130 – How to Build a Volunteer Plan for 2025

October 3, 2024

Episode #130: How to Build a Volunteer Plan for 2025 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast, Tobi Johnson provides practical advice on how to build a strategic volunteer plan for 2025. As we approach Q4 of 2024, Tobi discusses the importance of aligning volunteer activities with organizational goals and the need for a clear, concise plan to navigate common challenges like recruitment, retention, and resource allocation. 

She outlines a three-step planning framework (Ready, Set, Go) and emphasizes the benefits of having a strategic volunteer plan, which includes improved alignment, efficiency, resource management, and impact. Tobi also introduces the upcoming Vision Week, a bootcamp designed to help organizations develop their volunteer engagement strategy in just five days! Join the waitlist here. 

Volunteer Plan – Episode Highlights

• [00:28] – The Importance of Volunteer Planning 
• [01:18] – Top Challenges in Volunteer Management 
• [02:45] – The Need for Strategic Volunteer Plans 
• [05:47] – Benefits of a Volunteer Plan 
• [13:44] – Steps to Develop a Strategic Volunteer Plan 
• [30:54] – Join Vision Week 2025 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Membership Community 
• VisionWeek 2025  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #72: Volunteer Surveys – Are You Making These Mistakes? 
• VolunteerPro FREE SPOT Matrix Worksheet  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #035: 6 Ways to Prevent Burnout in Nonprofits 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #130 Transcript: How to Build a Volunteer Plan for 2025 

Tobi: Well, Hey there, everybody. I am hoping you’re having a fantastic week. I am here to talk about volunteer planning because we’re getting close to Q4 of 2024. And so that naturally has us thinking about what’s going to happen in 2025. And I thought I’d help you get a jumpstart on that thinking today and talk about how to build a volunteer plan for 2025. 

In our most recent volunteer management progress report, 50.2% of you are responsible for developing annual strategic and operational plans. So, about half of you are developing these plans, and some of you probably should be, right? 61% of you are responsible for managing change. And I believe that change doesn’t really happen without a good strategic plan. 

Also, you noted these four top Challenges in that volunteer management progress report. About a third of our respondents Mention volunteer recruitment as the top challenge and it is the top challenge every single year. How do we bring enough qualified, committed, and enthusiastic volunteers to our nonprofit? 

The second challenge this year was retention, keeping people coming back, making sure that those folks that we have worked so hard to bring on board stick with us and help us meet our missions in partnership. Another area of challenge. The third area of challenge was respect and buy in. So, getting our coworkers, our volunteers, our leadership to understand and buy into the, uh, Programs, policies, procedures, plans for volunteer engagement. 

So big topic, a big challenge for folks. And then the fourth one was just time. Managing competing priorities, trying to figure out how to get it all done, and how to work smarter, not harder. I would contest that solving all of these Four of these things can be solved by having better volunteer planning processes in place and having a better volunteer plan. 

And so today I want to talk about this. In our volunteer management progress report last year, we asked organizations how many of them had activities and goals for volunteer engagement included in writing in their organization’s strategic plan. And it was interesting to see what the results were because volunteers for so many of your organizations are essential to your success. 

So, I was wondering, you know, well, if they are, are they included in the planning process? Are they essential human resources for your organization or essential community support for your organization? Are they part of your plan? Now, it may or may not be part of your planning processes, although your board, which is comprised of volunteers, is central to developing your strategic plan. 

So, there are volunteers at a leadership level, at the very least, involved if you have a strategic plan. But are the work and the goals for volunteer services included in your strategic plan? And what we learned was that nearly half of organizations do include volunteer engagement in their strategic plan. 

Another third does not, and one out of five of our volunteer managers are not sure whether their volunteer engagement initiatives are part of their organization’s larger strategy. So that’s a problem, right? If we don’t know what our organization’s larger strategy is, how can we possibly align the work of volunteers in supporting those goals? 

