Root Cause Of Most Suffering

One of the single biggest root causes of avoidable, self-inflicted suffering in life is mismatched expectations!

As AFP continued to grow, mismatched expectations between the volunteers were stopping us from serving our stakeholders – military families.

So we ate our own dog-food, did a retrospective and co-created the bare minimum expectations for our volunteers.

3 Categories Of Volunteers

First, we co-created 3 categories of volunteers…

1. Board Of Directors
2. Board of Advisors
3. Volunteer

Clear Expectations

Then, we clarified what expectations we had of each of these categories…

1. Non-negotiable Cultural Expectations From Everyone: Behave in a way that is aligned with our working agreement
2. Non-negotiable Legal Expectations From Everyone: Based on Board Member Responsibilities, the fundamental legal duties of each volunteer include:
   • • Duty of Care — Each volunteer will participate actively in making decisions on behalf of the organization and to exercise their best judgment while doing so.
     • Duty of Loyalty — Each volunteer must put the interests of the organization before their personal and professional interests when acting on behalf of the organization in a decision-making capacity. The organization’s needs come first.
     • Duty of Obedience — Volunteers will help us ensure that the organization complies with the applicable federal, state, and local laws and adheres to its mission.
3. Variable, Role-based Participation Expectations:
   • • Board of Directors: Attend at least 9 monthly Board Meetings per year and volunteer for at least 12 hours per year
     • Board of Advisors: Attend at least 1 monthly Board Meeting per quarter
     • Volunteers: If you volunteer to achieve an outcome, work with your assigned board member to keep your promises.

Recruitment, On-Boarding & Promotion

Finally, we improved our recruitment, on-boarding and performance-management process…

1. We asked each prospective volunteer to answer a common set of questions to identify and work through mismatched expectations
2. We clarified the process for selection…
   1. VP of Volunteers does a 1st level screening of the applicant
   2. Screening must include getting answers to introductory questions
   3. Submit candidate profile to Board of Directors for approval
   4. If BOD approves, conduct screening interview
   5. If candidate passes screening interview run a background check
   6. If background check passes, invite candidate to join as a volunteer
   7. Assign a specific area for candidate to help in and pair with a member of Board Of Directors or Advisors
3. We clarified the process we would use to decide if a volunteer had earned the right to get promoted to a higher level of accountability…
   1. Promotion From Volunteer To Member of Board Of Advisors:
      • • Evaluate volunteer performance for at least 3 months
        • After 3 months, If the performance is acceptable, invite to become a member of the Board of Advisors.
   2. Promotion From Board of Advisors to Board of Directors:
      • • Evaluate volunteer performance as a member of the Board Of Advisors for at least 3 months
        • After 3 months, If the performance is acceptable, invite to become a member of the Board of Directors.

Request For Your Help

If you are inspired by our vision and mission and our approach resonates with you we would love to explore if you can join our team. There is a lot of work to be done and we need all the help we can get!