On so many different levels, people are looking for volunteer opportunities. They may choose to go through the community or government—sometimes they want to make volunteering a more permanent thing in their lives, or sometimes they simply want to know how to get summer volunteering jobs. If you decide to become a director of volunteer services, you would be the one to delegate the different work a volunteer longs to do. You would tell them what they can do to help, and help them get started on making a difference. Thus, the happy people around you—Volunteers are generally optimistic people, because they are busying themselves by serving other.
Becoming the director of volunteer services is something more than other volunteer management jobs—you are the one in charge, and you are working to make a difference. Another title for you could be Volunteer Coordinator—you get the job done by delegating the workload. You would be responsible for making sure everything runs smoothly; that the volunteers are where they need to be, and that everything gets accomplished.
You would have the opportunity to do many different things in this position—you would write job descriptions, so eager volunteers would be able to see what sort of options were open to them. You would track volunteer efforts, and volunteers would report their progress to you. Depending on where you became employed, you may also be in charge of reporting this progress to a higher director, or a government official. You would also coordinate regular volunteer appreciation parties, or find some other creative ways to thank volunteers for their service.
As the Director of Volunteers, you will need to be constantly working to bring more volunteers in. Recruiting is important, because there is so much that needs to be done to make this world a better place—one community at a time. You would also be responsible for training volunteers—you would get to work very closely with the good people that volunteer their time and talents. Many people want to find volunteering jobs, and you would help them find the best job suited for them.
To make this a fulfilling, successful career for you, there are some qualities that would be immensely helpful to you, if you could develop them. Since you will be working so intimately with people, the ability to relate to people is so important. Another key skill would be the ability to communicate well—both through the written word, and orally. You’ll be doing a fair amount of both, and as a director you will need to be able to make yourself clearly understood. Another skill that would be worthwhile to acquire is computer competency. As in so many jobs these days—most, in fact—computer literacy is so important. Learning to use a computer and use it well will serve you in so many aspects of your life, but especially in this job. The computer is the glue that holds the world together, and being able to use that glue is very crucial. The internet—obviously—is a very helpful tool and is by now—for majority of the world’s population—a way of life. People cannot function without it, and you will use the computer as the director of volunteers quite a bit.
Educational requirements—no matter where you decide to become employed—are essentially the same for this job. You must have graduated from High School—any further education you have will help you greatly, but many volunteer directors have no higher education. If you have had management experience, your chances for hiring increase dramatically, especially if you are only a High School graduate. The majority of director’s today make a salary of somewhere around $57,500 per year.
A director of volunteer services also plays a large part in coordinating the smaller volunteer services in a city. Faith–oriented groups, civic volunteers, school service clubs—all of these as well as the private volunteer will come to you. You will help make sure that not every group is serving in the same place, while another part of the community gets no attention.
Not only would your work be refreshing and new daily, it would also be exciting, and people-oriented. You would work with people, with the wonderful goal of helping people.