If we’re working in silos where we don’t have any idea what the goals are, we can’t align them. These results mean that over half Leaders of volunteers are working without clear strategic direction from their organization, either because volunteers are not included in the strategic plan, or because they are not made aware of what might be included in that plan. 

So, how can we possibly really purposefully and intentionally support the chief and major and key goals and aims of our organization if we don’t know what they are? And how can our organization understand how volunteers can be leveraged to meet those goals if they’re not including them in the plan? 

Right? So, you know, because volunteers are often part of an organization’s human resources and talent management activities, I really find this to be a bit of a troubling trend, making it really challenging for leaders of volunteers to align their work and the work of volunteers with their organization’s main goals and objectives. 

There is a real concrete reason why we need to have a strategic plan for volunteer engagement and that that strategic plan is aligned with our organization’s strategic plan. It’s important to have a strategic volunteer plan because it serves as a guiding framework that aligns volunteer activities with the organization’s overall mission and strategic goals. 

I also want to give you some other key reasons why I think this planning process is so important and that we really shouldn’t be trying to get work done without a plan. Without a plan for the year in place. Now, I’m not talking about strategic planning that creates a three- or five-year plan. Certainly, thinking about big goals for the long term is important and interesting to really think about, you know, well, where do we want to be in five years? 

And that can be part of a strategic planning process. But when I think talking about a strategic plan for volunteer, engagement. I’m thinking of a one-year plan. I’m thinking nimble. I’m thinking let’s be focused and let’s be clear on what we’re getting done in this 12-month period. So, one of the reasons this a plan, a volunteer plan can help is because it gives you alignment and clarity. I already talked about making sure we’re aligning with our organization, but it ensures that all stakeholders understand the role and value of volunteers within the organization. And again, it aligns volunteer roles with the organization’s strategic goals and makes sure that your volunteers are meaningfully contributing to the mission. 

If that’s not clear and transparent to everyone, you’re not going to have buy in. And if buy in is one of those top challenges for leaders of volunteers, you can see how having a plan in place that’s communicated to coworkers might be an asset in this situation. Another reason a volunteer plan matters, efficiency and focus. 

You know, without a plan, Efforts can become scattered and inefficient. You know, your volunteer plan acts as a North Star helping to focus on tasks and projects that will achieve desired outcomes rather than wasting time on activities that don’t contribute to your goals. So, you’re really thinking clearly. 

And it’s also, you know, when we’re talking about focus, we’re talking about choosing purposefully what we’re going to do, but also what we’re not going to do. And we’re thinking about what’s the value add of this activity versus this activity, because Lord knows we will get a lot of folks with ideas about what needs to be on our to do lists. 

But if we have a plan, we can point back to that plan and say, well, okay, well, what would you like me to take out of this plan? Is this a higher priority than the other things on this plan? So, it’s a great way to not only focus yourself, but also focus others who tend to like to bring you projects, their favorite projects that they think you should take on. 

And maybe or maybe not, they’re the best choice. Another reason is a strategic volunteer plan matter. Resource allocation. You know, volunteers, we all know volunteers are not just free labor. They require training, resources, and management. A strategic plan helps in identifying and allocating the necessary resources to support volunteers effectively. 

When you develop a strategic volunteer plan, you can use your plan to really identify, okay, which of these activities are going to require funding, which of these activities are going to require team members to support it that are paid. So, you can really start to break down. It’s a great way to kick off your thinking around your budget for the year. 

Now, whether you see You are the one that develops the budget or manages the budget for volunteer engagement and often Your budget line items are integrated into the department’s Budget or into multiple department’s budgets in some ways Still you can inform the development or the people who are developing these budgets By having a plan You can give them the plan and say, Hey, here, here are my, here are my cost estimates to resource this plan so that it can be done effectively. 

