Telling Donors the Volunteer Story

Any volunteer-based organization seeking donations has a risk that’s easy to overlook…the risk of not revealing information that the potential donor wants to know; information that might make the difference in the amount of the donation, or whether it’s made at all. That information includes the ways volunteer engagement helps support the mission.

Is your current description of volunteer engagement limited to the number of volunteers you have, the hours worked, and the wage-replacement value of those hours? If so, please read on.

Presenters in a recent Webinar sponsored by the Initiative For Strategic Volunteer Engagement offered some questions a potential supporter might reasonably ask that should be addressed in the organization’s “ask.” For example:

• What do volunteers accomplish? What benefits can you show that are above and beyond what the organization could accomplish with paid staff alone? To ask the same question in a slightly different way, how do volunteers increase the organization’s capacity?
• Do volunteers bring in more volunteers? Do they help the organization connect with more clients?
• How much do volunteers donate, in addition to the hours they work?
• What training and support do you provide volunteers? Show how that support helps serve the organization’s mission, and provide an indication of what that training and support costs.
• How do you ensure buy-in, by the paid staff, in volunteer engagement? Are volunteers held to the same standards of performance as paid staff?
• Are those who supervise volunteers included in strategic planning and key decision-making? Do they truly have a “seat at the table?”
• What stories can you tell about individual volunteers that illustrate how valuable these unpaid human resources are to the organization?

These are all ways you can make volunteers visible to potential donors, so volunteer engagement is never “the dog that didn’t bark.”

About VIS

If you have enjoyed this content and find it useful, we invite you to become a VIS member. For $25 a year, members have 24/7 access to over 70 resources on insurance, injury prevention, vehicle safety, event safety, human resources, volunteer management, and other topics to help the volunteer-based organization manage its foreseeable risks. New content is added each month. Join now. Questions? Email us at volunteers@visvolunteers.com or call us at 800.222.8920.