The average volunteer hour is worth $33.49—but you can’t properly calculate your volunteers’ contributions if you don’t track your volunteer hours! This comprehensive guide will explore the importance of tracking volunteer hours and how to do it.
What is Volunteer Hour Tracking?
Volunteer hour tracking is the process of logging each volunteer’s time contributions. You will want to track these hours both in terms of individuals and also in terms of specific roles or tasks.
You can track volunteer hours with a written log or a free, online solution like Google Sheets. However, tracking volunteer hours with volunteer management software allows you to save time and money with automated hour-tracking options while receiving actionable insights and easy reporting.
The Benefits of Tracking Volunteer Hours
Tracking volunteer hours is critical to helping your volunteer program reach its full potential. From generating accurate reports to boosting engagement, the benefits of tracking volunteer hours are numerous and far-reaching.
Calculate ROI
Volunteer hours replace labor that would otherwise have to be done by a paid employee. Tracking volunteer hours allows you to accurately convert volunteer hours into monetary value, which in turn improves your ability to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for your program. With this information, you can improve resource allocation, budgeting decisions, and long-term planning for your volunteer program and your organization as a whole.
Demonstrate Community Support
The more hours your volunteers log, the more support you have from your community. Tracking volunteer hours can give you compelling evidence for potential donors, sponsors, and community partners. An abundance of volunteer hours demonstrates the pivotal role your organization plays in your community and shows that you are a worthy investment.
Articulate Impact
Volunteer hour tracking also allows you to articulate your organization’s impact. You can show exactly how those volunteer hours translate to services delivered and the value of the time donated, as well as where your volunteers are making the greatest impact in terms of hours served. You can also easily describe how your volunteers have helped beneficiaries save money by offering services for free.
Secure Grant Funding
Every grant has different requirements, but tracking volunteer hours often plays a pivotal role in bolstering your grant applications. For example, if a grantor requires that you have matching funds to qualify for funding, you can apply the value of your volunteer hours as an in-kind donation towards meeting that condition.
However, even if your grantor does not require funding matching, they will still want data that demonstrates your organization’s impact. Volunteer hour tracking can be important here, too. Many government, foundation, and corporate grants require volunteer hour data as part of the application. Why? Volunteer hour data helps paint a picture of your organizational impact, as well as your level of community buy-in—two factors that are critical to showing that your nonprofit will be a solid investment for the grantor.
Drive Donations
The importance of tracking volunteer hours is also evident in fundraising. Donors often approach organizations with a similar attitude to grantors. They want to see that their donation will make a difference. You can use volunteer hour tracking to provide persuasive data that will elevate your fundraising efforts, encouraging donors to invest in your organization.
Not to mention, volunteers are one of your most powerful avenues for fundraising. If you can demonstrate the impact volunteers make through hour tracking, you are more likely to convert volunteers into donors.
Empower Volunteers
Your volunteers want to know that they are making an impact. By tracking volunteer hours, you can show them the precise value they are generating. This knowledge empowers your volunteers to work harder and advocate for your organization.
Optimize Task Delegation
Volunteer hour tracking can provide key insights into how you are currently using your volunteers—and how you could use them better. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Which volunteer positions are currently logging the most hours?
- Which volunteer positions are currently logging the fewest hours?
- What tasks or jobs need more time devoted to them?
- What does each volunteer’s availability look like?
- Are you overextending or underutilizing a specific individual’s time?
- How can you assign volunteers to better meet your organization’s needs?
Analyzing volunteer hour data helps you refine volunteer job descriptions and assign the right volunteer to the right role.
Help Volunteers Fulfill Requirements
There are myriad of reasons why someone may choose to work with your organization, and many of your volunteers may be looking to fulfill school, organization, professional development, or corporate volunteer program service requirements. From Girl Scouts to the National Honors Society to Fortune 500 companies, your volunteers may need to prove that they have volunteered for a certain amount of time.