So again, it’s all about transparency. Another reason a strategic volunteer plan matters is impact and effectiveness. You know, funders and stakeholders often question the impact and effectiveness of volunteer involvement. I’m sorry, but they do. We’re not always the best at communicating the impact of volunteers beyond simply the number of hours volunteers work or the value of volunteer time. 

And of course, these are important things to communicate. But a strategic plan demonstrates a structured approach to volunteer engagement, and it showcases how volunteers contribute to achieving the organization’s mission and goals. volunteer plan can draw a straight line between the work of volunteers and the work of you, even if you may be a department of one, to the organization’s greater mission. 

And it becomes clear. Okay. These are major players in our organization. Yes, they are. And you can see in our plan how they are. So, it’s really helpful to impact and effectiveness. Also continuous improvement along those same lines. The strategic volunteer plan allows for regular assessment and improvement of volunteer programs. 

It helps in identifying strengths and areas for development, ensuring that the volunteer program evolves and improves over time. And there’s two key points. in the development of a strategic volunteer plan where this assessment happens. One is at the beginning of the planning process when you’re setting your plan for the coming year you can think back what are our strengths, problems, opportunities, and threats, our spots, and I’m going to talk about these a little bit more and actually give you a free resource around this so hold on and after the break I’ll share this. 

But so you can do a spot matrix to identify where you’re at, but you can also assess how your plan went at the end of the year and look backward and say, what did we get done and what did we not get done in terms of this planning process? And it informs what you think you can achieve in the year ahead. 

The tendency for most people who start doing and developing strategic volunteer plans is to put too much on your plate. And so, through iterative annual plans, you can start to really refine and understand what’s doable. So, you’re not only identifying and continuously improving the projects and activities and initiatives that are listed in your plan. 

You’re continuously improving the planning process itself. So that’s kind of a cool by product. So, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Finally, having a volunteer strategic plan helps you with engagement and support. So well, uh, crafted volunteer plan can garner support from leadership, staff, and volunteers by really clearly articulating the vision, goals, and benefits of volunteer involvement. 

And it really helps build a committed, motivated volunteer workforce. So, you can retain your volunteers. You can also communicate to prospective volunteers what it is that they’re going to add value to your organization. And so having a plan can help tick off those challenges or help support those challenges or solve those challenges that I talked about earlier around recruitment and retention. 

So, I really do think that some of our biggest challenges can in part be solved by having a solid plan. Plan in writing that’s organized and concise to be able to use it as a communications tool to talk about what is the meaning of and of volunteer work at organization So I want to talk a little bit more and give you a step by step process for developing a strategic volunteer plan But before that, let’s take a break And after the break i’m going to get down and dirty with the tactics. So, hang on, I’ll be right back.  

If you’re enjoying this week’s episode of Volunteer Nation, we invite you to check out the Volunteer Pro Premium Membership. This community is the most comprehensive resource for attracting, engaging, and supporting dedicated high impact volunteers. Volunteer talent for your good cause. 

Volunteer Pro Premium Membership helps you build or renovate an effective volunteer program with less stress and more joy. So, you can ditch the overwhelm and confidently carry your vision forward. And it’s the only implementation program of its kind that helps your organization build maturity across five phases of our proprietary system, the volunteer strategy success path. If you’re interested in learning more visit volpro.net/join 

Okay, everybody, welcome back. We’re going to talk about this volunteer plan and how to develop it. We’re going to get a little bit strategic, but also tactical and practical. And for those of you who love that, now’s a really good time to pull out a pen and paper because this will help you start thinking this through. 

So, before you start planning, there are several things. You want to pull together and if you are joining us for, the vision week, our strategic planning bootcamp in November, I’ll talk a little bit more about it at the end of this episode, but if you have already signed up for our waitlist, or you’re a volunteer pro member who has already decided to join us November 18th through 22nd, jot these things down because you want to start collecting these things right now. 

