Where would your nonprofit be without its volunteers? From acting as peer-to-peer fundraisers, committee members, day-of-event support, skilled work, and board members, volunteers eagerly contribute their time and talent to support your mission. They are also a likely group to donate money to your organization.
With a volunteer hour being valued at $33.49 to a nonprofit, having the right strategies and plans for volunteer recruitment and management is critical for long-term nonprofit success.
Too many organizations can be laissez-faire about volunteer recruitment and management. What can your nonprofit team do to improve your volunteer recruitment and management so that these partners are able to offer their best to your organization?
Volunteer Recruitment
As you look to fill gaps, support critical programs, and grow specific areas of your nonprofit, you need to align the skills and interests of your volunteer pool with open roles and needs at your organization.
Offer Volunteer Job Descriptions and Training
How can your nonprofit fill your needs if you cannot share the ins and outs of what the volunteer role entails?
Create job descriptions like you would for paid roles, for any long-term volunteer role, such as committee members, office support, or board members. Share the time commitment you anticipate the role will have, the length of tenure, the skills needed to be successful, and more. Conduct interviews. Make sure that the role is a fit for both you and the potential volunteer. Share what training will be offered for the outlined role.
For shorter-term volunteers, still offer a description and the time commitment required, and make sure you make it easy for volunteers to sign up. If your organization invests more time into thoughtful volunteer recruitment, your paid staff can focus more on donor relationships, corporate development, and program delivery.
Consider Donors
People are very likely to donate to an organization where they volunteer. But the reverse is true and is an often-untapped pool of potential volunteers.
So much of fundraising is cyclical. Supporters run a marathon or attend a gala once a year and then are not fundraising or donating until the annual event rolls around again.
In the world of donor stewardship, it may make sense to not ask those donors to overlap events, but what about volunteering? Can your marathon runners help at your walk? Can a gala supporter use their photography skills and take your board headshots? Even just asking donors to volunteer can have relationship building benefits.
Adding more value to a supporter’s engagement with your nonprofit with volunteer opportunities will have long-term donor stewardship and retention benefits.
Explore Volunteer Grant Programs
Volunteer grant programs are corporate-sponsored giving programs, where volunteering employees can earn donations for nonprofit organizations—just for volunteering!
Some of these corporate volunteer grant programs payout for just one hour, while others require a minimum amount of volunteer hours from employees to earn the grant.
Depending on your nonprofit’s needs, you can tailor your volunteer recruitment to these grant-eligible employees. Consider the industries that these grant-eligible employees represent.
Imagine what a group of employees from a shipping company can do for your event packing or incentive fulfillment. Can you target the marketing arm of a Fortune 500 to help align your branding? With billions of matching gifts and volunteer grant funds left unclaimed every year, there is a real opportunity for earning funds alongside volunteer support.
Corporate volunteer grants are donations made by a company to a nonprofit that an employee has already supported. These programs aren’t kept secret, but employees don’t always know whether their volunteer hours count or how easy it is to claim a gift.
Read more about these programs and some companies with groundbreaking volunteer grant programs.
Tap Technology
Keeping track of volunteers in ad hoc spreadsheets and separate emails is not the most efficient way to recruit and steward these vital relationships or keep track of their individual impact.
Consider partnering with a fundraising management vendor that allows you to create unlimited forms to capture volunteer signups easily.
If you have a CRM with a grouping tool, you can tag contacts as volunteers for unlimited data points. Doing this allows you to use the data to personalize communication, steward supporters, and increase retention so volunteer recruitment runs smoothly.
Volunteer Management
As you manage your volunteers beyond recruitment and training, you have to deploy strategies that support your nonprofit’s volunteer engagement and retention.
With volunteer retention far exceeding donor retention, engaging with this dedicated group of supporters is vital to mission growth and success.
Show Appreciation
Consider similar thank you strategies for volunteers as you do for donors. Acknowledge volunteers within 24 hours of any day of support, and regularly thank higher-level volunteers with a stewardship plan, including calls, cards, emails, and face-to-face meetings.
Deploy Consistent Thank You Strategies
There are some easy ways to make your volunteers feel appreciated for their dedication to your cause, including:
Social media shoutouts: Highlight your volunteers by name and share their impact in a regular cadence and after events. Consider asking volunteers to write a post and share photos for your organization’s social media handles to share. Consider having a high-level volunteer do an “Instagram takeover.”
Start a club and offer swag: Encourage continued volunteering by creating a “top-contributor” club. Use a naming convention that ties to your mission, share exclusive opportunities and content, and offer these club members a car magnet or special shirt.
Give awards: Choose a few award categories, such as most hours volunteered, biggest heart, top corporate volunteer, and others, to highlight the achievements and contributions your most dedicated volunteers make to your nonprofit organization.
Host an appreciation event or event moment: If you have a place in your office space, a board member’s conference room for a cocktail reception, or a moment during your existing gala or P2P walk/run where you acknowledge volunteers by name and/or present an award(s).
Report for Board Members and Other High-Level Volunteers
Meet face-to-face with your board members and junior board to review their accomplishments over their term year-to-date. Often, there is an expectation for board members’ give-gets.
Share each member’s individual “give” to date, and aggregate their “get”—which walk teams, corporate sponsorships, gala table sales, program volunteers, in-kind donations, and more can be tied to their name and any introductions they made.
Make the report visually interesting and share each member’s impact and the group’s as compared to total dollars raised year-to-date.
This reporting might be challenging, depending on your financial reporting and CRM management. Using soft credits and custom reporting allows you to quickly and easily tag donations, team captains, and corporate sponsorships with a board member’s name, making aggregating this data possible in a few clicks, rather than a few days.
Send Out Surveys
Survey your volunteers for feedback. Consider segmenting them into groups, such as one-time, high-level, corporate, or lapsed volunteers. Ask them to rate their experiences and provide feedback on recruitment, training, and communication.
Volunteers contribute their time, skills, and often financial support to advance your mission. Investing in thoughtful volunteer recruitment and management strategies can maximize their impact while fostering deeper connections with your organization.
From creating clear job descriptions and leveraging donor-volunteer crossover opportunities to tapping into volunteer grant programs and employing technology for streamlined processes amplifies your mission’s reach.
Hear from our expert partners for more volunteer recruitment and training tips on how you can ensure these dedicated supporters remain passionate advocates for your cause.
