The primary reason nonprofit organizations often have difficulty recruiting volunteers is that the volunteer duties they are offering are not as interesting to volunteers as watching television. The New Volunteer Workforce; Stanford Social Innovation Review, previously reported, “Our research shows that the primary difference between volunteers and non-volunteers, when measuring what they do with their time, is the amount of television they watch. People who do not volunteer watch hundreds of hours of additional TV a year compared to people who do volunteer. It’s not that people don’t have enough time to volunteer. People do not volunteer because nonprofits do not provide them with volunteer opportunities that interest them enough to pull them away from their television sets.”
A Volunteer Management Capacity Study conducted by the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Urban Institute, and the UPS Foundation a few years ago concluded there are five main reasons why, once volunteers are recruited and put to work, they so often do not return.
1. Not Matching Volunteers’ Skills with Assignments. Volunteers with valuable and specialized skills are often dispatched to do manual labor rather than tasks that use their professional talents. The prime goals of corporate volunteer programs, for example, are building teams and increasing morale, which are most easily accomplished by groups of people doing manual labor. For example, every spring in cities across the country, hundreds of professionals turn out to paint walls and plant flowers at local schools. Although this has its time and place, most community organizations really need an ongoing involvement that taps volunteers’ professional skills rather than a onetime project that uses their manual labor. Volunteers often don’t get much out of the experience. Many of these volunteers get an empty feeling when they know that the job they’ve been given is make-work or a photo op.
2. Failing to Recognize Volunteers’ Contributions. Nonprofits need to recognize volunteers both through an organizational culture that values them and through specific appreciation ceremonies and events. In their annual reports, most nonprofits list all individual donors categorized by the amount of money they have donated. Very few nonprofits, however, do the same for people who donate their time. Naming individual volunteers with the number of hours they have contributed (and perhaps the dollar value) is one way to demonstrate a culture that values volunteers.
3. Not Measuring the Value of Volunteers. Most nonprofits do not measure the dollar value that volunteers provide to their organization. This reflects the lack of seriousness with which many organizations view volunteers and tends to compound the problem. If nonprofit leaders had hard data demonstrating the value of volunteers, they would be more likely to invest more time and money in developing volunteer talent.
4. Failing to Train and Invest in Volunteers and Staff. Volunteers need training to understand the organizations with which they are working, and employees need to be trained to work with volunteers. Nonprofits rarely invest substantial amounts of time or money in volunteer recruiters and managers. For example, a youth service organization in Florida reported that at one time it had a busy receptionist managing several hundred volunteers. Unfortunately, the receptionist model of volunteer management is all too common. Nationally, one-third of paid nonprofit staff who manage volunteers have never had “any formal training in volunteer administration, such as coursework, workshops, or attendance at conferences that focus on volunteer management.”
5. Failing to Provide Strong Leadership. Most nonprofit leaders are simply not taking the time to develop or support volunteer talent adequately—resulting in a poor or bland experience that leads to an unmotivated volunteer who has little reason to return. Most nonprofit leaders do not place a high value on volunteer talent.
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Recent grants received by our clients include:
$250,000 for an agency that brings hope and healing to residents of West Dallas - for a new football field
$195,000 for an organization that gives youth in the juvenile justice system the skills needed to break the cycle of incarceration and create positive futures - for general operating expenses
$114,000 for an organization that offers an entrepreneurship boot camp and re-entry programs for felons, with proven solutions for preventing recidivism, maximizing self-sufficiency and transforming broken lives - for their workforce training and entrepreneurship development program
$70,000 for an agency that meets the critical needs of homeless children across North Texas - to purchase products for homeless children
$24,000 for a faith-based school - for a new playground for their preschool program
$20,000 for an organization that improves case outcomes for abused and neglected children by enhancing the quality of legal services they receive - for their online center
$15,000 for a medical and dental clinic for low-income families - for general operating expenses
$15,000 for an organization that offers programs for abused and neglected children - for general operating expenses
$15,000 for a clinic for children from low-income families - for general operating expenses
$15,000 for an agency that empowers women in unexpected pregnancies to make informed choices by providing medical, educational, and emotional support - for their healthy behaviors educational program
$13,500 for an agency that trains and supports adults who fight for a child's right to be safe - for general operating expenses
Murray Covens, Principal