The Challenges of Working in Not-for-Profit

I felt good about getting a placement at Cancer Support WA because it meant that in my 20 days not only would I be able to gain valuable experience in the Public Relations field but I would be able to lend a hand to an organisation that relies heavily upon volunteers.
It wasn't until about half way through my placement that I really saw the implications of this reliance.

While there are 15 paid staff employed at CSWA there are around 65 volunteers and 10 interns every year that make all of their programs and events possible.
Specifically in a PR context there are only two staff dedicated to marketing and communications.

It appears that a number of the volunteers helping out are involved in the organisation due to a personal connection - being touched by cancer in some way and wanting to give back to the organisation that helped them through a hard time.
This means that their volunteers are very passionate and willing to put in significant time and effort to ensure the organisation can continue to provide its valuable services.

I found an article on the topic that put it quite nicely by saying "the ability to attract, maintain, and develop human resources, places ongoing strains and stresses on the constancy of programme and service delivery for not-for-profits".
The organisation doesn't have the time or resources to thoroughly train all of its voluntary staff nor is it feasible for them to be constantly monitoring their work. Having to trust their work without quality control is a risk that leaves potential for a lot of errors and without any monetary incentive it is harder to set expectations and deadlines.

On the other hand, due to tight budgets the paid staff have both limited resources and very high expectations. They work incredibly hard to better the organisation but as there are so few of them their work load tends to be very big and they can't help but rely on their volunteers to get everything done, so the challenge is being able to strike a balance between paid staff and volunteers.

That's it for now, thanks for reading.

Kelsey