Nonprofits Praise Their Volunteers. Why Are Volunteer Managers Left Out?

Go ahead. Pull up your nonprofit’s website right now.

Click “About Us.” Find “Leadership” or “Our Team.” Scroll through the names and bios, including contact information.

Is your volunteer manager there?

For most organizations, the answer is no. And if you run a nonprofit that depends on engaging and protecting volunteers with volunteer insurance, that omission says something about how you value the profession, about the gaps in your risk management, and about a person who very likely holds your programs together.

A Profession That Built Its Own Infrastructure — Without You

Here is what makes this exclusion particularly hard to defend.

Volunteer management is not an informal role. It is a recognized profession with its own credentialing body, professional associations, and ongoing research.

• The Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration offers a rigorous curriculum leading to the Certified in Volunteer Administration (CVA) credential. People who earn it display it proudly — on their LinkedIn profiles, their email signatures, and their resumes. It signals expertise, commitment, and professional standing.
• The Association of Leaders in Volunteer Engagement (AL!VE) exists specifically to advance volunteer management as a profession and advocate for the people who practice it.
• Tobi Johnson, one of the field’s leading voices, conducts an annual survey of volunteer managers. Year after year, the same theme surfaces: Volunteer managers do not feel they have a seat at the table. They are excluded from leadership conversations, left off org charts, and absent from websites.
• Adisa — the successor to the well-established Energize Inc., which kept the Energize brand alive — provides professional development, resources, and community for volunteer management professionals worldwide.

The infrastructure is there. The credentials are there. The professional identity is there.

What is often missing is recognition from the organizations they serve.

0.2% of the Budget. A Third of the Workforce.

The CEO of Better Impact, a leading volunteer management software company and VIS partner, recently put it plainly on LinkedIn:

“Volunteers represent a third of the nonprofit workforce — a fact that can be surprising to believe. And the professionals who lead them? They get about 0.2% of the budget. Often a team of one. That math has never made sense to me.”

Read that again. A third of the workforce. Zero point two percent of the budget.

And then, on top of that: no name on the website.

According to Independent Sector, volunteers contribute billions of hours of service to nonprofits each year. If a donor, board member, or prospective volunteer wanted to know who manages your volunteer program — the person responsible for recruiting, screening, training, scheduling, and supervising a significant portion of your workforce — could they find that person on your site? Could they put a name and face to the role?

For most nonprofits, the answer is still no. There is a “Get Involved” button. There are testimonials about how much volunteers mean to the mission. There are fillable forms for would-be volunteers to complete. But the professional who built and runs that program? Often nowhere to be found.

The Decisions No One Sees — Until Something Goes Wrong

There is also a practical dimension to this invisibility, and it carries real consequences.

Volunteer managers work mostly behind the scenes. They approve drivers. They design safety orientations. They screen applicants. They document incidents. None of that shows up in a photo gallery or a volunteer spotlight post.

But when something goes wrong — a volunteer driver causes an accident, a participant is injured during an activity, a claim is filed — investigators will look at the decisions made before anyone set foot in the field. Who approved that driver? Was a motor vehicle record check completed? What did the orientation cover? Who signed off?

Those questions lead directly to the volunteer manager.

Strong governance and oversight practices — including how staff manage volunteers — are central to reducing organizational risk. That means the volunteer manager’s work is not peripheral to your risk profile. It is central to it.

Does Your Insurance Support Your Volunteer Manager?

Many nonprofits assume their general liability coverage addresses volunteer-related exposure. That’s a mistake. Including volunteers on the general liability policy puts the organization at financial risk, unnecessarily. 

VIS structures its volunteer insurance programs around real-world exposure:

• Volunteer accident insurance addresses medical costs when a volunteer is injured.
• Volunteer liability insurance covers third-party claims arising from volunteers’ actions.
• Volunteer excess automobile liability insurance supports claims involving volunteer drivers.

Each coverage connects directly to the decisions a volunteer manager makes every day. When your coverage does not align with those responsibilities, gaps appear — and they tend to surface at the worst possible moment.

VIS members also enjoy 24/7 access to the “VIS Vault,” a collection of risk-management resources, including dozens of “Preventer Papers” on injury prevention and vehicle safety. These documents are very useful for small-group safety training or for giving to volunteers individually. Nationwide, volunteer professionals are using those resources to address the foreseeable risks to their volunteers, who make up one-third of the organization’s workforce. 

Make Your Volunteer Manager as Protected as the People They Manage

Volunteer managers carry real, underappreciated liability exposure. Organizations that do not publicly recognize these professionals and back them up with appropriate insurance for volunteer engagement have a gap in their risk strategy—and a blind spot in how they value the volunteer management profession.

Protecting your volunteer manager strengthens your entire program. It also sends a message — to that person, current and prospective volunteers, clients, and supporters — that your organization values the people behind the work as much as the work itself.

For details about the specialized volunteer insurance VIS offers, click the “VIS is…” tab at the top of the page and scroll down to the FAQ section.

About the Author

William R. Henry, Jr. is Vice President and Director of Member Benefits at Volunteers Insurance Service Association, Inc. (VIS), where he leads membership development and delivers risk-management solutions tailored to volunteer-based organizations nationwide. A recognized authority on volunteer risk management, he is a frequent speaker and author on best practices for safe and effective volunteer engagement. He is accredited by the International Association of Business Communicators. With a background in communications, journalism, and public affairs, Henry brings a strategic perspective to supporting nonprofit organizations across the United States.

About VIS

Volunteers Insurance Service Association, Inc. (VIS) is a membership organization serving more than 3,500 volunteer-based nonprofit organizations and public entities nationwide. VIS is the only association that offers these three insurance programs designed specifically for volunteers: volunteer accident, volunteer liability, and volunteer excess automobile liability.

If you are interested in protecting your volunteers through the unique VIS insurance program, please click on the “Get volunteer insurance now” link on the home page, or call 800.222.8920. For more information on VIS’s risk-management resources for members and our vendor partners, click on the “Member Benefits” tab.