Maximize Your Team’s Potential through Volunteer Management

What is volunteer management?

Volunteer management is not just a process for nonprofit organizations, it’s a crucial pathway to recruit, track, engage, and retain volunteers. It’s the key to developing and maintaining an adequate, passionate, dedicated supporter base, which is the backbone of your organization’s mission.

Proper volunteer management is not just essential for nonprofits, it’s a testament to the value we place on our volunteers. It helps avoid excessive volunteer turnover, a testament to the importance of their contributions. By prioritizing volunteer management, we give our volunteers a sense of belonging within our organization, encouraging them to continue working to bring our vision to life.

Volunteers make up a significant portion of any nonprofit. Managing them, however, is different from managing regular employees. One of the reasons for this is the voluntary nature of the worker’s commitments. Unpaid volunteers may need to take assigned work more seriously and require more excellent supervision and continued motivation from HR. Tracking tasks done by volunteers, training them every time a new volunteer joins, and ensuring the continuity of their work requires tedious follow-through and data gathering. Therefore, management may need more efficient tools to monitor, manage, and engage volunteers, including technology like volunteer management software.

The volunteer management lifecycle

The volunteer management lifecycle is the process through which volunteers engage with your nonprofit, from when they’re first recruited to when they become recurring supporters.

When you understand the volunteer lifecycle, you can identify ways to improve your volunteer management processes at every stage. Here are the four steps of the engagement lifecycle:

Volunteer recruitment
Volunteer recruitment is the process by which your nonprofit recruits new volunteers. It includes marketing volunteer opportunities, allowing volunteers to sign up quickly, and screening potential volunteers.

Volunteer empowerment
Volunteer empowerment ensures that volunteers feel equipped and excited to get to work. By matching volunteers to jobs that suit their skill sets, giving them quality training, and being available for questions during their shifts, you can empower your volunteers to do their best.

Volunteer recruitment
Volunteer recruitment is the process by which your nonprofit recruits new volunteers. It includes marketing volunteer opportunities, allowing volunteers to sign up quickly, and screening potential volunteers.

Volunteer engagement
You must develop a volunteer communications plan to keep volunteers engaged. This plan should include methods for delivering important volunteer information and avenues for volunteer feedback and questions.

Volunteer recognition and retention
We all appreciate being recognized for our hard work; volunteers are no different. Recognizing your volunteers can involve anything from sending a thank-you note to offering them a gift to giving them a shoutout in your monthly newsletter.

A volunteer appreciation event can go a long way toward showing your appreciation for the hard work and dedication of your supporters and advocates—and it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. These events are meant to build trust and show appreciation, respond to volunteers’ questions, and help demonstrate the alignment between your volunteers’ interests and passions and your organization’s mission.

Ultimately, when volunteers feel recognized and appreciated for their contributions, they’ll be much more motivated to stay involved with your organization for the long term.

Volunteer management best practices

Through every stage of the management process, your nonprofit has opportunities to better connect with volunteers, understand their motivations, and provide a positive experience. Ultimately, volunteers will decide whether to stay involved with your cause based on their connection to your nonprofit best practices to improve your volunteer management approach:

Streamline your registration form.

Make your registration form easy to find on your website by including it in your navigation menu and using calls to action (CTAs) on your homepage that lead to the form.

Your volunteer registration form should be simple and easy to fill out, no matter what type of device volunteers use. Ask only necessary questions, such as volunteers’ contact information (including their emergency contact), interests, and availability. Use large text and buttons to make the form easily read on mobile devices.

Write clear, compelling role descriptions.

Your volunteer role descriptions should entice new volunteers to get involved and offer all the information volunteers need. Include details such as:

The role’s title and responsibilities
The date, time, and location of the opportunity
Any supplies or equipment volunteers should bring
Volunteers will receive benefits from participating, such as meeting new people or receiving a complimentary branded t-shirt.
The link to the signup form

To maximize your recruitment reach, post your volunteer description on social media, share it via email, and publish it on volunteer hubs like VolunteerMatch.

Recruit existing supporters

Contact current supporters to see if they want to join your volunteer program. Send invitations to:

Donors
Peer-to-peer fundraisers
Corporate partners
Board members

These individuals have already supported your mission and may seek new ways to get involved. To ensure that your message stands out, send a personalized email or text addressed to recipients’ names.

Use multiple marketing channels to promote opportunities

Share your volunteer posting widely across your marketing channels, including:

Email
Social media
Your website
SMS communications
Flyers
Direct mail

A multichannel marketing strategy will help you reach the broadest possible audience. You can even ask current volunteers to invite their friends or family to your opportunities, widening your reach to new audiences.

Gather feedback from volunteers.

Show volunteers that you’re committed to building your program with their needs and interests in mind by asking for feedback. Send surveys with questions like:

What is your favorite part of our volunteer program?
What is something you would change to improve our volunteer program?
What is your preferred communication method for hearing about volunteer opportunities?
Do our volunteer opportunities work well with your schedule?
Would you recommend our volunteer program to a family member or friend?

