The cost of free labor

We run a successful internship program here at our agency.  Each semester college students from UNC - Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina State and other local universities spend time learning the ad business with us.  We've been blessed with some amazingly qualified young people, that I know will soon have me saying, "They worked with us once."

Early on we learned that you've got to have a formal reporting structure and a set of goals in place, in order for both the agency and the intern to get the most out of their time here.

As I was reading some recent articles and postings this week, I was intrigued to see that the same sentiments ran through a report created by the Stanford Social Innovation Review called The New Volunteer Workforce.  

They outlined five primary reasons why volunteers don't return to organizations they've volunteered with:

- Not matching skills with assignments

- Failing to recognize volunteer's contributions

- Not measuring the value of volunteers

- Failing to train and invest in volunteers and staff

- Failing to provide strong leadership

In short, even though your volunteers are unpaid, you have to plan and manage them like other staff.  Otherwise they quickly get the impression that what they do isn't important and they'll volunteer their time with an organization where they feel appreciated.

There's lots more on attracting, training and retaining volunteers for non-profits in the report as well.  This may not be your department, but I suspect there's someone in your organization that might be very interested.

Just as I postscript, I was turned on to the report by a posting in Andrew Taylor's blog - The Artful Manager.  If you've never read some of his work, I'd highly recommend spending a little time there.