Volunteer management can feel daunting, especially when you are juggling nonprofit events and one-off days of service with long-term volunteer engagement.
To help smooth the process, our team at GivePulse has compiled a list of tips for managing nonprofit community volunteers. Following these steps will make volunteering more fun and meaningful for everyone involved–and save you time and resources.
Create an Effortless Recruiting Process
The first step to building a solid team of nonprofit volunteers is recruitment. The most important rule to remember when recruiting community volunteers is that no one likes a complicated process. If you want to maximize involvement from your prospective volunteers, you should make the process smooth and accessible.
To streamline recruitment, you can leverage volunteer management software to create custom application forms. This makes it simple for volunteers to apply, and with a system to review and sort through forms quickly, nonprofit administrators spend less time reviewing and accepting new volunteers. GivePulse’s volunteer management CRM even has a payment option for add-ons such as t-shirts and background checks.
A well-organized recruitment process will start volunteers off on the right foot, giving them a lasting positive impression of your organization.
Be a Strong Communicator
Working with nonprofit volunteers requires frequent communication. From recruiting new volunteers to scheduling shifts for old hands, clear communication leads to successful events, high impact, and happy nonprofit volunteers.
Nonprofit volunteer management software like GivePulse helps you simplify communication with your volunteers through email templates, automated emails, and SMS messaging.
Celebrate Your Volunteers
Everyone wants to feel that they’re making an impact. Another aspect of nonprofit management is making sure that you regularly recognize the work of your nonprofit volunteers so they feel appreciated. A shout-out or “thank you” can make all the difference.
To recognize your volunteers for their contributions and understand the impact of their work, you’ll need to collect the right data. However, gathering and analyzing data from your nonprofit volunteers in real-time can be challenging.
GivePulse allows you to track, measure and display volunteer hours with intuitive visualizations to easily measure user impact–and give your volunteers the recognition they deserve.
Get on Top of Data and Reporting
Still recording volunteer hours on a spreadsheet? Too many separate documents can complicate your process and slow you down. One of the benefits of a nonprofit CRM is that all administrators can access data in real-time, increasing transparency across your organization.
Once you’re recording volunteer hours through your volunteer management platform, make sure you regularly run reports and share insights with your team to help set new goals.
Invest in Your Nonprofit Community with a Volunteer Management CRM
When it comes to managing volunteers, you need the right tools to be effective. A volunteer management CRM provides an all-in-one system to manage, schedule, and communicate with your volunteers, whether they are dropping in for a one-time event or volunteering every week.
GivePulse is a full-fledged nonprofit CRM that can help you streamline recruiting, communication, scheduling, and operations.
Schedule a demo with our team to learn how we can help you build a thriving community of volunteers.
About GivePulse
GivePulse's mission is to enable everyone in the world to participate and engage in lifting their community to new heights. We do so by providing a platform to list, find, organize and measure the impact of service-learning, community engagement, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and volunteerism.
Founded in 2012 in Austin, Texas, GivePulse works with 650,000+ groups, including colleges and universities, nonprofits, businesses, K-12/school districts and cities and municipalities. Together, we connect millions of people in an effort to create positive social change.
Start making a difference today by visiting www.givepulse.com.