And for those of you who are thinking about, okay, am I going to start doing some strategic planning soon? This list will help you too. Okay, before you start your planning process you want to Gather the following things to help you facilitate and get that that plan done quickly I think you know, we don’t want to overthink this We want to have the information at our fingertips and we don’t want to be able to develop our plan quickly and not You know take months and months to develop it. 

I mean who wants to do that in today’s world. I don’t think anybody so Things do you want to gather a team that you will work with to build out the volunteer plan? So, I don’t recommend doing a plan planning process all by yourself It’s just too hard to be able to remember everything and think about everything and I think other people’s perspectives are helpful So you could pull together a team of three volunteers and staff. 

I don’t think these teams need to be very big or, you know, five people, no more than five people. But think about what team members might help you. Also, you want to get your hands on your organization’s strategic plan. If you’re developing a volunteer plan, you want to know what your goals are going to roll up into. 

So, if you can get your hands on your organization’s strategic plan, now, I know some of you work in super large organizations and there’s no way you’re going to get your hands on that plan. So, think, think if you can get your division or department’s plan, that will help. If you have a strategic plan for volunteer engagement for last year, pull that out because you’re going to want to refer to it. 

If you have an operations plan or risk management plan for volunteer involvement, pull those out. If you have key performance indicators or outcomes, metrics, um, and, and the results of those, any of your tracking metrics, you want to pull those out. If you have any survey results from key stakeholders, like volunteers, community partners, clients, et cetera, any, anybody who touches the volunteer program in some way, or that volunteers serve. 

If you have any of those data points, any of those survey results, I pulled those out. Also, any grant reports or proposals for programs within which volunteers will serve. So, any programs that are volunteer driven, you want to make sure that you understand what the commitments are in those grants. grants and the way to figure that out is either to look at the grant proposal of the grant that’s been accepted or the grant reports and depending on what kind of organization has funded you those reports can be super intense or they can be pretty easy going either way it will help give you clues as to the goals that you and activities you might want to include particularly if you have a new program starting up then that will definitely want to be part of your planning process and then A final thing that is super helpful to do prior to your planning process is to gather a wish list of volunteer roles and initiatives from your colleagues, particularly if you’re placing volunteers in other departments throughout your organization. 

We have a volunteer pro member who does meeting, actually a few of them do now, a few people have picked up on this and I think it’s really effective, is to go have meetings with each of the departments to which you supply volunteers and start talking with them about new volunteer roles, refining the current volunteer roles, what the capacity is, what expansion of capacity needs to happen, all of that. 

And that will help you think about, do you have a growth plan in place for recruitment, for example. The other thing you want to do is to set aside dedicated chunks of time on your calendar right here, right now for your strategic planning process. Now I’ll talk about in a minute about, um, volunteer or Vision Week. 

I’ll talk about that at the end, and I’ll give you some hints on how much time is set aside, but you do need dedicated time. This isn’t something you’re just going to squeeze in in 15-minute increments. It’s also, on the other hand, not something that needs to be super onerous, but you do need dedicated time. 

This needs your dead, you know, thinking strategically is hard work. I’m not going to say it’s not. It is hard work, and it takes focus and concentration. So, you’ve got to have that time to do that. So, let’s talk about the strategic planning framework. Once you get it, gather everything you need, the information you need, that’ll give you clues and the people you need to help you think about what needs to go into your plan. 

At Volunteer Pro, a three-step process for strategic planning. Simple, focused, and gets the job done. That’s, that’s my goal. I don’t like processes that are super bureaucratic and really, you know, create more work than they’re worth. I’m just not down with that. I like nimble, lean processes that get the job done. 

And this is the process that I really love. So, we do a three-step process. The three steps are ready, set, go. Okay. Step one, ready, envision a bold, a bold future. You want to align your volunteer strategy with your organization’s key goals. Now, I talked about a lot about this earlier, so one thing you might want to do is when you think about your organization’s key goals, you look at their strategic plan, you also want to assess your current state. 

