How to Improve the Volunteer Experience

It’s no secret that volunteers are one of the most important components to the success of your nonprofit and its ability to achieve goals. If volunteers engage in a positive experience with your nonprofit organization, they can fill multiple opportunities of need and take part in your fundraising campaigns. The truth of the matter is that providing an outstanding experience for your volunteers starts from the first communication you have with them. First impressions are everything and can be the difference in either creating a new brand ambassador for your organization or not. Volunteers can fill many key roles for your organization including:

• Strategic partners
• Fundraising and development
• Marketing
• Information systems
• Service delivery
• Financial services

How Can a Nonprofit Make a Good First Impression for Volunteers?

As I mentioned earlier in this post, creating a good first impression for your volunteer prospects starts at the beginning and carries on into their experiences with your organization. You never have a second chance to make a first impression, so it is key that your organization puts your best foot forward. So, the question now is how? How can your nonprofit create real value and drive prospects towards giving their time and financial resources? Here are a few easy to implement strategies:

• Incorporate and communicate your organization's mission in all campaigns.
• Create a first-class website and digital assets that target prospect emotions.
• Focus on creating a strategic volunteer training programaround your cause.
• Understand who your prospects are and what interests them by creating volunteer personas.
• Identify opportunities to improve website user experience with analytics.
• Engage with your volunteer audience on social mediaand create real authentic value.
• Develop a strategy for reputation management to avoid pitfalls.
• Identify and understand your nonprofit's strengths and weaknesses.

Organization and Communication Are the Key to Improve Volunteer Experience

Creating a positive volunteer experience starts with communicating effectively and organizing your nonprofit's efforts. Staying organized will help your nonprofit reach its goals faster and make interacting easier on prospects. A cloud-based volunteer management solution can help your nonprofit achieve its goals of becoming more organized and providing better communications to its constituents. If your nonprofit does not have a volunteer-management system in place, you may be missing on reaching your full potential.

What is Volunteer Management?

Volunteer management is the strategic process of reaching qualified volunteers, keeping tracking of volunteer data and creating engagement with your prospects. Nonprofits can use volunteer management software to attract and retain volunteers.

Volunteer management software can assist your nonprofit with:

• Simplifying volunteer scheduling.
• Promoting your nonprofit eventsand organizational opportunities.
• Recruiting volunteers and donors.
• Tracking volunteer hours.
• Analyzing and reporting your volunteer data.
• Creating instant access to an online database of volunteer information.
• Enabling mobile and email communications with prospects.

Final Thoughts on How to Improve Volunteer Experience

Volunteers are one of, if not the most, important aspect of a nonprofits ability to be successful. Making a positive impact on your nonprofits ability to sustain and recruit volunteers starts at the beginning of your organization's process. Communication and staying organized will help your nonprofit reach its goals sooner and create sustainability.