There are many strategic benefits of volunteer management software, including boosting engagement, streamlining tasks, automating communication, and converting volunteers into donors.
Volunteers form the foundation of your nonprofit, yet their talents, enthusiasm, and skills may go underutilized without effective management. A robust volunteer management strategy is essential for maximizing your organization's impact and efficiently distributing resources. When it comes to crafting and executing that strategy, volunteer management software can be a real advantage.
Continue reading to discover the full range of benefits that volunteer management software offers and how it can elevate your volunteer program to new heights.
What is Volunteer Management?
Volunteer management is the complex process of coordinating the volunteer program and all the individuals within it. Volunteer management involves a wide variety of tasks, including:
- Recruiting, training, and onboarding volunteers
- Engaging and retaining volunteers
- Overseeing event planning and job allocation
- Coordinating with other segments of the organization
- Advocating for volunteers with nonprofit leadership
- Managing program resources
- Tracking and analyzing volunteer data
- Regularly assessing and improving the volunteer program
- Supporting overall organizational goals
Effective volunteer management goes beyond just building a healthy, sustainable volunteer program; it makes a tangible impact on your entire organization. The best volunteer management strategies increase community engagement, boost fundraising efforts, and optimize resource allocation. That means that supporting your volunteer program directly benefits your nonprofit.
What is Volunteer Management Software?
Because volunteer management is a critical task with so many moving pieces, many nonprofit organizations have decided to invest in volunteer management software. Volunteer management software allows nonprofits to streamline the volunteer management process without sacrificing any important details.
The benefits of volunteer management software include:
- Saving your organization time, money, and energy
- Improving volunteer recruitment
- Allowing volunteers to take ownership of tasks like scheduling, check-in, and hour-tracking
- Automating repetitive administrative tasks
- Increasing volunteer engagement and retention
- Converting volunteers into donors
- Streamlining event management
- Optimizing the volunteer program with robust analytics and reporting
Simply put, your organization can expect a strong volunteer management software ROI.
The Top 6 Benefits of Volunteer Management Software
Let’s take an in-depth look at the main benefits of volunteer management software and how it can transform your nonprofit’s approach to your volunteer program.
Recruit More Volunteers
Volunteer management software plays a major role in volunteer recruitment. The top volunteer management software solutions offer:
- Customizable recruitment landing pages
- A centralized database to track potential recruits
- Social media integration to market your nonprofit to new volunteers
- Automated communications to keep prospects from falling out of the recruitment funnel
- An easy-to-use platform for completing liability waivers, intake surveys, and other registration forms
- Self-scheduling options for training
All of these features make the recruitment process simpler for both you and new volunteers, increasing the chance that interested prospects will become critical team members.
Engage and Retain Your Volunteers
Recruitment is only half the battle; once you have your volunteers, you have to keep them active and engaged in your program. However, it’s difficult for volunteer managers to keep tabs on every volunteer while still juggling all of their other responsibilities. Volunteer management software solves this problem with:
- Automated reminder texts and emails before shifts
- Self-scheduling and volunteer check-in features
- Advanced database segmentation options, like User Groups and Event Groups, to match volunteers with the right opportunities
- Volunteer recognition tools, including awards and points-based reward systems
Volunteer management software removes the barriers that can discourage volunteers from being active participants in your nonprofit, as well as helps them feel like valued members of your organization!
Streamline Administrative Tasks
Repetitive administrative tasks distract your volunteer manager and other paid staff members from the more complex, big-picture activities that move your organization forward. One of the strongest cases for volunteer management software ROI is its ability to streamline administration.
Volunteer management software can function as an administrative assistant. For example, it can:
- Integrate with your existing CRM and other applications, like social media platforms and Google Analytics
- Launch automated workflows
- Assist with volunteer hour-tracking
- Target communication to the correct volunteer, donor, and staff segments
When you delegate administrative tasks to your volunteer management software, you save time, energy, and money!
