When I was a kid, I complained of being busy. “Good,” someone said, “busy people get more done.”

Now I run a “social volunteering” network that’s entirely volunteer-run — by busy people. My greatest challenge is in finding them, so I thought I’d share some things I’ve learned and ask for your ideas.

We have a lot of A Players. The girl who runs our New York senior center volunteering is a marketing exec who also runs her synagouge’s young adult division. The person who oversees our Jerusalem branch is a full-time student who travels and dances and organizes events for other programs. They don’t “have” time, they “make” it.

Then we have the deadbeats. These are people who take more time to write letters about why they can’t do something than it’d take to do it. They immediately run to schedule meetings, and talk about why things aren’t feasable rather than jumping in and trying them. They don’t seem to notice their total lack of progress. Worse, they involve friends who are even flakier than them. Steve Job’s rule that “A Players hire A Players, but B Players hire C players…” is true.

So the question is: How do you find the A Players? (And, how do you avoid the deadbeats?)

Here are a few things I’ve tried that seem to work.
PLEASE comment with your ideas, and give brief examples of how they worked.

• Look for people already active in their community.
  • These are busy people getting things done.
• Make it easy to express interest and then a bit tricky to join.
  • Capture their names immediately and then give them a task requiring some persistence. Leaders follow through.
• Look for people who challenge your rules (not who just ignore them!)
  • These are people looking to improve your organization. Fear them, then follow them. They’re your best source of new ideas.
• Be open about your needs, your failures and mistakes.
  • A simple status update on Facebook (”I’m looking for reliable people in … “) has netted me more quality referrals and offers than contacting a dozen leaders of major organizations.
• Welcome criticism.
  • When I published a newspaper (remember those?) a guest writer wrote a harsh and detailed email lambasting us for how we’d edited his article. We made him the News Editor. He was the best we ever had.
• Reward Selfishness
  • The girl who runs one of our children’s hospital programs is obsessed with babies (her words). So we don’t try to get her to run a Soup Kitchen event. She likes kids.
• Appreciation
  • When someone does something, no matter how small, give them huge thanks! We all want to feel needed.

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What doesn’t work:

• Cold Emails
  • I’ve seen people post on our Facebook Walls and contacted them for help. Maybe people who are willing to post on a wall but not hunt-down a leader aren’t leaders.
• Asking unreliable people to recommend reliable people.
  • They don’t understand the definition of reliable.
• Paying people.
  • If someone can’t keep their word, they can’t do it with your money in their pocket either.

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