You already know that your volunteer program is one of the most cost-effective parts of your organization’s processes, but did you realize that volunteers can play a critical role in your fundraising efforts?
With a genuine passion for your nonprofit, vast community networks, and a willingness to work, volunteers have the potential to generate significant donations. Read on to learn more about how volunteers support fundraising and how you can leverage this valuable resource.
Mobilizing Your Volunteers
In order to unlock your volunteers’ fundraising capabilities, you need to educate them about your current donation goals.
Before any major fundraising push begins, talk to your volunteers about:
- The basic outline of the campaign
- How the campaign aligns with the organizational mission
- The exact amount of money you are hoping to raise
You can also share success stories from previous fundraisers to showcase what success looks like and engage your volunteers on an emotional level.
Equipping your volunteers with this information will motivate them to actively participate in fundraising campaigns, as well as help them support fundraising efforts more effectively.
How Volunteers Support Fundraising
Once you’ve clarified your campaign goals and shared them with your volunteer base, it’s time to mobilize your volunteers!
Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
Word-of-mouth is extremely powerful, and this technique is exceptionally powerful in fundraising. Peer-to-peer fundraising leverages your volunteers’ existing networks and gives new donors a friendly face to identify with your organization.
To start a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, encourage your volunteers to set up their donation pages. You can connect them with the fundraising software you are currently using, or you can encourage them to use social media platforms, like Facebook fundraisers, to collect donations.
Help your volunteers make a compelling case for donating to your organization by encouraging them to share their own experiences through photos and testimonials. That personal touch can motivate someone who was otherwise unaware of or apathetic to your organization to donate.
While your volunteers will likely be more than happy to assist with a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, you can also offer incentives to promote greater participation and spur some friendly competition. Reward volunteers who collect the most donations with gifts like branded merchandise and free event tickets.
Event Planning and Execution
If your fundraising efforts revolve around a specific event, such as a gala or auction, your volunteers can play critical roles. Harness your volunteer base at every stage of the event planning and execution:
- Planning and Logistics: Volunteers can assist with a wide variety of planning tasks, including brainstorming, securing venues, making security arrangements, creating event graphics, designing decor, and gathering supplies.
- Ticket Sales: Delegate a few volunteers to handle registration and ticket sales, as well as fielding questions from potential attendees.
- Marketing: Ask volunteers to promote the event on social media, distribute flyers, and invite their friends.
- Set-Up: Mobilize volunteers to set up any necessary furniture and equipment, such as stages, sound systems, decorations, tables, chairs, etc.
- Guest Services: Assign your most outgoing volunteers to welcome event attendees, answer questions, and direct crowd flow.
- Booths: If you will sell anything at your event, such as merchandise or food, use your volunteers to run booths, provide services, and collect funds.
- Clean-Up: The event doesn’t end when the last guest goes home; there will be plenty of clean-up and dismantling to do. Volunteers can assist with breakdown to make sure the process goes smoothly and the venue is left in an orderly state.
By leveraging your volunteers to assist with fundraising events, you can create a more enjoyable experience for everyone—and raise more money.
Social Media Advocacy
Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your nonprofit’s disposal, and you can harness your volunteers to optimize your social media strategies.
Building a strong social media strategy requires a lot of attention. You need to consistently post high-quality, relevant content across a variety of platforms that each have their own specific strengths—all while directly interacting with your followers. Nonprofit Tech for Good estimates that a comprehensive nonprofit social media strategy can require up to 30 hours per week. That means your organization would have to potentially hire a new full-time employee to handle just social media.
Thankfully, volunteers can help. 9 out of 10 internet users have at least one social media account, so you have volunteers who are comfortable assisting with organizational social media. You may even have a marketing professional or budding influencer who can lend a hand with social media strategies and content creation.
With this extra help from your volunteers, you can leverage social media to support your fundraising efforts:
- Craft a narrative. Build a strong narrative around your current fundraising campaign that incorporates your organization’s mission, values, and impact.
- Use calls to action. Inspire your followers to contribute to your fundraising efforts and make it clear how they can do so, from donating to buying event tickets. Include relevant links, such as donation forms, in your bio so that your followers can give easily.
