163 – New Research from Points of Light with Jennifer Sirangelo

May 22, 2025

Episode #163: New Research from Points of Light with Jennifer Sirangelo

In this episode of Volunteer Nation, Tobi Johnson sits down with Jennifer Sirangelo, President & CEO of Points of Light, to explore why volunteerism is not just a “nice to have”, it’s a necessity. 

Jennifer shares her inspiring journey into the nonprofit world and offers a behind-the-scenes look at Points of Light’s mission to position volunteer management as essential infrastructure. Together, they unpack key insights from the groundbreaking report From Nice to Necessary, which outlines the urgent need for increased investment in volunteer engagement. 

If you’re a nonprofit leader, volunteer coordinator, or advocate for civic engagement, this episode will leave you energized and equipped to make the case for stronger volunteer systems. 

Points of Light – Episode Highlights

• [03:01] – Jennifer’s Nonprofit Journey 
• [05:47] – The Importance of Volunteerism and Civic Engagement 
• [08:36] – Challenges and Opportunities in Volunteer Management 
• [09:08] – The State of Volunteering Today 
• [20:07] – The Hidden Costs of Volunteer Engagement 
• [24:37] – Discussing Healthcare Access and Volunteer Management 
• [26:02] – Theory of Change in Volunteering 
• [27:41] – Challenges in Measuring Volunteer Impact 
• [29:32] – Research and Data in Volunteerism 
• [33:35] – Engaging Funders in Volunteerism 
• [34:55] – Addressing Volunteer Infrastructure 
• [38:44] – Digital Marketing and Volunteer Recruitment 
• [43:42] – Supervisory Ratios and Staffing 

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #047: The State of Volunteer Engagement with Dr. Sue Kahl and Nathan Dietz 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #71: Partnering with Funders to Support Volunteer Engagement with Jane Justis & Betsy McFarland 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #158: Nonprofit Capacity Building with the Community Foundation for a greater Richmond 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #81: How Vol Services & Nonprofit Marketers Can Work Together with Kivi Leroux Miller  
• Points of Light, From Nice to Necessary: Unleashing the Impact of Volunteering Through Transformative Investment  
• Contact Points of Light  
• Find Jennifer on LinkedIn 

Contact Us

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

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Episode #163 Transcript: New Research from Points of Light with Jennifer Sirangelo 

Tobi: Welcome everybody to the Volunteer Nation Podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I have such. A treat for you today. I have Jennifer Sirangelo from Points of Light, and she’s going to talk about something that is near and dear to all y’all’s hearts. I know it. I know it for sure, because it’s about funding. It’s. It’s about how do we get more investment into volunteer management, we know that capacity building, when we build capacity to engage more volunteers, we make more impact in the community. 

There are challenges around that, but we’re going to talk about the mission that Points of Light has taken on. To bring more investment into volunteerism and all of the benefits that it gives communities, volunteers, organizations, and all of our good causes. So without further ado, Jennifer, I’m going to introduce you, but I just want to say hello and thanks for being here. 

Jennifer: Oh, great. I’m so glad to be here. I’m very excited to have this conversation today.  

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s introduce Jennifer. So, Jennifer Sirangelo is president and CEO of points of Light. She’s a visionary leader dedicated to unlocking human potential and empowering people to pursue their purpose. It is completely aligned with the Volunteer Nation podcast, isn’t it, y’all? 

Okay. As President and CEO of Points of Light, Jennifer champions volunteering and fosters a culture of service and civic engagement worldwide. What a great mission. Jennifer’s transformative tenure at National four H Council modernize the organization. Jennifer and I, y’all know I’m a master gardener, so we were, we were just commiserating around extension. 

All you extension folks shout out driving significant growth. After Pivotal roles at Boys and Girls Clubs of America and Health and Higher Education organizations. Jennifer, I don’t know if you know, I also have a soft spot in my heart for youth programs. Because I started up and ran a few different youth programs, so I love working with. Young adults and youth recognitions include gold. Stevie Female Executive of the Year. Fast company’s most creative people in business and fortune’s most powerful women. Jennifer holds a master’s degree in public administration from Syracuse and is a Harry Truman Scholar. Welcome, Jennifer. 

