Volunteers

As any good businessperson knows it is easier to get a current customer to buy more than it is to acquire a new customer. The analogy in the nonprofit sector is to increase affinity. Affinity can start as volunteerism then culminate as donations, or in peer-to-peer, as fundraising activity...

Like many others in the charitable sector, your nonprofit organization is probably heavily dependent on volunteers. Those people freely give their time, and some of them may be so talented and dedicated that you wish there were money in the budget to make them full-time, paid members of the team. Fortunately, there are numerous ways you can show gratitude for your volunteers, even without giving them money...

Volunteer management best practices have changed as volunteer expectations and the reach of nonprofit organizations evolve. That said, the ultimate goal has always been, and will always be, to provide great experiences to volunteers and impact the community in an organized and efficient way...

Because the goals are high, capital campaigns feel risky. And few people want to be associated with something they fear might not be successful. So you have to take great care in building confidence right from the start. And that starts with getting the right people on board...

Although it’s tempting at times to think of the nonprofit and the business worlds as completely separate, they actually rely on each other in a number of significant ways. In a socially conscious age, businesses genuinely want to support good work in their communities to be rewarded with positive public image...

Volunteer retention is as important going into 2018 as it has ever been before. Volunteer behavior is changing and supporters want to be engaged in exchange for their time. What strategies is your nonprofit deploying to keep volunteers coming back? How is your organization measuring volunteer impact and communicating with your volunteer base?...

Let’s take a second to talk about the term “peer-to-peer fundraising.” It can be a confusing topic to many of us—mainly because the many nonprofits that do not engage in peer-to-peer fundraising don't know what it is, don’t know how to start or think their nonprofit lacks the resources to begin a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, as we found in our recently released “2017 Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Study...

People volunteer for many different reasons, which mean they also have different motivations for lending a hand. Regardless of the reason, if someone is willing to lend their time and talents to your organization, you should take the time to get to know them as individuals…

Turnover is costly, even in the nonprofit sector. Although most volunteers are not paid, extensive training may go into preparing the volunteer to perform their duties. Nonprofits also invest money in recruiting volunteers either by inbound or outbound marketing strategies...

Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Just about everybody got a dose of Maslow somewhere along the line, either in high school social studies class, or college psychology or sociology courses. And if it somehow slipped by you in school, you may have read about it in management or productivity books. Even books on project management talk about it...