9 Ideas For Finding Volunteers For Special Events

Finding individuals who are willing to be long-term volunteers for your nonprofit can be difficult. Many people in this country want to do whatever they can to help out organizations, but they don't necessarily want to do it all the time. That's why one-time special events can be very appealing to potential volunteers.

There are plenty of individuals out there who would love the chance to be a part of making your event a success; it’s just a matter of reaching them. In his book "The Idiot's Guide to Recruiting and Managing Volunteers," John L. Lipp wrote that you have to exhaust all avenues of communication to reach these potential volunteers. He suggested using the following techniques:

• Start by asking individuals who are part of your active volunteer program. As soon as you have a date confirmed for your event, send them a “save-the-date” message;
• Do the same thing with people who volunteered for your last special event. If your event includes sponsors, talk to them and see if they are interested in providing employees to help support it;
• Contact service clubs and professional organizations, especially those that have a connection to your cause, and ask them about making a commitment to provide a minimum number of volunteers for your event;
• Target people with specific skills;
• Reach out to organizations that specialize in recruiting volunteers for special events and one-time opportunities;
• Utilize the Internet to promote your event and volunteer opportunities;
• Contact local religious groups; and,
• Consider offering your clients an opportunity to volunteer for your special event.

15 Questions About Your Volunteer Program

It's hard to imagine a nonprofit's volunteer program succeeding without a strong infrastructure in place behind it. This is rarely a problem for most organizations but just because there are policies in place doesn't mean they are the right ones.

In his book "The Idiot's Guide to Managing and Recruiting Volunteers," John L. Lipp wrote that organizations should undergo a routine assessment of their volunteer programs. This involves taking inventory of what you have and what you need. He presented the following checklist that you should go over when determining how you can approve things:

• Does our volunteer program have its own mission statement that explains why volunteers are an integral part of our organization?
• Do we maintain appropriate insurance coverage for volunteers?
• Do we have set goals for what volunteers will try to accomplish each year?
• Do we have a volunteer recruitment plan?
• Is information on how to volunteer featured prominently on our web page?
• Do we have handouts for prospective volunteers?
• Do we have an application for prospective volunteers to complete?
• Do all of our new volunteers attend an orientation to learn more about the organization and the role of volunteers?
• Is planning for volunteer engagement included in all agency strategy meetings and new project development?
• Do we have written position descriptions for each volunteer function?
• Have we prepared employees to work effectively with volunteers?
• Is each volunteer assigned a supervisor to ensure accountability?
• Do we have written policy on confidentiality?
• Are all of our policies for volunteers written down in one place?
• Do volunteers have time sheets so they can track their hours?

Reasons To (And Not To) Have Your Volunteers Fundraise

More often than not, it's the paid staff of a nonprofit who will be responsible for asking donors for money. There are, however, very good reasons to have your volunteers involved in fundraising.

In her book "Successful Fundraising," Joan Flanagan wrote that organizations should consider dividing fundraising work between professionals and volunteers. She listed the following advantages to using volunteers as fundraisers:

• Volunteers are free. It is a labor of love.
• Your volunteers can come from diverse backgrounds to allow the organization to reach many different economic, professional, geographic, racial, religious, social, political, and civic networks.
• They can work for the largest employers in your community, with hundreds or thousands of co-workers.
• Some volunteers might have more time during the day, an ideal time to ask for money.
• Volunteers can be more aggressive about asking for money for the staff’s salaries and benefits.
• If volunteers raise the budget, the professionals become literally accountable to the elected leadership and constituents.
• Asking for money is the acid test of leadership. If volunteers do the fundraising you get an accurate measure of who cares most about the organization.

This all sounds great, but Flanagan did note there are some potential problems:

• They might hate doing it.
• They might lack expertise about your issues.
• Volunteers might not be dependable.
• Control.

At the end of the day, it seems that using volunteers as fundraisers is a great idea. Just make sure to consider the negatives before making a final decision. For more information like this, visit the management tips section of our website.

6 Ways To Improve Your Volunteer Recruitment

Nonprofits are always looking for new ways to improve their volunteer recruitment. The best way to do this, according to Susan J. Ellis, is to put yourself in the shoes of the volunteer.

