How to Streamline Your Nonprofit’s Volunteer Management
Volunteers play an important role for nonprofits. They help your organization get more done and they tend to donate more.
Even so, many organizations still to manage volunteers using only spreadsheets and manual processes. It’s time to turn this around.
Today, there are software solutions that help you streamline your volunteer recruitment efforts to get more people volunteering and give your volunteers a great experience that helps with volunteer retention.
Volunteer management software solutions
Volunteer management software solutions make it easier to manage the full volunteer cycle and deliver a smoother volunteer experience that’s more convenient and enjoyable for your staff and your volunteers. Specifically, they can help you do things like:
- Manage volunteer opportunities to keep your program moving forward
- Recruit volunteers and communicate with them to keep them engaged
- Schedule volunteer shifts more effectively to improve the volunteer experience
- Report on volunteer data to track the progress of your volunteer program
These software solutions come in different forms. You can find some of them as modules within nonprofit software solutions or platforms from software vendors including Blackbaud, Bloomerang, Charityproud, EveryAction, Neon One, and Salesforce.
If your organization relies heavily on volunteers, then you might prefer to use a stand-alone volunteer management solution. Some nonprofit software solutions and platforms have the option to integrate with these types of volunteer management solutions.
Following are three volunteer-specific solutions that should be on your short list to review. They offer many similar features, but you might find that one offers unique functionality that makes it the right fit for your organization’s needs:
How nonprofits are using volunteer management software
Some nonprofits, like Hands On Atlanta, are already using volunteer management software to simplify their volunteer programs. In a recent podcast, I sat down with Tim Adkins, director of marketing and communications with Hands on Atlanta, and Same Fankuchen, founder and CEO of Golden, to talk about volunteer management software.
In our discussion, Tim shared how Hands On Atlanta has used the Golden volunteer app to engage 5,000 more volunteers and clock 18,000 more service hours year over year. As a nonprofit that mobilizes the Atlanta community to address the city’s top needs, the organization has also seen partners posting more volunteer opportunities.
Learn more about volunteer management software for nonprofits
You can learn more about how Hands On Atlanta uses their volunteer app to improve volunteer management by listening to the NonProfit PRO Voice podcast: Using Volunteer Management Software to Drive Engagement with Nonprofits.
