or are not - supervised
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9. Determine Soft Risk
Soft risk can happen when
• Culture prevents correcting or disciplining bad
behavior
• Policies are on paper only
• Volunteers don’t have the tools or resources
to find the right answer
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10. Where is the soft risk in your
organization?
Take a minute to share where you might have
soft risk exposure in your program.
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12. Minimize Soft Risk
• Ensure that policies have buy-in and are
enforceable
– Enforce them!
• Address training and orientation outcomes
– Talk about them early and often
• Outline and define each role’s authority
continuum
– Where does the decision making start and stop?
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13. Minimize Soft Risk
• Provide resources and support
– What is the right answer?
• Talk about it!
– Model difficult situations or conversations
– Role play or have volunteers switch roles
• Know who’s the right volunteer for the role
– Implement screening practices to ensure that
you’re making the right match
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14. Help others understand soft risk
This isn’t something that
will go away if you don’t
think about it –
We need to talk about
the ramifications of soft
risk in the same way we
do hard risk.
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15. Help others understand soft risk
• Tell your stories
– What if…
– How would this look on the front page of the
paper?
• Identify negative outcomes
– Link to staff time, resources, reputation
– The more volunteer work matters, the more soft
risk can damage your program and organization
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16. Make the case to address soft risk
• Create buy-in around soft risk as an issue
– Story telling with morals
• Identify the ramifications of the status quo
– Culture held hostage
– Failure to discipline or dismiss
• Changing roles for volunteers require new
attitudes
– There isn’t a lot of soft risk in stuffing envelopes
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17. Resources and Getting Started
• Tap into your ethics “backpack”
– Where is your gut telling you there’s a problem?
– http://cvacert.org/resources-and-media/professional-
ethics/
• Prioritize your soft risk issues
– What are your organizational priorities, where is
the greatest impact?
– Use the work sheet to evaluate the risks
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18. Resources and Getting Started
• Work with leadership to start the soft risk
conversation
– What are your stories? What stories with morals
can you tell?
• Evaluate your foundation components
– Position descriptions, screening practices,
training and orientation activities.
– Where are you opening your organization up to
soft risk?
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19. Thank you!
Jennifer Bennett
Senior Manager, Education & Training
VolunteerMatch
jbennett@volunteermatch.org
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