Ellis, president of Philadelphia, Pa.-based Energize, Inc., suggested visiting online registry sites to look for volunteer opportunities, putting you in the position of a volunteer looking for unpaid work. Doing this can reveal some very important information, such as:

• What's your local competition? (Like it or not, other organizations are doing this too.);
• Conversely, what organizations do you know that want volunteers but are not listed online? Is this to your advantage or not?;
• What are organizations like yours asking volunteers to do? Might such tasks be valuable to your operation, too?;
• How flexible are the other assignments in terms of schedule, place(s) where the work has to be done, etc.?;
• How attractive does each position sound? How much detail does each listing provide?; and,
• Study the descriptions you're posting or preparing to post. How do they compare? Will you be able to compete successfully?

All of this information will help you to better form your own volunteer recruitment program so that it accurately matches what applicants want.

Thanking Your Volunteers

Volunteers are an incredibly precious resource for nonprofits. That's why it's so important to make sure they never feel like their hard work is not going unappreciated. So when it comes to thanking your volunteers, here's a rule you should follow: Don't wait until the end.

When a volunteer feels appreciated, it increases their morale. Whether someone has high or low morale can be the difference between someone who is productive and someone who is not. In his book "The Idiot's Guide to Recruiting and Managing Volunteers," John L. Lipp wrote that it is important to make your volunteers feel welcomed from the beginning. Waiting until they leave to say "thanks" won't do you much good.

With this in mind, Lipp suggested 10 easy ways to integrate volunteer recognition activities into your organization:

• Get name badges for your office volunteers.
• Have an annual "Design the Volunteer T-Shirt" contest and use the winning design as that year's shirt for special events. Long-term volunteers will be able to wear their t-shirts from past years.
• Have a small budget? Ask a local company to pay for having volunteer t-shirts printed in exchange for having their logo tastefully printed on the shirt.
• Have a "Volunteer of the Month" and post his or her personal story on your web page.
• Ask a volunteer if he or she would like to take a 15-minute coffee or snack break with you.
• Create holidays in honor of your long-term office volunteers.
• Name rooms or office equipment after outstanding volunteers.
• Schedule a monthly drop-in potluck for volunteers who work in the field but would like to get to know one another in a social setting.
• Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper making a statement of gratitude to all of your volunteers.
• If you send a regular newsletter to your volunteers, include an "Above and Beyond" section where you publicly acknowledge individual volunteers for specific actions.

What's In Your Fundraising Toolkit?

When you think of the word "toolkit," hard-hat jobs are the first things that usually come to mind. The last thing you would think of would be fundraising.

You don't need hammers or wrenches to raise money but, according to Kay Sprinkel Grace in "Nonprofit Management 101," it's important to have a metaphorical toolkit on hand. These contain all the tools that fundraising novices, such as volunteers, need to be successful. It's important that they have these tools on hand, as they probably won't be comfortable soliciting donors in the beginning.

Sprinkel Grace suggested stuffing your volunteers' toolkit with the following items to help them spread the word about the organization:

• Stories of your impact to add a personal touch to your role in the community;
• The elevator speech (and the elevator question – what do you say after you’ve said the speech to ensure that the conversation is just the beginning?);
• Facts about the organization (i.e., number of people served, before and after statistics, etc.);
• Analysis of the organization’s impact measured against the needs of the community;
• Most commonly heard questions and objections to giving and the recommended response;
• Highlights from the strategic plan that may be relevant to some potential donors; and,
• Full financial information, presented in an understandable format.

Have you already given out fundraising kits to your volunteers? If so, what other items not listed here would you suggest including?

Attracting Volunteers With Facebook

It's hard to come up with more than a few people in our lives who aren't using Facebook.  Even if you don't use it much for personal reasons, you probably use it to attract people to your nonprofit's website and to engage supporters.  But did you know it's also a good way to attract new volunteers?

