From Volunteer Frontier’s website, we found some great reasons not only to encourage people to volunteer for your organization, but also to evaluate your program to make sure it’s as successful as possible. Here are the reasons (and the original link):
1. Save Money on Professionals
Use pro-bono volunteers to assist or manage projects in IT, social marketing, website design, accounting, communications, fundraising and other areas. Many nonprofits are already all over this huge money save. What would it be worth to you to have someone who managed your content and website design fro free?
2. Increase Volunteer Retention
Just like employees, keeping the volunteers you have saves time and money down the road. How does your rate of volunteer turnover compare with other agencies? What would keep good volunteers around longer? What do they want?
3. Maximize Efficiency and Focus
The ways volunteers are utilized often happens organically over many years. Perhaps programs that worked 10 years ago with volunteers just don’t work as well today due to differing skills, interests and time commitments of today’s new breed of volunteer. Ramp up programs that work and nix programs that are struggling or not providing a good return on investment.
4. Increase Individual Giving
Research shows those who know your organization’s work well – and who invest their time with you are much for likely to invest their money as well. Companies who have employees volunteering also can become engaged with your group’s work.
5. Increase Foundation Funding
Increasingly, donors are looking to see how well volunteers are utilized in an organization. Showing dynamic use of volunteers certainly gives a leg up over the competition. Remember when the foundation community said all board members need to give or get money in order for a grant application to be considered? Volunteer engagement is the next criteria for which smart donors are using.
6. Leverage Staff Better
It’s expensive having staff. Some of what your staff does now might be able to be handled by volunteers. Staff can then focus on things only staff should be doing. It’s not about displacing staff with volunteers but rather maximizing how an organization uses a 40 hour a week employee.
7. Enhance Staff-Volunteer Relations
Reviewing how volunteers and staff feel about each other can help mitigate problems down the road. It’s a delicate balance between empowering volunteers and allowing staff to make the final decisions. If you could administer a confidential online survey to volunteers and staff, what would their opinions be of each other?
8. Maximize Units of Service/Deliverables
There is so much pressure to perform and measure up these days. If your organization had more leader volunteers who were invested in your cause, a middle management level volunteer could lead direct service volunteers.
9. Strengthen Community Image
Those volunteering their time with you are bound to talk about your organization. That can be a good or bad thing – depending on the experience they’ve had. Having volunteer cheerleaders for your agency provides no better endorsement.
10. Show That Volunteers Matter
Assessing how your agency engages volunteers sends a strong message to staff, volunteers, the board, funders and the public that service is central to your work. It’s about building on your successes and tweaking programs to make them the best they can be.
