{"id":2054,"date":"2009-01-22T02:36:04","date_gmt":"2009-01-22T02:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildapricot.wpengine.com\/?p=2054"},"modified":"2025-05-12T05:29:51","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T05:29:51","slug":"motivating-your-volunteers-needs-barriers-and-psychology-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wildapricot.com\/blog\/motivating-your-volunteers-needs-barriers-and-psychology-101","title":{"rendered":"Motivating Your Volunteers: Needs, Barriers, and Psychology 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nonprofits are good at showing appreciation<\/a>
\nto their volunteers in a wide variety of thoughtful ways, and those
\nthank-you gestures are vital. No one can be expected to carry on
\nindefinitely with work that goes unappreciated. But finding ways to motivate volunteers and keep them engaged<\/a> can be a real challenge. <\/p>\n

Rewards <\/strong>are not the
\nmost powerful kind of human motivation — because a reward by definition
\nfollows<\/em> the act. Motivation<\/strong>, on the other hand, is what gives the volunteer a reason to step up in the first place.  And just as there are two ways to reward someone — to give
\nsomething they like, or take away something they don’t like —
\nmotivation also has two sides. <\/p>\n

We can create opportunities to volunteer
\nthat are designed meet the needs of our supporters, or we can remove
\nthe barriers that might keep them from volunteering. <\/p>\n

Ideally, we’ll do
\nboth — but removing the barriers has to come first, if volunteer
\nactivities can hope to compete with all the other attractive demands on busy people’s
\ntime and attention.<\/p>\n

Forget about trying to recruit and motivate people until you
\nfirst learn how to stop chasing them away. What are you now doing that
\ndiscourages people from participating more actively in your group or
\ncause? … People make choices as to what groups and activities they
\nbecome involved in, and how much time they give to each, based on their
\nperception of these costs and benefits. They consciously, and
\nunconsciously, weigh one against the other. If the perceived costs
\noutweigh the perceived benefits, they drop out of the group or become
\nless active. These costs then become barriers to participation. <\/em> ~ Nebraska 4-H Volunteer Leaders Toolkit<\/a><\/div>\n

Will door-to-door canvassing let me visit with friends and neighbors I don’t get to see very often?  <\/em>If there’s a need to be filled, there’s a motive for volunteering.<\/p>\n

If I agree to host the big fundraiser, does it mean I’ve got to rent a tux?<\/em>  If so, there’s a literal, out-of-pocket cost attached to this
\nvolunteer opportunity. But will that cost be a barrier for the
\nvolunteer? It depends in part on his financial resources, but also on
\nwhether his unfulfilled needs — for attention, for peer approval, for
\nsocial interaction, whatever — outweigh the costs of that tuxedo rental.<\/p>\n

\"diagram<\/a>How can we begin to identify not only the needs waiting to be
\nfillled, but also the barriers that may stand in the way of volunteers?<\/p>\n

Dr. Abraham Maslow came up with a model for understanding basic human motivators or drives, a Hierarchy of Needs<\/a>.
\nYou may remember seeing it as a pyramid diagram: the broad bottom tier
\nis the things we need to ensure survival, and it goes up from there
\ninto ever more complex groups of needs related to quality of life and
\npersonal fulfillment.<\/p>\n

\n

For those who forget Psych 101, Maslow believed that while humans
\nhave a wide range of needs, they must first meet very basic survival
\nneeds like food, shelter and water before they are able to pursue
\npsychological needs like love, esteem and self-actualization. It makes
\nsense— if you are starving to death, a BLT is more attractive than some
\nTLC.<\/em> ~ Aaron Hurst<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You’ll find other models to explain the mysteries of motivation, but
\nMaslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can help to organize our thinking about all
\nsorts of human behaviors from social networking, to Web2.0 fundraising campaigns, to music education. And the better you know and understand your volunteers, the more useful the tool is likely to be.<\/p>\n

\n

No volunteer is going to come in and tell you they are interested in
\nyour opportunity because they lack in one or more areas of the
\n‘Hierarchy of Human Needs’. However, if you listen closely to what they
\ntell you and if you ask the right questions, you’ll soon learn what
\nareas they are lacking, and … determine if the volunteer opportunity
\nyou have will pay them the psychological wages to keep them for life.<\/em> ~ Art Femister<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 “I’d love to help you, but…”<\/h3>\n

Motivation is only part of the equation, remember. Would you expect
\na bare-footed volunteer to climb a mountain for your cause? No matter
\nwhat reward or incentive is at the end of the journey, first he’ll need
\nto have a pair of boots. And a rope. And maybe a climbing partner, too,
\ndepending on the challenge ahead.<\/p>\n

Am I physically, emotionally, intellectually capable of doing
\nthis for you? If I do this for you, what will volunteering cost me, in
\nterms of needs that are not fulfilled, or in things I value that I will
\nhave to give up? <\/em><\/p>\n

Physiological:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The practical, physical and\/or logistical barriers — those that
\nmatch up with the most basic level on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — are
\ncertainly the easiest to identify, and probably the easiest to overcome.<\/p>\n