If you aren't using Facebook to bring volunteers to your organization, you are missing out on a key recruitment tool.  So how do you do it?  Let's just say it's a little more complicated than posting a status update that reads "We need volunteers."  Here are five ways to effectively use Facebook as a volunteer recruitment tool:

• First of all, you need to make sure the people you want to reach are even using Facebook.  The site usually attracts a younger audience so if that's not the demographic you want, then it probably doesn't make sense to use it extensively.
• Think about the kind of posts that will attract volunteers.  Avoid direct appeals in favor of photos, videos, or recaps of past volunteer events.  These serve a dual purpose: They recognize past workers while showing potential volunteers what they can expect if they work for you.
• Make sure you're attracting the right people—if there's a minimum age or some other qualification, make that clear in your posts.
• Offer a diverse array of volunteer opportunities, and make sure to have rock-solid practices for training your volunteers.  In short, prepare your organization for volunteers as best you can—and then begin recruiting on Facebook.
• Maintain good general Facebook practices, and make sure all the other groundwork -- from your organization’s main website to volunteer management guidelines and processes to a policy for Facebook commenting -- is in place.

Now that you have these best practices in mind, you are ready to start posting.  Let us know your experiences with using Facebook as a recruitment tool in the comments section.

You can read more tips like these by signing up to our weekly e-newsletters.

Professional Development For Volunteers

While nonprofit volunteers will often move on to different opportunities once their work is done, that doesn't mean you don't have an obligation to help them out with their future careers.

Helping your volunteers with their professional development is a good way to show how much you appreciate their work.  And, as John L. Lipp writes in "The Idiot's Guide to Recruiting and Managing Volunteers," it's also a great strategy to keep them motivated.  While this training will help volunteers develop career skills for later in their life, it can also lead to promotions within the organization.

In order to keep things fresh, Lipp recommends bringing in special guest speakers to speak on specific topics.  You may also want to schedule webinars that your volunteers can attend.  Either of these choices provide a level of interaction that will enable your volunteer workers to better enhance their skills.

So how often should you offer these professional development courses?  While Lipp acknowledges there is ongoing debate on how much is necessary, most agree that some follow-up training should be offered at least once a year. 

Nonprofit Volunteer Accused Of Embezzling

Volunteers are great help for any nonprofit, but one California-based nonprofit is dealing with an issue that highlights the need for strong vetting of potential workers.

Elizabeth Lower is accused of embezzling around $25,000 from Empty Cradle, according to a report from Channel 10 News San Diego.  A member of the organization, which helps families deal with the loss of children, spoke to the station about the situation, which took the nonprofit by surprise.  Lower first came to Empty Cradle asking for help after her 6-month old daughter died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).  Although she was struggling with the loss, she wanted to volunteer for the organization.

There were no red flags to be found at first.  It wasn't until a year ago that Empty Cradle noticed something was wrong.  They found they were unable to get in touch with Lower after they found an unpaid bill.  Upon closer inspection, they found they had lost between $25,000 and $30,000 from their accounts.  Just like that, all of their money was gone.

Lower was arrested at her apartment last Thursday and will be arraigned today.  In the mean time, Empty Cradle is left only being able to perform its core services.  The case highlights how careful organizations have to be when hiring new volunteers or employees.  It wasn't that long ago that the Girl Scouts of America Greater New York affiliate went through a similar situation when their finance director pleaded guilty to stealing thousands of dollars from the organization.

Read the full story on Channel 10 News San Diego.

All About Volunteer Management

Volunteers can be some of the driving forces behind a nonprofit's success, but they can only reach that level with proper training and support.  That's where volunteer management comes in handy.  This technique is more than just making sure volunteers are supervised.  The process starts before they are hired to work, by making sure the individuals know exactly the kind of work they will be doing.  Here's a quick definition that will explain this topic further:

Volunteer management is the process of organizing and training nonprofit volunteers. More than any other institution, nonprofits rely on the help of unpaid volunteers to keep the organization running. Without the proper support, however, these individuals won’t be able to effectively do their work. This kind of support includes making instruction sheets, creating volunteer orientation programs, and assigning staff members to keep track of their work. The description for the volunteer position should be clearly written so that applicants know exactly what is expected of them. It’s also important to make sure all volunteers feel welcome and appreciated.

