Are You Making the Most of Your Volunteer Talent?

We’re declaring October to be Volunteer Appreciation Month.  Why?  Because volunteers can be an organization’s greatest resource – if managed, leveraged, and appreciated properly.

Intellectually, we all know how important volunteers are to our nonprofit work.  But day in and day out, we often fail to tap in to this rich vein of talent and support.  Recent studies show that nonprofits have a very difficult time retaining volunteer talent. 

What's to be done?  First, there needs to be an organizational commitment to leveraging volunteers to their fullest.  In order to rally your staff around this, it's quite helpful to fully understand the impact volunteers have on your organization which requires good measurement. Second, decide to learn to manage volunteers just as you would manage any other critical function in your organization.

Of course, you need tools to properly manage, measure and scale your volunteer program.  GiftWorks Volunteers can help - from capturing volunteer skills and your organization's volunteer needs, capturing volunteer and project hours, to providing the means to recognize and communicate with your volunteer team.  GiftWorks Volunteers is an add-in to, and completely integrated with GiftWorks Standard and Premium editions.

Below is short version of an excellent article written by retired volunteer organizer Ellie LaCasse discussing how technology can help you improve your volunteer program.  Read on and please share any thoughts you have on fully leveraging volunteer talent!

 

Using Technology to Gain and Retain Volunteers by Ellie LaCasse

Volunteers may be your organization's greatest resource. In fact, volunteers bring something invaluable to your organization, more than just their dollars, but their time, their interest, their loyalty and their ability to evangelize your mission to others in your community. Committed volunteers, helping with your work and representing you in the community, are priceless. Indeed, volunteers are likely to become your most consistent and, in time, major donors. But if you're not using technology to reach them and coordinate your volunteer efforts, you may be missing a large and growing segment of potential volunteers.

Today's volunteers are no longer content to sit and stuff envelopes on Thursday afternoons. They put a high-value on their time and abilities and want volunteer assignments that tap into those talents and reward them with the satisfaction of having provided meaningful work. To succeed, you must develop ways to find, fulfill, and satisfy your volunteers.

You may not be a sophisticated computer or web user, but you can be sure that the majority of your volunteer audience, both in your community and beyond, is using technology for their personal and business lives. Here are a few ways that you can use technology to improve volunteer efforts for your organization.

1. Collect specific data about your volunteers. It is critical to a not-for-profit's success to have systems in place for managing volunteer skills and abilities, as well as volunteer jobs and opportunities. At a minimum, you should invest in some type of a database for these areas. There is no other effective way to manage this important function.

2. Match volunteer talents with organizational needs and activities. Just as important as recruiting volunteers is retaining them. With your volunteer database, you'll need the ability to manage projects and volunteer jobs and match volunteers to jobs and projects. You'll also need to be able to record what jobs people have performed in the past, what skills they possess that you have and haven't used, and check that you've found a job for every volunteer you can. If you keep your database up to date, you'll even be able to brush up on John Jones' volunteer history before you meet him for lunch.

3. Schedule and track projects. Use your software to manage jobs and opportunities as well. You don't want to schedule five volunteers to help with an activity and then only have enough work for two of them. All five will feel that you and your organization are unorganized and perhaps their skills could be better used elsewhere, and be reluctant to sign up again.

4. Keep in touch with your volunteers. Likewise, you should use your software system to contact volunteers. While this is most easily done via e-mail, you might also consider a personalized, handwritten note to those people connected to an event, or even a regular volunteer newsletter. You can alert committee members of an approaching meeting, updates on an upcoming event, or let them know how many pledges have registered for your upcoming walk-a-thon, transmitting not only information, but motivation and a sense of community. You can even put out a call when there's a sudden unforeseen need for emergency food preparation or data entry or help with a move. Make sure to acknowledge the importance of volunteers to your organization and community with fresh success stories.

5. Recruit volunteers continually. Recruiting new volunteers can start on your own website. Provide on-line job descriptions, sign-up/registration, volunteer outcomes on your site, and keep them up-to-date. Create a special volunteer section where you highlight and thank your volunteers. Publish a monthly report of volunteer hours.

6. Personalize your volunteer requirements. Both on your site and on the Internet, you have the opportunity to put a real face and voice to your appeal. You can use photos, maps, even voices or music to bring your story to life. Unlike the limitations of a paper brochure, you can vary and change your image(s) daily in order to provide more depth and breadth to your message.

7. Link to social networking sites. Many not-for-profits are expanding their reach even more boldly with the use of interactive web tools like MySpace and Facebook, blogs, and discussion groups. Maybe you even have a volunteer who might like to tackle this kind of outreach. This is a great opportunity to build an online community, to engage more people in your cause, resulting not only in volunteers but donations and increased awareness.