Strategically managing and organizing volunteers can maximize impact, reduce turnover, and create opportunities in 2021.
One of the most valuable capabilities of strategic volunteer management is the ability to organize volunteers to create value. Effective management creates value for both your organization and the volunteers providing their time. According to a study, performed by The Corporation for National & Community Service, more people are volunteering than ever before.
In 2019 alone, 77.34 million people volunteered at least once, over the year (equating to $167 billion in economic value). With growth, comes the need for volunteer management and organization. Chances are your nonprofit would be unable to achieve its mission without the support of volunteers and a management process.
If your nonprofit does not have a process for organizing volunteers in 2021, your organization is missing out on value. Creating a strategic process for organizing volunteers can increase program impact, reduce turnover through engagement, and create new opportunities by eliminating administrative tasks. Many organizations, just like yours, are saving hundreds of hours, per year, by having an organized volunteer program.
There is no better time to start organizing volunteers strategically than the present. Here are four best practices for organizing volunteers in 2021.
Create Volunteer Profiles
Data should be the driving force behind your nonprofit’s strategy. Requiring volunteers to create a profile as part of the registration process can help your nonprofit organize your data and identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities within your volunteer pool.
Even though it is possible to create volunteer profiles via Excel spreadsheets and Google Docs, it is not a sustainable process, especially as your volunteer program grows.
Investing in a volunteer management solution can allow your organization to streamline registration and organize data digitally. An automated solution for volunteer registration can also secure the accuracy of the data in your volunteer database. Better data and more control of fields captured is a worthy investment in 2021.
Volunteer management software, like VolunteerHub, can also provide your organization with a background check solution, integrated directly into your registration process, to help protect the integrity of your volunteer program.
Learn more about volunteer registration
Create Realistic Goals
Creating realistic goals will help your nonprofit when organizing volunteers. How will organizing volunteers more strategically help your nonprofit reach and exceed program goals? Deciding how your organization will leverage data is what strategic volunteer management is all about. Better organization of volunteer data can help your nonprofit engage, recruit, retain, and encourage volunteers to share your mission and goals with their network.
One of the best ways to identify your volunteer program’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is through SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis can help your nonprofit prioritize and organize volunteer data in a way that aligns with current and future goals.
Create Landing Pages that Appeal to Groups
Corporate volunteerism is on the rise. Your nonprofit must have a strategy and solution for managing group volunteers. Unfortunately, a manual process for volunteer management makes organizing volunteer groups difficult. Deploying a volunteer management software solution, such as VolunteerHub, makes group volunteer management a streamlined process.
Your nonprofit can use volunteer management software to create group landing pages, communicate directly with group volunteers, and incorporate corporate branding into group-specific pages. Utilizing volunteer management software makes it easier to create volunteer program assets that appeal to corporate partners.
Create an Organized Reward and Recognition Program
Developing a reward and recognition program for volunteers is highly important in 2021. Today’s volunteers want to have their commitment to your organization recognized frequently. Creating an organized reward and recognition program can help your nonprofit engage and retain supporters. Volunteer management software, like VolunteerHub, makes creating a reward and recognition process a breeze. Rewards and recognition can be built directly into your volunteer database via gamification features. Your nonprofit can also use the communication features in VolunteerHub to thank volunteers for opportunity fulfillment automatically.
Organizing Volunteers in 2021: Takeaways
Organizing volunteers for program success in 2021 is all about leveraging data and creating opportunities while eliminating barriers. If your nonprofit wants to create an appealing process for volunteers, that is easy to manage internally, it is important to create realistic goals, develop a process to create volunteer profiles and group landing pages, and create a strategy for rewards and recognition.
