Tips For Achieving Excellence in Your Volunteer Management

What Exactly is Volunteer Management?

The entire idea of volunteer management has to do with effectively managing the available volunteer resources. To effectively do this, there are several tools available. We truly believe that the management aspect of volunteer organisations is what keeps everything together. The management of these resources helps leads to the effective usage of resources in a way that makes a lot of sense for each party involved. There are numerous different definitions and approaches to effective volunteer management. We utilise an approach inspired by the international literature that specifically highlights the use of management as an all-encompassing strategy used to coordinate the resources.

Throughout the entire marketplace, you will find charities competing with one another in a very crowded industry. Therefore, being able to not only look out for volunteers, but to retain them, has become exceedingly difficult and increasingly important. Along with this, our clients have been looking to increase and optimise the management of their volunteers because of various economical and political influences. As more and more charities begin competing for more volunteers, the industry is only getting more difficult to navigate.

There are currently over 1.4 million live volunteering opportunities available with nearly 47,000 individual organisations being represented. Due to this momentum, it is increasing the pressure on various organisations to get their management aspect corrected to be able to both attract and retain the volunteers over the long haul.

Below, we will be going over some of our top tips for being able to attract the best volunteers.

Try to make quick decisions for volunteers who are showing interest. You also want to strive to hand out accurate information. Do-It took on a national survey that showcased that as many as 36% of potential volunteers had something holding them back from wanting to volunteer because they didn’t receive the kind of response they wanted from their application or because they didn’t have a clearly defined role expressed to them.

Try to gain a thorough understanding of what the volunteer is looking to get from the experience and what they are capable of offering the organisation to facilitate and foster a healthy and positive relationship.

Try to give the volunteer a clear understanding of what they will be doing and how their role within the organisation will contribute to the end-goal for the charity or community.

Try to make the role that you are handing out completely irresistible. You want the role to be desirable on all fronts. You can help do this by showcasing pictures of the different volunteers in action, showcasing clear job titles, and stating the benefits of each role.

Try to ensure that your website and all of the volunteer opportunities that you have are fully marketed, promoted, and advertised on mobile responsive websites. Likewise, you want to ensure that you are doing so on various social media. Keep in mind 50% of prospective volunteers regularly use mobile devices over traditional desktop alternatives.

Top Tips For the Management of Volunteers:

Get individual guidance to effectively assess your specific processes and how they compare to the best practices within the industry.
Provide the right kind of support for all of your volunteers through a dedicated peer to peer community or provide direct access to advisers for support. You also want to try to assist volunteers in understanding their role and provide them with the knowledge they need to succeed within it.
Always look to recognise the achievements of all of your volunteers. They want to be recognised. Try to give them the recognition they deserve.

Top Tips For Measuring the Impact:

You should be looking to demonstrate the value of the volunteers to your organisation and it is a very important aspect to numerous stakeholders in your organisation. Therefore, you want to ensure that you are defining what you collect, how you collect it, and how you analyse it. You want to create an impact framework that includes:

The demographics of your volunteers.
The contribution each volunteer makes.
The benefits they will be getting from the experience.
The positive value they can provide to the organisation.
The comprehensive impact the volunteers have on the growth of your organisation.