Volunteer Leadership: How to Develop the Volunteers Who Lead Your Nonprofit
What is volunteer leadership?
Volunteer leadership is unpaid work directing other people toward a nonprofit’s goals. The board chair running a meeting, the committee chair setting an agenda, the site lead organizing a Saturday crew and the gala chair recruiting next year’s committee all do it. They lead without salary or formal authority, so they need clear roles, training and support.
Consider the people who keep your organization running without a paycheck. Your board chair runs a dental practice and gives you two evenings a month. The gala committee chair has a full-time job and two children. The volunteer who captains the Saturday food pantry crew has done it for years and has never been asked what would make the job easier. None of them reports to you, and several of your programs would stall without them.
Most nonprofits manage these people by recruiting well, thanking them often and hoping they stay. Volunteer leadership works better when you treat it as leadership: named roles, the skills each role needs, the practices that keep volunteer leaders, and support for the executive director who works with them all.
Key Takeaways
- Volunteer leadership covers two groups: governance volunteers such as board members and committee chairs, and program volunteers such as site leads and event chairs. Each role needs a written description.
- Volunteers now give fewer hours each, which raises the need for volunteer leaders who brief, schedule and thank them.
- Recognition, training and matching people to roles are the practices an Urban Institute study tied to keeping volunteers. Counting their hours was unrelated to retention.
- Use a mentor for how the role works and a coach for why the person took it.
- The executive director sits at the center of volunteer leadership, and coaching works on what that leader controls: expectations, handoffs and boundaries.
Who Counts as a Volunteer Leader?
A volunteer leader is any unpaid person responsible for other people’s work or decisions. In a nonprofit that covers governance volunteers, such as board members, officers and committee chairs, and program volunteers, such as project leads, site captains, event chairs and unpaid volunteer coordinators. The two groups need different things from you.
Governance volunteers hold legal responsibility as a group, and their hardest lesson is the line between governance and management. Program volunteers carry the daily work, and their hardest lesson is directing other volunteers with no pay to adjust, no review to write and no way to keep anyone who stops coming.
For a small nonprofit, the basics cover most of it: a written job description for each role, a clear statement of what the role decides, and a plain expectation that people come to meetings. A role nobody wrote down gets defined by whoever held it last.
| Role | What they lead | Common gap | What helps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Board chair | The board’s meetings and its partnership with the executive director | Holding the board accountable without managing staff | A written role and regular time with the executive director |
| Committee chair | A committee’s work plan | Meetings that end without a decision or an owner | A short agenda template |
| Project or site lead | A crew on a shift, event or project | Delegating to people who can walk away | A shift checklist and a named staff contact |
| Event or campaign chair | A committee with a fixed end date | Doing the work instead of recruiting others to it | A successor named halfway through |
| Volunteer coordinator | Recruitment, scheduling and retention for the volunteer program | Carrying everything alone | Training, a budget line and someone to think problems through with |
Why Is Volunteer Leadership Harder Now?
More people volunteer than a few years ago, but each gives less time. The Census Bureau and AmeriCorps survey found 75.7 million people, 28.3% of U.S. residents age 16 and older, volunteered through an organization in the year to September 2023, up from 23.2% in 2021, while average hours per volunteer fell from 96.5 in 2017 to 70.
Half of those volunteers gave 24 hours or less in the year, down from 40 in 2017, and almost one in five served at least partly online. A committee that met monthly in a conference room may now have members who give a few hours a quarter and join by video.
Shorter hours raise the need for volunteer leaders. Every person giving a few hours needs someone to brief them, schedule them, check their piece of the work and thank them. When work arrives in smaller slices, a volunteer leader usually does the slicing.
Their own time has a value too. Independent Sector estimates a volunteer hour was worth $36.14 in 2025, so a committee chair who gives eight hours a month donates about $3,470 of time a year. Decide what that time is for before you ask for it.
What Skills Do Volunteer Leaders Need?
Volunteer leaders need the skills of any people leader, adjusted for the fact that nobody has to follow them. Five matter most: influencing without authority, running meetings that end in decisions, delegating to people who can say no, giving feedback to peers and knowing where their role stops.
- Influence without authority. They get work done by making the case, asking clearly and following up, because they cannot assign it.
- Meetings that decide. Each agenda item ends with a decision, an owner and a date, or comes off the agenda.
- Delegation to volunteers. Work handed to someone who can quit tomorrow needs smaller tasks, clear instructions and a light check-in.
- Peer feedback. Telling a fellow volunteer their part is late is harder than telling an employee, so many leaders wait until the problem is public. Agree at the first meeting how the group will flag a late task, so the first reminder follows a rule everyone already accepted.
- Knowing where the role stops. A board member does not direct staff, and a site lead does not rewrite program policy.
Successful professionals need this development too. A manager who leads forty people at work arrives on a board with habits built on authority: assign, review, escalate. None of those work on a committee of peers.
