The Leadership Continuum Approach...

Just like moving donors to higher levels of giving, developing leader volunteers takes time.  I've found it to be the lucky exception to land a really good new and untested volunteer leader.  We've all had folks show up -promise to do it all, then fade away - leaving us holding the bag and cleaning up the mess.  Worse than that, our staff members say they'll never take another "leader" volunteer again.  I'd suggest that we develop more of a leadership continuum approach.  Many great organizations like the girl scouts and 4H have been doing this for years with volunteers taking on increasingly more responsibility and ownership over time.  One idea is to have three categories of leader.  I suggest levels like - 1. co-project leader (paired with more experienced volunteer),  2. project leader (tested & reliable), 3. program leader (more focused on leading others and longer term projects).  Within those categories you could have a number of positions or roles with some being skilled volunteers and others being more managerial or project focused people.  Some volunteers can be short-term, while others could be longer term. Check out my August Volunteer Frontier Newsletter.  It has great resources to help you move forward with grooming volunteer leaders.  If you have good ideas feel free to write them below!  What's working for you? How do you groom people for leadership positions?