Everyone’s fine until they’re gone

The backbone of Social Income is our volunteers. However, volunteering is easy to drift out of. Here’s a quick rundown of how we’re managing our growing community.

Social Income runs on volunteers, and for a long time that has worked without much structure. However, as the community grows at pace the thing that makes volunteers want to stay, feeling close to their work and to each other, becomes something we have to actively maintain.

Volunteering is easy to drift out of. It can go unnoticed when someone quietly becomes less involved, and by the time a person has disappeared, the reasons for why they left are usually months old and no longer fixable. That’s why we’ve introduced personal check-ins: conversations between volunteers and one of our community managers. 

What a Personal Check-In Entails

The personal check-in is a chance for a community manager to hear how volunteers are doing, to find out whether they’re getting the support they need, and to make space for anything that doesn’t quite fit elsewhere. It’s low-key: half an hour, online, one-on-one, and with nothing to prepare. Discussion topics include:

• How they’re finding the role at the moment; what gives them energy, what doesn’t.

• Their tasks: what fits well, and anything they’d like to change or try.

• The support they get from the Community Managers and the rest of Social Income; what’s working and what’s missing.

• Where we could improve as a community.

• How much time they expect to allocate to Social Income over the next few months.

What’s shared in a check-in stays with the Community Manager, unless agreed upon otherwise (the only exception being anything to do with safety or serious misconduct).

Personal check-ins allow us to catch issues early. Not to push anyone to do more, but to find out whether their role still fits, and to change it if it doesn’t. These check-ins show us what the community actually needs, instead of what we think it does.

What We Haven’t Figured Out Yet

The check-ins contribute to a tight-knit community, but don’t address all the dilemmas that come with the rapid growth of a volunteer-based organization.

For example, in-person events build the strongest bonds, but they exclude everyone who isn’t in Zürich. How do we foster both connection and inclusion? Another dilemma is that some volunteers are able to allocate more time and energy to Social Income than others. Recognizing these risks builds a hierarchy in a community that doesn’t want one, but we do want everyone to feel seen and appreciated. Also, how do we make sure that the closeness of the community doesn’t rely solely on the effort of one or two people? And who checks in on the Community Manager?

We don’t possess all the answers yet. For now, we keep the dialogue going, ask critical questions and experiment, with the aim of fostering an engaged community.

P.S. If you’re a volunteer reading this, and if you’ve been meaning to raise something but haven’t found the moment, please reach out to [email protected].