So, you can use a spot matrix, which helps you analyze strengths, problems, opportunities, and threats to uncover hidden opportunities and things you need to think about that might impact or might challenge the success of your plan. We have a free spot matrix worksheet that I’m going to link to in the show notes. 

And you can use that to draw out your spot matrix and to really think it through. It has instructions and then it has a graphic that you can use. So, check that out when in your strategic planning process. You can even, even before you start strategic planning, it might be a few weeks. something. And I love doing these with a group because I get everybody’s perspective from all the seats that they sit in. 

And then you want to sketch out your big vision in the ready. What’s your big vision for transformation? I like to use big goals, and I use this acronym, big B I G that are brave, insightful, and galvanizing. So, you really want to think about what the brave are, insightful, and galvanizing. Things that I could do that would transform volunteer engagement in the year ahead. 

So, I like people to start in the envision stage. It’s about thinking big and probably a little bit bigger than you’re used to. Maybe making yourself just slightly uncomfortable, a little bit nervous. Can this be done? But yes, it can. Now I’m not saying, you know, pie in the sky. Although pie in the sky dreams often come true. Think about the term moonshot. When President Kennedy said to the American people, like, hey, we’re going to put a man on the moon and bring him back, people probably thought that was nuts, right? But, hey, it happened. happen more than once. So, we can create our own moonshot for our volunteer plan. So that’s step one. 

Step two is planning your strategy. So, you build a plan that’s concise, shareable, and focused on results. And what I mean by shareable is that when you give it to somebody, they don’t open it up, look at it, and go, I guess I’ll read this later. No, you want something concise, a few pages long. The people can quickly glance through, see what you’re up to, and know what’s going to happen. 

This plan is focused on goals, objectives, activities, deadlines, team members, and budget. So let me repeat those. This goal, or this plan, is comprised of goals, objectives, activities, deadlines, and budget. team members and budget. Now, you know, I’m not a fan. Again, I’m a fan of get or done dead. And I know most of you do not have a lot of extra time on your plan on your, your hands. 

So, these plans, volunteer plans are not super text heavy. They’re not narrative pages and pages of narrative. We’re not doing that. We’re putting together what we’re going to get done. Right. And if you’re a volunteer pro member, one of the other things you might want to do to help you focus on what strategies you’re going to use is to use our Volunteer Strategy Success Path Assessment to check your current volunteer program maturity across our five domains, Envision, Build, Grow, Sustain, and Scale. 

And that will help you pinpoint areas where you’re vulnerable that you might want to ensure that you are setting goals around. So that’s for our volunteer pro members. If you’re not a volunteer pro member and you want access to that assessment tool, you can join us at volpro.com/join and it’s like a 45, I think it’s 45 elements. 

And it’s basically a yes, no questionnaire. And you just go through and say, yes, we have this or no, we don’t have this. And in the end, it pops out a report that gives you your overall maturity level for your volunteer programming, as well as maturity levels for each of our five pillars. And it helps you quickly hone in. 

We also have also in the report, we give you recommendations for volunteer pro resources and training to take the next step in any of those areas that you want to improve. So super helpful to helping you, you know, because you know, a lot of times, you know, we look at our programs and we think, well, there’s like a million and one things I could do here. 

 Where should I focus my energy? So, this helps you do that, our assessment tool. So, check that out. If you’re a volunteer pro member. Who’s listening and if you haven’t done it yet and if you have but you haven’t done it recently Take that assessment right before we start vision week So you have it as something that you can think about when you’re planning your strategy Okay, so the third step in our ready, set, go framework is go or implement your strategy. 

And this is where you use systems for high productivity and results with less stress. Now, this is an important part. We’re not just putting a plan together. We’re thinking about how we’re going to implement that plan. So, in this stage, you really want to calendar out 12 months of your strategy and build in some white space. 

It’s not that we’re trying to get things done 24 seven, that’s not doable. So, we break down your plan into quarterly sprints, doable quarterly sprints. And inside the volunteer pro community, we do quarterly planning intensives every 90 days. so that our members can focus on the next 90 days of their strategic volunteer plan. 