Habits built on authority do not survive a committee of peers.
How Do You Develop Volunteer Leaders?
Develop volunteer leaders with the practices research ties to keeping volunteers: recognize them, train them and match each person to a role that fits. In the Urban Institute’s study of volunteer management, those practices were tied to retention, yet only 25% of charities had adopted volunteer training and development to a large degree.
The survey behind that study dates from 2003, and one finding is worth keeping in mind: counting volunteer numbers and hours was unrelated to whether volunteers stayed. Counting hours helps a grant report. In that study, it did nothing to keep volunteers.
- Write the role down. One page: what the role decides, what it does not, the monthly hours and when the term ends.
- Match the person to the role. Ask what each volunteer wants from leading before you offer a role.
- Give them a mentor for the mechanics. A past chair can explain how meetings run and what is expected. For the board, a 90-day board member onboarding plan covers this ground.
- Train the skill the role needs. A committee chair needs meeting practice, and a treasurer needs to read the financial statements.
- Talk about purpose early. CNPC’s coaches see a recurring board failure: members who join for the prestige and the resume line, then contribute little. An early conversation about why the person is there surfaces that before it costs the board a year.
- Plan the handoff from the first day. Name a successor before each term ends. Some volunteer leaders later join the staff, and the thinking behind developing emerging leaders applies to them too.
Should You Mentor or Coach Volunteer Leaders?
Use both, for different jobs. A mentor, often an experienced board member or past chair, passes on how things work here: processes, policies, introductions and what is expected. A coach works with the person: why they joined, what they want from the role and how they choose to lead in it.
CNPC’s coaches put the difference in one question. A board buddy explains what a board member does. A coach helps the board member answer “What’s my purpose here?” and connect their own purpose to the organization’s. A volunteer leader who never answers it tends to drift.
A mentor explains what the role requires. A coach asks why you said yes to it.
Both sit among the nonprofit leadership development approaches a small organization can afford, and the difference between coaching and mentoring decides which one a leader needs first.
Coaching for volunteer coordinators
The staff member who coordinates volunteers often sees the whole volunteer program alone and cannot pay, promote or keep anyone. Volunteer coordinator coaching gives that person room to think through recruitment, handoffs and boundaries with the executive director and the board.
Coaching is the wrong first tool when the gap is knowledge. A new treasurer who cannot read a statement of financial position needs training first.
Where Does the Executive Director Fit In?
The executive director sits at the center: they write or approve program roles, work in partnership with the board chair, back up the volunteer coordinator and absorb whatever falls through. They cannot change how each volunteer behaves, but coaching works on the part they control: how they set expectations, hand off work and hold boundaries.
Executive directors who bring board challenges to CNPC coaching frequently report the relationship improved even though the board never sat in a session. Clearer boundaries leave a board member fewer openings to drift into management. The guide to executive coaching for nonprofit leaders explains how an engagement runs.
Through CNPC, executive coaching means six confidential sessions with an ICF-credentialed volunteer coach: $300 when operating expenses are under $250K, $400 under $500K and $600 above that, fees 85%+ below market rate. When the problem sits within a leadership team, executive team coaching works with the team for $500 to $1,100, and the post on board coaching explains how CNPC applies team coaching to boards.
CNPC runs on volunteer leadership too. Its coaches give their time, which is how CNPC’s volunteer coaching model works, and gifts from readers help sustain the volunteer coaching model.
What Should You Do This Week?
Before your next board or committee meeting, write a role card for each volunteer leader position: what it decides, what it does not, the monthly hours, who mentors the newcomer and when the term ends. Share each card with the person in the role and ask what would make the job easier.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are examples of volunteer leadership roles?
Board chairs and officers, committee chairs, event and campaign chairs, project and site leads, team captains, peer mentors and unpaid volunteer coordinators. Any volunteer responsible for other people’s work or decisions holds one.
Can a volunteer leader supervise paid staff?
In most nonprofits the board, acting as a body, supervises one employee: the executive director. Individual board members and other volunteer leaders work beside staff and route requests through the executive director or the staff member’s supervisor.
How do you keep volunteer leaders from quitting?
Recognize their work, train them and match them to roles that fit, the three practices the Urban Institute tied to retention. Give every role an end date so stepping down on time is normal.
What is the difference between a volunteer leader and a volunteer coordinator?
A volunteer leader leads other volunteers in one part of the work, such as a committee or a shift. A volunteer coordinator runs the whole volunteer program: recruitment, scheduling, training and recognition.
Does CNPC coach volunteer leaders?
CNPC coaches leaders of 501(c)(3) nonprofits, government agencies and analogous non-U.S. entities, one to one or as a leadership team. If you are unsure whether your role qualifies, say so in your application. CNPC confirms eligibility before matching you with a coach.
Support for the Leader at the Center
Six confidential sessions with an ICF-credentialed volunteer coach, from $300 by operating budget. Our coaches donate their time to nonprofit leaders.
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