Volunteers Are Not 'Nuts and Bolts' to be Organized! (Reflections on Volunteer Facilitation)

Last Thursday, I was scheduled to lead the first part of a workshop on "Volunteer Management." Two weeks prior, I had been busy outlining the modules in my yellow-covered notebook when I suddenly stopped. The working title was "Organizing Volunteers," but the pen just wouldn't move. I asked myself: A volunteer isn't a mechanical object to be "organized" like parts in a machine. Right there, I crossed it out and wrote: "Self-Organization." This was a concept that had deeply resonated with me back in March 2026, while I was translating Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons. (I hope to see it published soon.)

Why "Self-Organization"? I believe a volunteer in an organization is not "cheap" or "free" labor; they are a human being, with their own genuine concerns, anxieties, and dreams. When we talk about "organizing," it feels as if we are assembling machine parts. But when we talk about "self-organization," it means we are preparing the ground, creating the space for volunteers to find their own paths, while still operating within the organization's framework. It means helping them see themselves in the collective—to find and define their own place. Of course, in crises, command-and-control might be necessary, but in ordinary times, we must allow them to be themselves. This is the essence of facilitation in the process of volunteer self-organization.

This is where the role of the "Volunteer Manager" shifts. We are not bosses here; we are facilitators. A facilitator is someone who, upon seeing new volunteers lost or unsure of what to do, doesn’t dump a long list of "dos and don'ts" on them. Instead, they sit beside them, listen with patience and care, and help them discover their own potential—helping them identify exactly where they fit into this puzzle in a way that feels meaningful to them.

What should a facilitator do? I believe every facilitation technique helps: brainstorming with the group about the work ahead, breaking them into smaller clusters, and giving them the space to draw their own "mental maps" of the volunteer task. Even letting the group write their own ground rules.

Link to my article on Virgul about the journey from "suspension" to "belonging" in Persian

A volunteer entering an organization is often in a state of "suspension." They don't know where they stand, whether their voice will be heard, or if their presence makes any difference at all. They are, in a sense, hovering in the air, sometimes not even realizing what they are doing. If an organization’s leader adopts a facilitating perspective, they must prepare the ground for that "suspension" to transform into a sense of "belonging." Belonging means the volunteer feels this house is their own home. Not because of an organizational mandate or a top-down decision, but because of the deep spiritual bond they have formed with the people around them, and because they have grasped the deeper vision and purpose of the volunteer work. This is true self-organization.

Last Thursday, August 20th, 2026, we held the first session of the workshop on "Volunteer Self-Organization and Management." As the facilitator, I believe I gave the participants the opportunity to be the authors of their own experience. This coming Thursday, we will gather again to discuss this perspective. I believe if we learn to practice "creating the ground" for self-organization rather than simply "organizing" people, our organizations might find a new vitality—and the volunteers themselves will grow along the way.

P.S.: I wrote this on the train from Tehran to Kerman. I started early in the morning while the sunrise filtered through the compartment window, falling onto my face. Five others in the compartment were still asleep, and I didn't want to make a single move that might disturb their peace.

Two important principles in community work

1) Work in groups

The facilitator who is alone, and who goes to the community individually, may be successful however, let’s do not forget what promote what we live. We are going to train people to be together while we are alone. People learn from our behavior, and thus, I recommend that we have to be together too. It means that instead of one facilitator, be a team of facilitators who work together. This is our very precious experience when we were involved in poverty reduction project of the State Welfare Organization in Iran years ago. The facilitating bodies were the social work clinics in provinces. The clinics were run based on an individually managed entity. Therefore, they were somehow promoting individual management and work among communities. Just imagine: lonely facilitator talks about working together. It does not work. Even in our dialogues with some of the managers of the clinics, we heard they said: “there is not a culture of group activities in Iran, how you are trying to promote community work”. This is important to add that there should be a belief in community work too. Not only facilitators have to work in a team, they have to believe in team work. They must talk about their real experiences of success.

2) Do not be frustrated even if people are frustrated

In certain cases of community work (this is about Boompajuhan activities in communities), we found that people were not interested to continue: they are tired or they have not been successful in gaining the attention of others to their precious work or they could not move forward. In certain instances, you might hear that we could not continue since it has been useless. The facilitators have to be patient, and try to have meetings (or processes) with people to find solutions together. This is a problem like many other problems of the village that might have been resolved. This could have a solution too. Then encourage your local group to have a meeting. The members of the local group could talk about that. A structured dialogue could help them to understand the causes of the situation. Be patient and do not become frustrated.

When all participants can participate in all topics...

