Onboarding & Coaching A High-Impact Volunteer Team with Four Diamonds' Suzanne Graney

About this episode

Suzanne Graney discusses effective strategies for onboarding and coaching high-impact volunteer teams in a nonprofit setting.

Managing volunteer leadership presents unique challenges, especially when your entire executive team changes annually. The most successful campaigns don't just recruit great volunteers—they systematically develop them into unified, mission-driven teams that can execute at the highest level despite constant turnover. In this episode, Marcie Maxwell talks with Suzanne Graney, Executive Director of Four Diamonds, the nonprofit behind Penn State's Dance Marathon (THON). With years of experience leading one of the largest student-run philanthropies in the world, Suzanne shares how THON successfully onboards brand-new leadership teams each year and maintains momentum across a full campaign cycle. Suzanne discusses her approach to rapidly aligning diverse volunteers around shared goals and creating systems that sustain engagement throughout the year. She explores how succession planning works when your pipeline constantly refreshes, and reveals what she's learned about the evolving leadership styles of today's college volunteers. The conversation offers practical strategies for anyone working with rotating volunteer teams in large-scale fundraising efforts. Together, we'll explore…

People in this episode

Host: Marcie Maxwell

Guest: Suzanne Graney

Topics covered

• volunteer management
• onboarding strategies
• leadership development
• engagement techniques
• nonprofit fundraising

Keywords

• volunteer leadership
• campaign management
• succession planning
• college volunteers
• fundraising strategies

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Four Diamonds, Penn State

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