Volunteer feedback is a valuable resource for improving your volunteer management program. After receiving responses, outline a plan to adjust your program based on volunteers’ input. Communicate your plan to volunteers to show that you take their recommendations seriously. For instance, at [Nonprofit Name], we implemented a suggestion box and held regular feedback sessions, which led to significant improvements in our volunteer training program.

How volunteer management software can help

Choosing a powerful volunteer management platform like PlanStreet is not just about making tasks more efficient, it’s about empowering our volunteer managers. It simplifies everything from recruitment to engagement and, ultimately, feedback, allowing us to focus more on our volunteers and our mission.

Volunteer management platforms refer to tools volunteer managers can use to organize volunteer information, scheduling processes, communications, and other activities.

Volunteer management software features

It’s important to consider what features your organization needs most when choosing a volunteer solution. Here are a few must-have features to look for when researching volunteer management systems:

Scheduling tools: Assign volunteers to projects and shifts, send shift reminders, and identify scheduling gaps
Volunteer profiles: Track volunteer history, contact information, interests, skills, and other important information. Attach important documents, like background checks and waivers, to volunteer profiles.
Data reporting: Monitor volunteers’ progress through your training process, track volunteer hours, and measure volunteer impact
Communication tools: Message volunteers privately, offer a communications board, and create communication segments for targeted messaging. Categorize your volunteers by availability, age, gender, geographical location, years of service, and other characteristics of your team’s choosing.

Any volunteer management system you consider should offer these essential tools. Many will also go above and beyond to ensure a positive user experience and better volunteer retention outcomes.

Better engagement and tracking can lead to volunteer retention, which reduces the need for training and empowering new volunteers every few weeks. Speedy communication, clarity in role description, appreciation of volunteer contributions, and on-demand guidance will encourage volunteers. To keep all these tasks running smoothly, especially in the digital age, managers must use cloud-based software for the broadest possible data sharing and communications.

What Can Volunteer Management Software Do for You?

You are investing the time and effort to understand what volunteer management software can do for your nonprofit. We’ve discussed volunteers’ need for connection and training, but did you know volunteer management software systems can help you manage these things and more?

Here are five things volunteer management software systems can do for you:

Send regular communications– You can set up email templates and regular communications to help volunteers stay connected to the organization.
Track volunteer hours– Volunteers can enter their hours so you can calculate ROI when reporting to your donors.
Build Community– HUB pages with resources and opportunities where they can post and comment can connect your volunteers.
House Training– Videos, webinars, and job aids can be posted on your site, allowing easy access to your program. You can even post quizzes to measure the effectiveness of your learning objectives.
Manage Contacts—Information on your volunteers can go beyond basic contact information. It can also include their interests and special skills, shift schedule, the stages of volunteer training they completed, which communications they’ve received, and evaluation information.

Types of Systems

Depending on your needs, many volunteer management software platforms are available to help your nonprofit. Below is a chart that describes the variety of systems that exist.

Scheduling platforms and event management systems are suitable for one-time events where you may not need to keep an ongoing list of contact info for volunteers. Individuals, sports teams, schools, churches, or organized groups often use them.
All-in-one platforms and volunteer management systems are usually used by nonprofits with established volunteer programs that want something more complex to manage recruiting, training, and communications.
Donor-volunteer systems are used for keeping information on volunteers and donors. This information is kept for future fundraising campaigns or for sending notes of appreciation.

What are the benefits of managing volunteers and donors within one system like PlanStreet?

An integrated volunteer and donor management platform offers the following benefits:

Save time and resources. By managing donors and volunteers in one system, you can save time from toggling back and forth between multiple platforms.
Often, you’ll have donors who also volunteer and volunteers who also donate, so it makes sense to track all these individuals using the same system. Your organization can save money by avoiding investing in two separate platforms.
Discover hidden fundraising opportunities among your volunteer base. Long-time volunteers or particularly passionate volunteers are often good candidates to send fundraising requests to. Your database can identify highly engaged volunteers, enabling you to develop a personalized outreach plan.

For most volunteer managers, a simple spreadsheet and hundreds of email chains lead to frustration and poor results. That’s where technology comes in to save the day—and valuable time and resources for your mission.

Volunteering management software can help organizations improve their management strategy in many ways while providing volunteers with a great experience. Let’s dive into some in this post: With the right technology, you can:

Increase communication
Set specific roles
Keep costs low
Demonstrate appreciation

Volunteer management is challenging. With so much going on at any given time, miscommunication and administrative mistakes are common—especially when using multiple mismatched tools to manage your organization’s volunteer programs. To avoid awkward and frustrating situations, many organizations use a single volunteer management software (or VMS) as a focal point to keep everything running smoothly.

PlanStreet offers:

Easy intake: volunteers can fill in forms custom-designed by you to collect required data

Centralized availability of data through its cloud-based software. Managers assigning projects to volunteers can access all volunteer information and relevant documents to show background.