How the Right Technology Can Help Address Your Volunteer Management Challenges
Volunteers play a key role in many nonprofit organizations. But as valuable as they can be, tracking and managing them can be a time-consuming challenge.
In today’s nonprofit technology market, though, there are software solutions that can help you streamline your volunteer management — saving staff time and giving your volunteers a better experience.
To dig in to this topic further, I recently asked Sam Fankuchen, founder and CEO of Golden, a few questions to help shed light on volunteer management challenges and how the right tools can help:
MB: What are the top challenges you see nonprofits facing today when it comes to managing volunteers?
SF: The top issues for nonprofit and social good organizations are recruiting more volunteers, turning them into donors and other forms of supporters, automating engagement processes, and building relationships.
Many nonprofit organizations struggle to have an accurate view of who their supporters are, how they like to be engaged with, and the types of ways they like to be involved. When you have this breakdown between organizations and volunteers, you see a higher rate of volunteer turnover, lower engagement, and ultimately, reduced service with your cause.
MB: What are some of the practical ways you’re seeing nonprofits address these challenges?
SF: Many nonprofits are finding practical ways to address and resolve these challenges.
The increased adoption of technology has helped scale efforts that previously were managed manually and took up hours of staff time. Now, by leveraging automated data capture without data entry, organizers can move faster and better serve their volunteers.
Combine this with native integrations into their preferred CRM and fundraising tools, and organizers and fundraisers alike can have a holistic view of their data.
We believe passionately that organizers and fundraisers should have equal access to data and to combine their efforts into transforming volunteers into donors and vice-versa. Integrated technology makes it all possible!
MB: Can you share some real-world examples of how nonprofits are improving their volunteer management?
SF: We have many spectacular examples of how nonprofits are revolutionizing their volunteer management:
- Midwest Food Bank has saved 400 hours per chapter per year on manual administration tasks by leveraging Golden’s automation tools.
- California Climate Action Corps has saved 6 hours per week on data entry using Golden’s Insights feature and engaged 23,000 volunteers in their 2023-2024 program year.
- Piedmont Parks Conservancy increased their volunteer count by over 700 volunteers, resulting in an additional 3,500 hours in volunteer hours, in part due to their use of Golden’s automated emails, custom reservations, and waiver collection.
MB: What tips do you have for nonprofits who are struggling to efficiently manage volunteers?
SF:
- Get to know your volunteers better: When you your volunteers better, you can serve them better. Start by sending a survey to your volunteers with questions like, “how to best communicate with you,” “what type of opportunities do you like best,” and “are you interested in inviting others to volunteer with you?” By asking these types of questions, you can start to better define and understand your volunteers.
- Clean your data: We’re only effective as our data allows us to be. When you have unreliable information, you’re not able to effectively manage, or cultivate, your volunteers. Go through your database and start identifying those that have no longer served your cause, those who are actively engaged, and those who may need a little nudge to return. After your data is clean, you can start to segment those volunteers into different groups and dive into how to best serve each of them.
- Start with Golden’s free software: Leveraging tools, like Golden volunteer management software, can help save your team at least a day of time per week per person who touches volunteer engagement processes. It will also allow you to get to know your audiences better, give them greater value, and get value from them by making experiences and campaigns more personally relevant.