By tracking volunteer hours, you can provide these volunteers with an accurate overview of their contributions that they can, in turn, relay to their organizations. Even if a volunteer is not currently associated with an organization, they may want to add a precise record of their volunteer hours to their resumes to strengthen their candidacies for higher education and job applications.
Support Volunteer Retention
Tracking volunteer hours can dramatically improve volunteer retention. Volunteers are much more likely to continue working with an organization when they feel like they are making a difference, and they are also 66% less likely to stop volunteering if they have been assigned to proper roles. Volunteer hour tracking helps accomplish both of these goals, allowing you to show volunteers their impact and match them with the correct tasks.
Bolster Volunteer Recognition Initiatives
Tracking volunteer hours can complement your current rewards and recognition systems. Try tying volunteer hours to incentives, such as merchandise or gift cards, or offer a special award to volunteers who reach a specific hour quota. Even something as simple as a social media or newsletter shout-out for volunteers who have tracked a lot of hours can go a long way. Rewards play such a key role in volunteer engagement, satisfaction, and retention, so leveraging volunteer hours for your recognition program is a no-brainer!
Generate Meaningful Reports
Your organization needs reports for a variety of reasons, including taxes, compliance, grant applications, and internal functions. Volunteer hours are one part of the reporting puzzle. Tracking volunteer hours gives you valuable data that you can turn into reports that hold meaning for all of your stakeholders.
How To Track Volunteer Hours
Now that you understand the importance of tracking volunteer hours, it’s time to get a tracking system in place. To start tracking volunteer hours, you first need to identify the data that you need to collect.
Your volunteer hour tracking system should include:
- The volunteer’s name
- The volunteer’s position (the exact position may shift between events, so make sure to note any changes)
- The date volunteered
- The number of hours worked
- The hourly value of the volunteer’s work
- The volunteer’s contact information
You may also want to consider the following factors:
- Personalize your volunteer hour tracking data. Reflect carefully on your organization’s goals and how tracking volunteer hours can support them. What insights do you hope to glean from the data? What reporting requirements do you or your volunteers have to meet? Use the answers to personalize your approach to volunteer hour tracking.
- Implement a sign-in system. To understand how many hours a volunteer has worked, they must sign in and sign out of all opportunities. You can have volunteers manually “clock in” with a sign-in sheet or kiosk. You can even connect your volunteer hour tracking database to a virtual check-in, making it easy both for volunteers to sign in and for you to track their hours.
- Follow up. If you don’t have an automated volunteer hour tracking system in place, make sure that you regularly follow up with volunteers after shifts to remind them to log their hours.
You can collect volunteer hour data using a variety of methods, including handwritten logs, spreadsheets, and databases. However, to make your volunteer hour tracking as accurate and efficient as possible, you will want to use volunteer management software like VolunteerHub.
The Benefits of Tracking Volunteer Hours with VolunteerHub
VolunteerHub is a comprehensive, easy-to-use volunteer management software that can take your volunteer program to the next level. With VolunteerHub, you can optimize volunteer hour tracking systems while still getting the actionable insights and meaningful reports that you need.
Our volunteer hour tracking features include:
- Multiple tracking options. Customize your VolunteerHub volunteer hour tracking by choosing the methods that work best for your organization, including manual entry, self-reporting, QR codes, and our administrative interface, OnSite.
- Automation. VolunteerHub’s automated processes allow for more accurate and efficient volunteer hour tracking, saving your organization valuable time, energy, and money while dramatically reducing the risk of error.
- No-show tracking. VolunteerHub’s automatic communication and reminder features help prevent no-shows from occurring; however, if a volunteer misses an event without any notice, you can also easily identify them through the database.
- VolunteerHub’s reporting features allow you to generate meaningful reports in seconds. We have standard and advanced options to make sure your organization always has the information you need.
In addition to volunteer hour tracking, VolunteerHub’s all-in-one platform offers a variety of solutions to optimize your entire volunteer program, including resources for volunteer recruitment, scheduling, and fundraising, as well as event management.