In Farsi, I call it "Miz-e Dav-var" that can be translated as "rotating table". It is a facilitation technique. In English, it has got different names: Carousel technique or Rotating Review, World Café, Knowledge Café or Charette procedure. It is a brainstorming technique used by facilitators, when there are different subjects in a session and all would like to participate. 

For a definition, I quote from the website of readwritethink.org a part about Carousel technique or rotating review. The technique here has been used for students in a classroom:

"While taking part in Carousel Brainstorming, small groups of students rotate around the classroom, stopping at various “stations” for a designated period of time (usually 1-2 minutes).  At each station, students activate their prior knowledge of a topic or concept and share their ideas with their small group.  Each group posts their ideas at each station for all groups to read." (http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/brainstorming-reviewing-using-carousel-30630.html)

I read in selba.org that the technique of World Café has been created and developed by Juanita Brow and William Isaacs in their book The World Café. As explained in Selba.org the technique is as follows: 

"The big group is divided in small groups of 4-5 people sitting around a table with a paper tablecloth —to write, draw, or doodle in the midst of the conversation— and talking about a given subject presented under the form of a question. In each table there is a table 'host' who stays at the same table throughout the process. After 20-30 minutes the general host invites participants to change tables. The table host explains briefly the essence of the previous conversation to the guests who arrive for the next round. After three rounds of progressive conversation there is a dialogue among the whole group with the intention of gathering and recording key ideas, questions or insights that might be useful for action planning or other purposes." (http://www.selba.org/EngTaster/Social/Facilitation/FacilitationTechniques.html)

In Wikipedia, it has been written that the World Café originated at the home of Juanita Brown and David Isaacs in 1995 when a "large circle" conversation became disrupted by rain. It is called World Café since A café ambience is created in order to facilitate conversation. The knowledge café or K-Café (and sometimes conservation café) shares certain features with The World Cafe. I think it is good to have a look at this slide to know more about knowledge café: http://www.slideshare.net/dgurteen/introduction-to-the-knowledge-cafe

Of course, the technique may go back more deeply into history if we call it Charette procedure. I found the following part in Mind Tools: 

"The Charette Procedure (sometimes spelled 'Charrette')... involves organizing people into several small groups, each of which brainstorms ideas one-after-the-other until everyone involved has had a chance to contribute fully. Derived from the French word for wagon, it comes from the practice of architecture students in the early 1800s, who used carts to rush their drawings from one place to another to get final approvals. In much the same way, when you use the Charette Procedure, you take the ideas generated by a group, and cart them over to the next group, for them to be built upon, refined, and finally prioritized." 

After this introduction about the different names and history, I have to emphasize that this technique is not only talking, it is a technique of thinking and producing something that is created through brainstorming while everyone in the group has participated in the production process. and of course, it is a different technique from Open Space Technology where there are more people and it may take longer for several days. Meanwhile, speed geeking is a similar tool used for presentation.

I have used the technique several times in different contexts (villages and urban communities). It works. People love to become involved in such a model of thinking and working together.

The procedure for facilitating:  

1. The content: how many questions are on the tables? Questions are related and fill in a bigger puzzle. 
2. Arrange the setting and make ready what would be needed for each group (paper, markers, flip charts,...)
3. Explain for the participants how the technique is going to be done.
4. Divide the participants into small groups of 5 - 7 people (sometimes more; it depends how many participants are in your workshop and how questions have to be responded). If there are four questions and there are 24 participants, then you have four small groups of six participants.
5. One person is chosen as group facilitator (it can be called host or recorder). Choosing can be done by the workshop facilitator or by the group; as he or she needs to have facilitation skills, it would be better to be selected by the workshop facilitator. 
6. Provide each group with a discussion topic or question. 
7. Establish a time limit (8 to 10 minutes) for the groups to generate ideas in response to the topic. The time limit can determined through looking at : 1) number of the questions; 2) how deep the questions are; 3) participants energy; and 4) and the time you have for the workshop.   
8. At the end of the time period, we can do in two ways: a) Participants sit in their place and the group facilitator moves and takes the responses from their group and rotate to the next group. b) Each group of participants moves clock-wise or counter clock-wise and the group facilitators remain in their own place.
9. Once the group facilitator joins his/her new group (for 8.a) or once each group of participants joins the next facilitator (for 8.b), the group is asked to review the information generated by the previous group and quickly add any other ideas or comments they have. 
10. Repeat the the previous step, until each group has had an opportunity to discuss every issue. Some facilitators prefer that during the last rotation, each group should prioritize the most significant or important ideas generated on that topic. 
11. The total group is reconvened. Each group facilitator summarizes the discussion and priorities generated by the topic. The workshop facilitator may connect the ideas if needed. The puzzle may become complete at his stage.

