New volunteer organisations are founded by the day, and if you are not closely following the statistics, you may think that the volunteer force in the world has never been stronger. However, it appears that a lot of people who used to contribute in some way have given up>  Many organisations are still existing purely because of the fresh recruit who has come motivated to want to help.

And they do help.  But why is it that they give up after a couple of months or a year?

Is it that volunteers feel that they have contributed enough; that they are busy and can’t spend more of their time?  Or could there be something wrong with their particular organisation?

Burning Out of Volunteers – What and Why?

One of the biggest hazards for your organisation is the burning out of volunteers. Losing people is bad enough on its own, but the irony is that the best volunteers are usually more likely to give up before the rest. Why is that?

Volunteers usually give a reason why they don’t want to be involved anymore. And usually, the reason is clumsy, obviously false, like ‘I am busy’.

Tom McKee, author of The New Breed: Understanding and Equipping the 21^st Century Volunteer has carried out his own research into the problem of burning out and has found the top 7 real reasons why people stop volunteering. These include lack of flexibility, the time lost for useless meetings, the lack of professionalism and communication, feeling like not making a difference, lack of feedback from the leader and, most often, lack of a skillful leader.

According to Tom McKee, all of these reasons can actually be summed up in the first one – the organisation is lacking a skillful leader who knows what to do. Often the leader is the one who cannot motivate their people and makes the mistakes that lead to the burning out of volunteers. What are they?

Read about them in our next post.