The Power of an Asset-Based Approach to Volunteering
From your first breath, you have been accruing a wide array of assets. Everything from your passions, knowledge, skills, and access to resources gives you an incredible number of strengths. Imagine if every project, program design, team meeting, volunteer onboarding, feedback process or article began by focusing on strengths – also known as the asset-based approach. However, when we begin with positive thinking, the irony is that challenges can emerge faster, more directly and can often be resolved more effectively.
Most groups do not work this way. Think of groups you have worked in. Imagine a group that decided they wanted to “change the world,” what do they typically do in the first few months?
More than likely, they would:
- Define what changing the world means
- Spend a lot of time working out what the group actually wants to do
- Argue over what to call such a group
These are all valid responses, given the open-ended nature of the question. However, if the group used an asset-based approach, they would start by talking about the planned work or objectives, then start mapping the strengths people bring to the table.
An asset-mapping process sets the stage for a highly productive work environment. As Peter Block, American author, consultant, and speaker in the areas of organization development, community building, and civic engagement states; “The focus on gifts confronts people with their essential core that has the potential to make the difference and change lives for good. This resolves the unnatural separation between work and life. The leadership task is to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the center.”
When we start by exploring people’s strengths, we value people as human beings. When applied to volunteer development, the asset-based approach is one of the most powerful ways to mobilize for social change because it proposes that everyone has something to offer and therefore everyone is needed. It shifts us to building from opportunities rather than responding to problems. In the case of group processes it reduces the kinds of participant fears that often lead to unhealthy behaviors (such as power plays and passive aggressive behavior). Equipped with such knowledge, groups can move forward in a respectful, highly productive way with the work that attracted their member’s involvement in the first place. The asset-based principle is also transferable to project planning. When you design a project that starts by highlighting its participants’ strengths, user uptake rapidly increases.
The asset-based approach to volunteer development provides a breath of fresh air. We move towards an empowering ‘we have’ narrative and away from the disempowering ‘we need’ version. Often just starting and focusing on what currently works is enough to mobilize further resources.
Let me leave you with a task next time you are facilitating a group: begin the gathering with personal asset-mapping, asking people to write on sticky notes three of their passions, three things about which they know something and three things they can physically do. After sharing these nine things with the person next to them, participants can add their colorful sticky notes to big sheets of paper posted to the surrounding walls. The group will discover the incredible wealth of strengths in the room. By starting with what’s already working, we ground our activities in the wisdom of possibility, drawing on existing trends, lessons and the ‘wins’ of those who have come before us.