Revolving tables, Rotating Review, Carousel technique, Charette procedure, World Cafe or Knowledge Cafe all seem to be one facilitation technique: All Participants Participate in All Topics, and do not forget, it is not a decision-making method.

This method is useful when the facilitator is involved in carrying out a SWOT workshop. I have also used it in knowledge sharing workshops when there are five or six topics at the end.

A glance at the definition of "group" from a facilitator's point of view

To have a clear definition of "group" is a necessary part of work for any professional facilitator. Before starting to think about the definition, let's see why such definition is important. Any facilitator works with groups of people; a mentor may be with one mentee (Wikipedia definition: mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person), but a coach, a facilitator or even a social worker work with groups of people. If a facilitator can have a clear definition of group, then this will help him/her a great deal in "group-building", since he or she knows what part of the group has to be strengthened to help the group to shape. For instance, if we say that a group "is a two or more people who have one common goal", during facilitating the work of a group, our mind automatically or even consciously goes towards "defining a common goal" since based on the definition, this is the common goal which is the most important element of the definition. One may ask whether there are other definitions or not ?

In my workshops on facilitation, this is always among the starters. I always begin the training workshop with the definitions and request the participants to think about these four major concepts: "human being", "group", "community" and "participation"; sometimes, I divide the participants into three groups and I request each group to think about the definitions of "group", "community" and "participation" (the definition of "human being" will be done later in a public discussion). I would like to say that participants always emphasize on this element that a group should have a common goal. But for a facilitator this is not important.

I always ask the participants, whether those standing in a bus stop are a "group" or not. If you think that a group should have an aim, then these people who are in bus stop and all of them would like to take the bus, should be a group, since there is a goal, a common goal. But we know that this is not a group. By the time there is not 'interaction" among them, it is not a group. Interaction means that they have to talk to each other, they have to listen to each other, there should be some kind of interconnection among them.

There are so many examples that clarify why "interaction" is a necessary element. To my point of view, this is the way to create the group. Participants in a group talk to each other; they try to find common ground, they try to search for those things that can be used as resources; they listen to each other; and they can know and understand. This has to be done in a respectful environment. A facilitator can play a major role in creating such environment.

People come together, shape a group through interaction, and create an identify for the group; such identity or group identity helps them to be more connected to each other; a relationship based on "trust" shapes among them. They define certain values and regulations. Gradually they find their way and define their goal. They use their own resources and recognize their own differences. In this way, they experience a process of empowerment within the group. All these happen because of "interaction".

See the following slide on "power"; There are only ten slides, but it is going to connect the concept of "power" and "empowerment" based on a definition of group with an emphasis on "interaction".

http://www.slideshare.net/saeidnourineshat/power-saeid-nourineshat

All techniques, the process, and all a facilitator does, have to contribute to "interaction".

See also this presentation (updated on first of September 2013):

http://www.slideshare.net/saeidnourineshat/how-does-a-facilitator-look-at-group

Community management and facilitation

In Tehran, a city council whose members are directly elected by Tehran citizens is in power. Still for a metropolitan city like Tehran, such council acts mostly at macro level. After some time, and by a decree by the Tehran city council, neighborhood councils were established. These negiborhood councils (or Shora-yari or friends of the council) are again elected by the direct votes of people in communities. Tehran has been divided into 374 communities, and each of them has one established neighborhood council.

After sometime, a new mechanism was introduced: community manager (or Modir Mahaleh). A new concept that was brought into the communities to resolve the problems with the city council (who cannot decide for every community in Tehran) and the neighborhood councils (who had only limited duties of monitoring the municipality and keeping communication with the city council). The new community manager now has come into scene, with more powers, to help the community development.

To select one capable community manager,  a new entity was established in communities in Tehran: Community Trustees' Committee (or Heyat Omanaye Mahaleh), composed of members from neighborhood council, community mosque, local active groups (CBOs) and the representative of the Municipality at sub-district level. This entity helps the community manager to better decide and act in the community. 

It seems a little bit strange that in less than 20 years we have created five new mechanisms in Tehran: City council, neighborhood councils, Community Trustees' Committee, local groups at community level, and community manager. I think such mechanisms cannot work well without the people who know how to talk, how to create a constructive dialogue, how to decide in groups, and how to cooperate with each other. Facilitation can be an effective tool for all those who intend to have results at the end, since it will assist to have communicative process at various levels. In fact, facilitators can be much useful in creating common visions and objectives at various levels from smaller groups of community-based organizations to committees and neighborhood councils.