By stewarding your volunteers, you are not only managing them effectively but also nurturing them throughout their engagement with the organization. Implementing a stewardship plan can help cultivate strong relationships and provide the necessary support, ensuring that volunteers remain motivated and valued in their contributions to your organization's mission.
Prioritizing stewardship can maximize your volunteers' impact and cultivate a positive experience for everyone.
Organizational Benefits of Volunteer Stewardship
Volunteer stewardship not only benefits your organization by contributing to success and effectiveness in achieving goals and mission but also fosters a rewarding experience for volunteers. Their enthusiasm, commitment, and motivation are amplified through engagement, leading to improved retention and the utilization of each volunteer's unique skills, talents, and resources to maximize impact.
Below, we highlight four pillars of volunteer stewardship that you should consider implementing into your program.
Pillar 1: Recruitment and Onboarding
Recruitment and onboarding are critical volunteer stewardship components, laying the foundation for a positive experience for each volunteer.
In terms of volunteer recruitment, the following are key to remember:
- Identify your needs and clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each volunteer needed.
- Target your recruitment efforts to reach people most likely aligned with your mission and interests. You can use your volunteer databases, community events, and social media channels.
- Create clear, compelling messages to highlight the impact of volunteers, the benefits, and why your organization is specifically worth their time and effort.
- Host engagement events like informational sessions or open houses to give more details about the roles available and your organization.
- Streamline your application process and make it easy for potential volunteers.
- For onboarding, you should set clear expectations and provide your volunteers with detailed overviews of their roles and responsibilities.
- Offer comprehensive training and orientation sessions so your volunteers can learn more about your mission, values, procedures, policies, and specific tasks.
Other ways to facilitate a great recruitment and onboarding experience include:
- Pair new volunteers with your more experienced ones or staff members who can become mentors, providing support and guidance during onboarding.
- Ensure your volunteers can access the resources and tools needed to perform effectively.
- Establish channels so volunteers can provide feedback, ask questions throughout onboarding, and make sure you respond to their concerns.
Effectively recruiting and onboarding is necessary for volunteer stewardship because:
- They both set the stage for your volunteers to have a positive experience, which is key for retention and maximizing impact.
- When you take the time to recruit volunteers well-suited to your organization and then provide them with in-depth onboarding, you're raising the likelihood that they'll stay satisfied and engaged over the long term.
- Stewarding volunteers from the start demonstrates your commitment to valuing what they bring to the table, fostering loyalty and belonging.
- You're preparing your volunteers to fulfill their roles, benefiting your organization and the communities you serve.
Attracting and onboarding methods cultivate a dedicated and enthusiastic group of volunteers in harmony with your organization's mission and objectives.
Pillar 2: Training and Development
Empowering volunteers through training and development equips them with the necessary tools to thrive in their roles and make significant contributions to your organization.
For volunteer training, remember the following:
- Provide volunteers with role-specific training, like skills training.
- Offer hands-on and practical experience opportunities to reinforce training and learning and build confidence.
- Develop and provide volunteers with training materials, videos, manuals or online resources that they can look back at when they need to in a self-paced way.
- Interactive training sessions are most engaging, incorporating group discussions, activities, and the chance for questions and feedback.
- Training should be ongoing to help volunteers develop their skills, adapt to changing circumstances, and stay updated on best practices.
Volunteer development can include:
- Skill-building workshops on volunteer personal or professional development topics like project management, leadership or communication skills.
- Establishing mentorship programs facilitates guidance, support and career advice from more experienced volunteers and staff to new volunteers.
- Cross-training encourages volunteers to explore different roles within your organization, broadening their perspective and skill set.
- Recognizing and celebrating achievements and milestones motivates ongoing engagement and growth.
- Provide feedback to volunteers that's constructive and focused on their performance. You can also provide them with opportunities for self-assessment to support their ongoing development.
Training and development play several major roles in stewardship, including:
- They provide volunteers with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to perform their roles, enhancing their contributions to the organization.
- Investing in training and development demonstrates your commitment to supporting the growth and success of volunteers.
- You're showing that you value your volunteers by providing training and development. That keeps them engaged for better retention rates.
- Continuous development of your volunteers' skills and capabilities enables them to tackle new challenges, take on leadership roles, and make more meaningful contributions to the organization's mission.
