The largest fire in LA County so far has burned 220 square miles and devastated hundreds of families. There’s a centralized volunteer response team organized by L.A. Works, in partnership with the Volunteer Center of Los Angeles. Find out more at the L.A. Works website.

Whether you are currently job hunting or not, volunteering can be a great way to advance your career.  The Forth Worth Business Press reports that Volunteering in recession can be professional development

Speaking of what motivates people to volunteer, Chris Jarvis of Realized Worth has some great insights:

It is essential that people begin to discover their intrinsic motivations for volunteering. Why? Because when the things we do connect to who we are, we become personally invested. Our own identity works itself out in conjunction with volunteering. As we reach out to others, we begin to take a journey inward. We begin to discover and express our truer self.

See: Want Good Volunteers? Forget The Altruistic, Find The Self-Interested (Part 1 of 2) for the full post.

Many people like short term volunteering gigs. Mashable website offers 20 Ways to Change the World in Only 15 Minutes a Day – if these fit with your nonprofit’s mission, promote these ideas in your community.

How about volunteering via your mobile phone? Joanne at About.com says Micro-Volunteering is Picking Up Steam

Here’s more on microvolunteering from Generation Y Give: Mobile Tech for Social Change and Micro-volunteering

Especially if your program or event requires a large number of volunteers, scheduling and supporting them can be a full time job.  Now you can do this more easily with VolunteerSpot, an online volunteer management tool.  Using the internet to work with volunteers makes it easier for them to participate and shows that you are organized and on the ball with technology.

Recognizing and thanking volunteers can be done online too.  Here are two examples… First from Volunteer Spot, a profile of Sabrina Lea, Council Director for Girls on the Run, Kansas City, MO.  Heroes for Children is a great organization that supports families who have a child battling cancer.  Each month they profile one of their dedicated volunteers on their blog.  Here’s the September Volunteer of the Month.

Tracking Volunteer Time to Boost Your Bottom Line: A Complete Accounting Guide from Blue Avacado. A great guide for nonprofits on why and how to track volunteering time

The estimated dollar value of volunteer time was $20.25 per hour for 2008. The Independent Sector has a chart of how this estimate has grown over the years.

Remember how much your volunteers are really worth – Volunteers give their time, talents, knowledge (sometimes from a lifetime of professional experience), they give their enthusiasm and can be great at spreading the word about the great things your nonprofit is doing.  Truly priceless!

P.S. See our directory for additional links about volunteering.

“You can’t teach a cat to bark!” That was the comment from one of the board members. It was a tough meeting. The volunteer board members were discussing with their executive director an important paid staff member who wasn’t meeting the job expectation.

They had sent him to training workshops, mentored him, coached him, re-written a very specific job description, and the person still just didn’t seem to be able meet the requirements of the position. Neither the board nor the executive director wanted to fire this staff person because they liked him as a person, so they were brainstorming about what to do next when one of the board members commented, “You can’t teach a cat to bark.”

Jim Collins, in his monograph, Good to Great and the Social Sectors, outlines five significant issues that frame greatness in the non-profit world. One of those five is “First Who–Getting the right people on the bus within the social sector constraints.” As I listened to the board discuss this staff person, I questioned whether they had the right person on the bus. All the training, mentoring, coaching and motivation wasn’t going to change him.

To paraphrase John Maxwell in Leadership Gold, here are three reasons not to try and get cats to bark.

• If you try to teach a cat to bark, you will frustrate the cats.
• If you try to teach a cat to bark, you will frustrate the dogs.
• If you try to teach a cat to bark, you will frustrate yourself.

Many years ago the Springfield, Oregon Public Schools newsletter published an article that sums up my point (as quoted in Growing Strong In The Seasons of Life, Charles Swindoll):

Once upon a time, the animals decided they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world. So they organized a school.

They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it easier to administer, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, he was better than his instructor was. However, he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was so slow in running, he had to drop swimming and stay after school to practice running. This caused his webbed feet to be badly worn so he became only average in swimming. But “average” was quite acceptable, therefore nobody worried about it-except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because he had so much makeup work to do in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down. He developed “charley horses” from overexertion, so he only got a “C” in climbing and a “D” in running.

The eagle was a problem child and was severely disciplined for being a non-conformist. In climbing classes, he beat all the others to the top, but insisted on using his own way of getting there.

One of the most important decisions that a leader makes is the selection of staff and volunteer leaders. The number one resource for the great non-profit is having enough of the right people willing to commit themselves to the mission. But they have to function in their areas of strengths, talents and time. Sometimes as leaders we have to make the hard decision to fire a member of the staff because that cat will never bark.

Tom McKee is a leading volunteer management speaker, trainer and consultant.  Additional resources from Tom can be found at Volunteer Power.