Leverage Volunteer Impact Data
Your organization is constantly evolving, and your volunteer program needs to change with it. However, you can’t improve your volunteer program without understanding it—and that’s where volunteer management software comes in. Volunteer management software can help you collect and leverage volunteer impact data with features to:
- Track and analyze data
- Generate meaningful, customizable reports
- Create volunteer surveys
Armed with this meaningful data, you can take action to optimize your volunteer program and articulate its value to stakeholders, donors, and grantors.
Automate Communication
Communication is a critical part of the volunteer management process, but it’s difficult to keep up with individual communication chains. Volunteer management software automates the communication process so that your volunteers always get your message.
With volunteer management software, you can:
- Send automated text messages and emails
- Personalize messages to specific volunteer segments
- Schedule communications for the appropriate times
- Show gratitude with thank you notes
When you keep your volunteers in the loop, they will be much more engaged and active with your organization—both in the short-term and the long term.
Convert Volunteers to Donors
Volunteers are 2x more likely to donate to your organization, but you have to give them the opportunity. Volunteer management software makes volunteer fundraising easy with:
- Identification features to target the volunteers who are most likely to donate
- Unlimited donation pages
- Fundraising prompts
- Secure payment processing
- Automated thank you notes
By boosting volunteer-to-donor conversion, your volunteer management software can pay for itself!
How to Choose a Volunteer Management Software Solution
Volunteer management software can be a game-changer for your nonprofit, but with so many platforms available, which one do you choose?
Start your volunteer management software search by critically evaluating your volunteer program. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What are your program’s pain points?
- Are there any inefficiencies in your current processes?
- How would you like to see your volunteer program grow in the future?
- What feedback have you received about ways to improve your program?
- What problems do you need volunteer management software to solve?
- How much do you want to invest in a software solution?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you will have a better idea of the kind of platform you need.
What to Look for in Volunteer Management Software
Look for a software solution that effectively meets your organization’s needs while providing a strong volunteer management software ROI.
The best volunteer management software solutions offer:
- User-friendly interfaces. While training will always be part of integrating new software, prioritize platforms with user-friendly interfaces for smooth implementation.
- Your volunteer management software has to be able to fit your organization’s current needs and provide support as your organization grows. Customizability will be key to making sure that the software can help you achieve your goals, both for your volunteer program and for your organization as a whole.
- Volunteer management software can help you save critical time and energy through automation, so make sure that your platform has options for automated workflows and communication.
- Self-service tools. Self-service tools, like self-scheduling, check-in, and hour tracking, can empower your volunteers while also offloading some administrative tasks and freeing up your paid staff.
- Data tools. Look for a volunteer management software platform with strong database capabilities. You will want robust analytics and advanced reporting options that provide actionable insights into your program. With an up-to-date volunteer database, you can easily find the information you need, when you need it, as well as more effectively match volunteers with the right opportunities, identify potential avenues for volunteer fundraising, and articulate your program’s impact.
- Event management. Volunteers play a critical role in your organization’s events, so you need a platform that can help you plan and manage events, as well as the volunteers that help execute them.
- Software integration. Volunteer management software should make your operations simpler, so choose a platform that can integrate smoothly with the other software your organization already uses.
- Continued support. Your software support needs won’t end with the initial onboarding. You need a platform with a friendly, knowledgeable, and responsive support team that can help you should any issues occur.
- Proof of success. There are plenty of volunteer management software solutions out there, so look for ones with both strong reviews and compelling case studies that show a proven track record of success.
- Trial periods. Many platforms will be willing to offer you a demo so that you can see whether it fits your organization’s needs.
Optimize Volunteer Management with VolunteerHub
VolunteerHub is the premier volunteer management software solution. With over twenty years of experience, we have helped thousands of organizations manage billions of volunteer hours—and we can help you take your volunteer program to the next level.
VolunteerHub’s comprehensive, easy-to-use platform offers solutions for every step of the volunteer lifecycle, from recruitment to retention to rewards. Our features include:
- Customizable user groups
- Automated workflows
- Self-service options for scheduling, check-in, and hour tracking
- Robust analytics and reporting
- Event management
- Rewards systems
- Automatic text and email messaging
- Volunteer-to-donor conversion
- Secure payment processing
- Continued customer support and training
