As anyone working in the nonprofit sector will tell you, nonprofit employees wear a lot of hats. Your CEO may also be in charge of fundraising. Your program director may also serve as your facilities administrator, or your marketing director may also handle in-office tech support. In small nonprofit organizations, your administrative team may also be in charge of handling all the details related to their roles when there isn’t room in the budget for an administrative support team. But in medium to large nonprofit organizations, the role of admin support should not be overlooked. These people can be a vital part of an organization’s success.
Great Support Staff Members Are Worth Their Weight in Gold
Administrative support staff members are there to make the jobs of administrators easier and to make them more effective in their work. They take care of many of the details so administrators can focus on the big-picture aspects of furthering the nonprofit’s mission. A good support person will keep a nonprofit organized, in compliance with the applicable laws, and allow it to accomplish more than it otherwise would be able to.
When you find good administrative support professionals, do whatever you can to keep them happy! Pay them fairly and regularly express your appreciation for the work they do.
Can You Use Volunteers for Administrative Support?
There’s no rule that says you can’t use volunteers in this critical role, but I would caution you before relying too much on volunteers to support your administrative team. The most important characteristic of your support staff, in my opinion, is that they are reliable. Admin support is often responsible for staying on top of details like keeping track of schedules, answering emails and phone calls, maintaining office supplies, keeping records up to date, and making arrangements for meetings or travel. These types of tasks are best done by someone who is consistently in the office or who is able to stay in regular contact with the administrators they are supporting.
It’s hard to require this level of reliability from a volunteer. Volunteers, by definition, are there on their own volition, and therefore, may not be available to your organization when you need them most. They don’t have to get their time off approved, they can say “no” to any given task you assign them, and there’s really not much you can do about it.
In addition, for many volunteers, volunteering is what they do with their extra time. When something more pressing comes up in their lives that requires their time, their volunteer work will typically be the first thing to go. They likely won’t give you two weeks’ notice but will somehow kindly inform you that you won’t be benefitting from their free labor anymore.
If at all possible, your admin support team should be made up of paid staff members. This way, you will be able to delegate specific tasks to them and be fairly certain that they will get done what you need them to get done. However, if budgetary constraints make it necessary to rely on volunteers, place your most dedicated and reliable volunteers in administrative support roles.
What to Look for in Admin Support Staff
As you search for someone to hire in an administrative support role at your nonprofit organization, focus more on soft skills than hard skills. The right person can be trained to work with your fundraising software, learn how to make updates to your website, or be taught how to run your video conferencing system, but it’s difficult (maybe even impossible) to teach an adult to be organized or proactive if they aren’t naturally that way.
Ideally, the people you hire as your support staff will have an interest in your mission. They don’t necessarily have to be passionate about it, but they should at least think your cause is worthwhile.
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