The NonProfit Times organizes all of its articles by categories, and one of these is volunteer management.  Have you been wanting to learn more about how to get the most of your organization's volunteers?  Head on over to our "Search Articles" page to read more about it, as well as the others topics we have posted.

Finding Volunteers For Special Events

Nonprofits can raise funds through a variety of different methods. While a large amount of these funds come from direct donations, special events play a large part as well. These events can be concerts, galas, special speaking events, or other large gatherings. These can take a great deal of effort, but that effort is repaid well if it's done properly.

The backbone of a great special event lies in the strength of its volunteers. You are going to want to find individuals who are totally committed to the cause for which the event is raising money. If a volunteer is not enthusiastic about it, they will likely not put as much effort into making sure things go smoothly. That's why it's important to have a solid screening process when picking volunteers. One great suggestion is to create a questionnaire for potential candidates that might include questions like: "How many people are you comfortable working with?" or "What skills are you proficient in?"

All potential volunteers should also receive a document explaining, in detail, the goals of the event, and what you expect them to do. This last point is especially key. People don't like getting surprised with work they weren't prepared for, so make sure you list everything you want your volunteers to do.

These simple tips will help you pick out quality volunteers for your big special events. Feel free to leave more ideas in the comments section.

Nonprofit Management Tip: 5 Ideas For Handling Evaluations

Nonprofit organizations rely a lot on the help of volunteers.  Whether it's assisting with an important fundraising campaign or helping out at a special event, their work can really help out.  That's why nonprofits need to know the finer points of volunteer management.  In this week's nonprofit management tip, we examine how organizations can evaluate their volunteers:

Volunteer management is so important that training sessions and orientation programs for volunteer managers can pay big dividends. Instituting such programs might not be easy, however.


Susan J. Ellis, a Philadelphia, Pa.-based consultant who specializes in volunteers, believes that volunteer leaders often need to be acquainted with the approaches that will help them to help other volunteers, as well as working to the benefit of such initiatives.


For example, it could be helpful to tell them that:


• It is worse to talk negatively about someone with others than to confront the person directly about poor performance;


• It is more flattering to suggest that a volunteer could do better at something than to act as if you think they’ve already done their best;


• If you want to recognize good volunteers, then deal with volunteers who are not doing the right things. Otherwise, you send the message to the others that it doesn’t matter whether they do something well;


• It could be a relief to the volunteer that you are offering options for improving a situation that the person also believes is not working well; and,


• Stress self-fulfilling prophecy. Set high standards and don’t settle for “Well, we’ve got to accept whatever volunteers do.” Expect the best and that’s what you’ll get. But don’t assume that everyone automatically comes with positive expectations, even volunteers.

Evaluating your volunteers can be a challenging task, so hopefully these tips were helpful to you.  Feel free to share your volunteer management stories with us by posting in the comments section below.

Half Of Adults In Louisiana Are Volunteers

Note: This is a summary from a story in the latest episode of The NonProfit Times TV.

A new study by Louisiana State University revealed a fascinating statistic: More than half of the state's adult population volunteer their times to nonprofit or religious groups. In fact, LSU says that the rate is probably more than the 51% found in an April survey. The survey was commissioned by Volunteer Louisiana, and it interviewed 720 people 18 or older in 216 cities and towns. Most of the respondents also said that they considered the work they do to be helping, not volunteering.

Modesto Non-Profit Needs Volunteers

This is a fairly quick post, but it's also a very important one if you live in the Modesto, CA area.  Inter-Faith Ministries, a California nonprofit organization that helps people in need, is in need of volunteers for their various food and clothing donation drive.  If you are interested in doing some non profit volunteer work, you should go to their headquarters on April 16th for a volunteer orientation.

In other Inter-Faith Ministries news, the organization will be holding a sale from April 8-9, and needs donations of clothes and furniture.  Items can be donated to the organization Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Also, Inter-Faith has begun a milk and education program for families with children ages 5 to 18.  Interested?  There will be an informational meeting on April 4, also held at Inter-Faith's headquarters, which is at 120 Kerr Ave. For more information read the full article from the Sacramento Bee.