Business professionals are often the dream demographic for nonprofits seeking volunteers.
So, how do you attract more business professionals to your organization? In this post, we’ll explore how work-from-home volunteer opportunities might be the perfect fit for doing just that.
Not Enough Hours in the Day
Let’s start with a big challenge to overcome: busy professionals are often unable to fit regular volunteerism into your normal operating hours. (Keep in mind that it’s not uncommon for professionals to be working 50 or more hours each week.)
We do have some good news. There is a way you can still harness the power of the professional — through work-from-home volunteer opportunities, also known as “virtual volunteerism.” This creates a happy medium, as you are benefitting from these individuals’ skills, and they can complete volunteer tasks when their schedules allow.
What Can We Do with Virtual Volunteerism?
If you’re not exactly sure how to utilize professionals in a work-from-home context, here are a few ideas:
- Technology Experts – What nonprofit wouldn’t enjoy some additional help in this category? From remote server assistance to webmaster or application development duties, a trusted volunteer could work on his or her own time in this capacity.
- Marketers – No dedicated marketing person at your agency? Find a volunteer skilled in desktop publishing, and your life has been made much easier. Just give him or her a decent lead time and some guidance as to what you need for flyers, brochures, and other publicity pieces, and then turn your volunteer loose.
- Social Media Administrators – As a subset of traditional marketing, we all know that social media is front-and-center these days, and we can be pretty certain it’s not going away anytime soon. As important as social media is, sometimes it’s difficult to find time to keep it all organized. Find a qualified volunteer or two for this job, however, and you are set. Just feed them points you want to hit, along with accompanying photos or videos, and watch your social media accounts flourish.
- Fundraising Support – We can always use more help in this department, right? From approaching local merchants for donations to making personal telephone calls for a fundraising campaign, there is no shortage of tasks virtual volunteers can do.
- Grant Writing Assistance – Speaking of getting more funds, grants are great for that. On the flip side, grant writing takes a special kind of person. The process must follow a logical process and pay stringent attention to detail. The other drawback to grant writing is, naturally, that sometimes your organization may be investing a good bit of time into preparing the proposal, only to be turned down. In this case, doesn’t it make sense to delegate grant writing to a volunteer? Now you are not losing on-the-clock productivity hours, and your agency may be gaining a great deal if your application is funded.
- Accounting and Finance Insight – Whether they are day-to-day duties such as accounts payable/receivable, or larger tasks such as tax filings or internal audits, helping hands here are usually welcome.
Get Started with Work-From-Home Volunteer Opportunities
Take a look at your organization with a fresh perspective, and we’re sure you’ll see even more opportunities for virtual volunteerism. It just takes finding the right volunteer, a bit of planning, and leveraging technology (e.g., Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Skype, FaceTime, and of course VolunteerHub). With this combination, you’ll find that virtual volunteers produce very real results.
Please note: this blog post contains stock photographs of models for illustrative purposes and does not imply their use or endorsement of products.