Volunteer training and development are integral to stewardship. They enable volunteers to grow and thrive while making a lasting impact within your organization and the communities you serve.
Pillar 3: Support and Recognition
Show your volunteers how much you value them by providing support and recognition, nurturing a sense of fulfillment and community.
You can show support to volunteers as part of a stewardship plan by:
- Maintaining open, transparent, and consistent communication with volunteers, providing information, updates, and opportunities for feedback and input.
- Make sure volunteers have access to everything needed to perform roles effectively.
- Be available to answer volunteer questions and concerns and provide support and guidance when needed. Respond promptly when volunteers reach out, demonstrating the value you feel for their contributions.
- Facilitate connections among volunteers to help build a supportive community for the exchange of ideas, shared experiences, and offering assistance to each other.
- Offer flexible scheduling options and accommodate preferences when possible to recognize the diversity in the needs of volunteers.
Show recognition through efforts like:
- Personalized appreciation tailored to reflect each volunteer's strengths and contributions.
- Celebrate achievements and milestones publicly with recognition events, social media posts, website features, or newsletters. In doing so, highlight their impact.
- Show gratitude with handwritten notes or shows of appreciation like certificates or gift cards.
- Consider establishing a formal recognition program or an award system to honor exceptional volunteers and recognize their dedication and contributions.
- Involve volunteers in decision-making processes and seek their input on your organizational initiative.
As far as the importance of support and recognition in stewardship, reasons there's a relationship include:
- A supportive environment and recognition of volunteer contributions improve engagement, retention, and satisfaction levels.
- When you foster a culture of support and appreciation, you're better positioned to attract new volunteers, retain current volunteers, and build a strong, committed community.
- Supported, recognized volunteers who feel their efforts are often being seen become advocates for your organization, promoting the activities and mission to others.
Volunteer support and recognition nurture positive relationships and inspire commitment, representing their important role in stewardship.
Pillar 4: Retention and Evaluation
Central to the stewardship of volunteers is the dedication to retaining and evaluating their impact. Constantly assessing and enhancing the effectiveness of volunteer programs is crucial in cultivating a robust and committed volunteer community.
For volunteer retention, keep in mind the following:
- Get to know your volunteers personally. This will help you align them with roles that are the best fit for them, and it will make recognition more meaningful.
- Set clear expectations from the start on what you expect from volunteers regarding their roles and responsibilities and the impact of their contributions.
- Recognition and appreciation stand independently as a pillar of stewardship but can also be part of retention and evaluation.
- Get feedback from your volunteers on their experiences, preferences, and suggestions for improvement. Be an active listener of concerns and ideas, and respond transparently and empathetically.
- As mentioned above, providing development opportunities encourages volunteers to take on new organizational challenges.
For the evaluation of volunteers, remember:
- Set metrics to measure the impact and performance of volunteer contributions. There are many ways to do this, including examining hours served, tasks completed, and achieved outcomes.
- Conduct regular surveys or feedback sessions to identify strengths and weaknesses in your program, informing decision-making.
- Assess the effectiveness of your programs in achieving organizational goals. Look at the contributions of volunteers in areas like program outcomes, service delivery, and overall advancement of the mission.
- Use findings to identify areas for improvement and implement strategies based on the stewardship tips above. Regularly review and update your volunteer policies, practices, and procedures based on feedback.
Retention and evaluation are crucial to stewardship for the following reasons:
- Retaining volunteers over the long term increases your program's consistency, stability, and continuity.
- Evaluating the experiences and performance of volunteers can help you implement targeted interventions, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.
- You're demonstrating a commitment to accountability, continuous improvement and transparency in this pillar of stewardship.
- Retained, engaged volunteers will likely promote your mission to the people they know, attracting others to join them.
There are quite a few overlaps in the pillars of stewardship, with the biggest takeaway being its critical role in your organization's success and sustainability. You foster a supportive, inclusive environment where your volunteers feel empowered, motivated, and valued.
If formalizing your volunteer stewardship seems overwhelming, a platform like VolunteerHub can simplify it by providing you access to the necessary tools and data. VolunteerHub automates and streamlines while you're working on driving your mission forward.