And so we try to build in some accountability, and we have folks who come every single time to these, and they find them super helpful. But we facilitate getting everybody focused on what are their big rocks or big initiatives for the next 90 days. And then you may want to move your plan online so that your team can work from it. 

So, project management software is super helpful to keeping track of who’s doing what, and at what stage you’re at, and what projects are getting done, which aren’t. So, the final thing I would say in our ready, set, go process is, is as important as the process itself. And that is you need to burnout proof your plan. 

So, part of burnout proofing your plan, of course, is setting a doable plan. I don’t recommend more than three to five big objectives for any annual plan. If you do more than that, you’re probably not going to get them done. But also, you want to think about how each You can build in personally for yourself, some activities for wellness and balance. 

We have all worked very hard and gone through a very difficult time with the pandemic and we’re only starting to come out of it. And so, we need to make sure that we can set plans that we can be excited about and plans that aren’t going to really impact our health negatively. Or the health of our volunteers. 

So, if you want to get more ideas on burnout proofing, check out Volunteer Nation episode 35, six ways to prevent burnout in your nonprofit. So that’s Volunteer Nation episode 35, six ways to prevent burnout in your nonprofit. So, in summary, I really hope this has helped you think through what a strategic planning process would look like. 

A strategic plan for volunteer services is crucial to ensuring that volunteer efforts are purposeful, aligned with organizational goals, and are effectively managed to maximize their impact. It also helps you prevent burnout and choose a series of tasks that are time consuming. Um, of course, not everything we do at work is always fun, but you get to choose your journey in a lot of ways. 

You have goals, but you can also choose part of your journey in a purposeful way and at least put a few projects, a few passion projects in your volunteer plan that are going to light you up. But if you’re not planning, you’re at whims and you’re at the discretion of other people and what they think you should be doing. 

Now, certainly there are certain mandates and certain things that we’re responsible for in our jobs, but I think you probably have more control than you think. And by having a plan that’s well created, you can start to take control of your work life and take control of the impact that volunteers are making and stop working from an endless to do list. 

And that’s really the goal of strategic planning. So, if you’re ready to create a plan for volunteer engagement and mobilization for 2025 – what about getting it done in five days? And what about joining me to make it happen? You can do that with vision week and vision week, 2025. I’ve been talking about it on the pod. 

It’s slated for November 18th through 22nd. We’ve got about 550 people on the waitlist so far. So, we will be letting those folks know when registration goes live and letting them know about an early bird discount. It’s less than a hundred dollars. So, it is not an expensive event. If you want to join the waitlist, go to volpro.net/vision 

Each day we will be meeting for about an hour. So, you may want to mark your calendars now, November 18th through 22nd. Set aside an hour each day. I think we’re meeting at noon each day from noon to one eastern time and then you need to set aside probably two hours a day for implement an hour to two hours a day for implementation. 

It kind of depends on and if you do that you will have a strategic plan by the end of the week. You just got to put the work in and you just got to be ready to do it. And we’re going to use the process that the ready, set, go implementation process that I just talked about going into deeper detail. 

I’m going to be there to answer questions. You’ll get a workbook. If you join at the VIP level, you’ll get a workbook. You get the replay recordings; you’ll get access to our pop-up community. I think it’s going to be fun this year. Every year we have a really good time. So, I hope you’ll join us. If you want to join us and get on the waitlist for now, and then I’ll be talking about it when registration goes live, but our waitlisters are the ones that get to hear first when our early bird discount goes live.  

So, you can go to volpro.net/vision I hope this process has really helped you today. Think about what you’re going to do in 2025 to take control of your work life a little and make sure you’re making the impact that you intended and, and that your volunteers feel good about them.   

If you like this episode, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Obviously, we love ratings and reviews, and we also hope you’ll join us next week. Same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.