- Share volunteer testimonials. Highlighting specific volunteers encourages personal connections between your organization and your audience, and it also motivates volunteers to share posts to their pages for greater visibility.
- Generate engagement. Ask your volunteers to like, comment, and share posts. This engagement will improve your standing in the algorithm, as well as expand your reach to your volunteers’ followers.
- Highlight benchmarks. Throughout the fundraising campaign, share important benchmarks. Benchmarks can show your followers that the fundraiser has momentum, while also showing them how far you still need to go!
Your volunteers are your most engaged supporters, and using them to advocate for your organization on social media can significantly boost fundraising efforts.
In-Kind Contributions and Corporate Partnerships
Many of your volunteers will have connections to local businesses, and they may be able to help you secure valuable partnerships to augment your fundraising efforts. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is quickly becoming a priority for businesses and employees alike, so you may be surprised by the wealth of business opportunities your volunteers have access to.
Volunteer-driven corporate partnerships can result in:
- In-kind donations: In-kind donations are donations of goods or services instead of funds. In-kind donations can boost your fundraising campaigns by reducing operational and event costs, thus maximizing your return on investment. Sample in-kind donations include venues, auction and raffle items, equipment, supplies, and free services, like graphic design, website development, accounting, legal advice, etc.
- Volunteer grants: Volunteer grants are a CSR initiative where employers donate money to a nonprofit after an employee volunteers with the organization for a specific amount of time. Encourage your volunteers to inquire about volunteer grants and other CSR initiatives. If their employer doesn’t already offer them, you can help your volunteers make a case for them.
- Gift matching: Gift matching is another form of CSR, where employers match employee donations. 92% of companies offer gift-matching programs, so it’s a lucrative avenue to explore. Consider using gift-matching software like Double the Donation to help maximize fundraising impact among your volunteers and donors.
CSR is on the rise, so don’t leave money on the table. Encourage your volunteers to reach out to their employers about supporting fundraising efforts.
Volunteer-Led Donation Drives
Donation drives are an effective way to propel engagement, especially when they are timed to align with specific times of year, such as back-to-school or the holiday season.
Work with your volunteers to see how they can organize a donation drive within their local area. Follow these simple steps:
- Determine what kinds of donations you need. Are you looking to raise funds, for items like clothes, food, toys, or both? Set a clear goal for how much the volunteer should aim to collect.
- Consider virtual options. Not everyone will be able to make it to an in-person donation drive, so offering virtual giving can expand your donor network.
- Find a location. Donation drives can be one major event at a relevant venue, or they can be as simple as leaving a donation box at a strategic location, such as schools, churches, or local businesses.
- Promote the drive. Donation drives typically involve the local community, so encourage your volunteer to publicize the event through word-of-mouth, social media, and flyers around town.
- Make it a party. If you decide to hold your donation drive as an in-person event, make it a party! Offer music, light refreshments, raffles, and even games and activities.
- Show appreciation. Just like any fundraising campaign, the donation drive should wrap up by thanking supporters and sharing the impact they made.
Because volunteer-led donation drives directly engage the local community, they can be a surprisingly effective fundraising tool.
Volunteer to Donor Conversion
When you’re thinking about how volunteers support fundraising, don’t forget about volunteer fundraising. Volunteers are two times more likely to donate to your organization than non-affiliated prospects, and volunteer contributions are typically ten times higher than non-volunteer donations.
When you’re building a fundraising campaign, invite your volunteers to participate by leveraging volunteer management software like VolunteerHub. VolunteerHub is a top-tier volunteer management software that makes volunteer-to-donor conversion easy.
Our robust volunteer fundraising features include:
- Unlimited donation pages
- Automated fundraising communications, including donation prompts and thank you messages
- Integration with multiple payment services, including PayPal, American Express, Global Payments, SecureNet, and many more
- Rewards and recognition options
In addition to our volunteer fundraising features, VolunteerHub can also maximize your organization’s return on investment by optimizing the entire volunteer management process, from recruitment to reporting.
But don’t take it from us! According to JodyAnn Mcintosh, the Manager of Community Engagement & Volunteer Services at Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance, “VolunteerHub literally paid for itself after 3 months because we saw an increase in volunteer donations after implementing the software.”
