Your volunteer database can be used to develop personas and create more targeted advertising for volunteer & fundraising opportunities in the future.
Creating a strategic process for capturing volunteer information and organizing data is important. Your nonprofit can use this information to promote new opportunities to existing supporters, increase community engagement, and convert volunteers to donors. One benefit of an organized volunteer database, that often gets overlooked, is the ability to use its information to identify trends and target the most ideal volunteer prospects. A recent study, conducted by HubSpot, found that using personas made websites 200% – 500% more effective and easier to use by targeted users. HubSpot also found that creating personalized emails drives 18 times more engagement than broadcast emails. How is your nonprofit using the data collected in your volunteer database to identify trends, create segmentation, and recruit talent?
Here are three strategies to consider.
Broadcast Opportunity to the Right Demographics
One of the most valuable pieces of information contained in your nonprofit's volunteer database is data. Demographics are characteristics of your volunteer pool such as their gender, age, location, education level, occupation, income, and marital status. Identifying trends in your volunteer data can help your nonprofit get a better idea of who your current supporters are, where they are from, and what they do outside of volunteerism. This information is important because it can help your organization create targeted campaigns that appeal to your supporters or people similar to them.
Example #1: You may find that a large percentage of your volunteers reside in the same locality and your marketing strategy/budget can be adjusted to focus on saturating other communities near that area creating additional opportunities for community awareness/engagement.
Example #2:
Your organization may find that numerous volunteers are employed by a specific organization. This information could be used to develop a new corporate partner opportunity.
Understand What Caused a Volunteer to Increase Giving
Volunteers can provide your organization with value outside of fulfilling opportunities. In fact, volunteers have been shown to give more financially than non-volunteers. Fidelity, Time and Money report, found that 87% of people who volunteer also give gifts financially. The same report also found that volunteers give 10X more money to charity than individuals who do not participate in volunteerism. How is your nonprofit's marketing team using this information to market fundraising opportunities to volunteers? How is your organization using your volunteer database to understand what propelled a volunteer to give?
Example: Your volunteer database may reveal that a volunteer fulfills, on average, a specific number of volunteer opportunities before donating financially to your cause. If so, your organization should focus more effort on retention and asking for financial contributions at the right time.
Personalized & Automated Communication
Automation has the power to save your organization time and money. According to a recent study, performed by CMO, marketing automation increases productivity by an average of 14.5% and decreases overhead by an average of 12.2%. If your nonprofit is using a volunteer management solution, like VolunteerHub, your volunteer database can be used to streamline the communication process. Your organization can use volunteer management software to remind volunteers of upcoming opportunities, promote new opportunities to serve, and thank volunteers for providing their time. These text and email communications can be personalized to increase campaign success.
Here are a few case studies of organizations using VolunteerHub to improve communication.
Takeaways
Investing in a volunteer database is a great way for your nonprofit to organize data, capture volunteer information, and create personas that can be used to optimize volunteer recruitment and fundraising strategies. Your volunteer database can be leveraged to identify volunteer demographics, see trends in giving behavior, and automate the communication process.