Jennifer: Thank you. I’m very happy to be here today. 

Tobi: Awesome. Well, let’s get started. I always like to start folks off with a little bit about their birth story and nonprofit work because it’s always so interesting. How did we get here in the first place usually? No, we didn’t. We did not go to college and get a master’s degree at Nonprofit Management. 

But tell our audience a little bit about yourself and what you do and how you got into before Points of Light you worked. In different nonprofits. So, tell us about that. 

Jennifer: I love that you call it a nonprofit birth story. That’s awesome. So, I, I have one of those. I’m very happy to be here, excited to be among friends and talking about this topic we’re all passionate about. 

I am a lifelong nonprofit executive or leader. My birth story in nonprofit, I’m from the Midwest. So, I grew up in Kansas City and have been on really kind of living all around the country but grew up there. So that’s my values and kind of where I started. But my nonprofit birth story began when I was in college, and I was in college at the time. 

In the early or late eighties, early nineties, when much of the volunteer infrastructure we know today was being born, built, growing, and, but I was a working kid. I had to pay my way through college, and I had to work. I could, I could never take off during spring break, but one year I got a scholarship, a travel scholarship, and I got to go with Habitat for Humanity to rural Guatemala. 

And do a house build nice where we walked every day down the red dirt roads in between the rolling hills where they had the farmers were like on harnesses and ropes, doing like farming the mountains. It was amazing and I got to meet for the first time, really interact with nonprofit. Work people that worked in nonprofit who ran the programs there, and it transformed my life. 

It was such a wonderful experience and thank you to the person who gave me that scholarship and I made it. When I came back from that trip, I got to my dorm room, and I remember the physical feeling of kind of being. Taken aback and I sat on the floor, and I just knew, yeah. Like it was like a moment. I was like, I know that’s what I want to do. I want to work in nonprofits. And I never looked back, and my first job was working in a homeless shelter after college.  

Tobi: Yeah. Wow. We have so much crossover. I’m telling you; I’ve traveled a lot in Latin America. I lived in Chicago for seven years, went to the school of the Art Institute, and when I went to graduate school there. My intention was to work in nonprofit arts organizations when I graduated, and that’s where I started in nonprofits. So, a lifetime career. It’s, it’s funny, you get into it and then you can’t leave. I mean, I remember my mom used to say, you could make more money if you got into corporate jobs. And I’m like, but I don’t want to do corporate jobs.  

Jennifer: Once you’ve found your passion, there’s no reason to not live that life.  

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. So, let’s talk about volunteerism and civic engagement. Why do you think they are so important, especially right now?  

Jennifer: Right. Well, I would, I’ll tell you, that’s why, I had a 25-year career before I came to Points of Light in youth development and you mentioned the two organizations. 

I was very fortunate to work for Boys and Girls Clubs of America and the National four H Council, and I love that work. But there was a point at which in the last 10 years where I just, I felt that I was concerned about the world we were graduating the young people into, I had, for years, I had felt like if we just get them on their trajectory, they’ll be okay. 

But it was increasingly clear that this ecosystem, this society was not going to be healthy for them. And I wanted to try something. I wanted to. I wanted to do something that impacted even bigger than just the young people. So, I came to Points of Light because I believe that when we look at what’s going to transform our country and our world, it is going to be people, people by people, person by person, block by block, and volunteering changes people. Yes. It changes communities and it changes our society and that’s why I believe it’s so essential right now.  

Tobi: Yeah. I also, in the report, you, you call this out in the report as well and gang, we’ll get into what the report is, but that. It’s interesting because when this division heated up around our country, I asked our volunteer Pro impact lab members during a coaching call. 

I said, you know how many people are experiencing with your volunteer team’s division and ranker? Within people who vote differently. Nobody raised their hand. They were all like, look, we have a variety of volunteers. They, they vote in different ways. They have different, they have some values that are different, but they also have some core values that are the same. 

They, they see each other in each other. And I was. In some ways taken aback, but then it kind of reminded me like, yeah, of course. Because in my own volunteer experience, it’s the same way that once we get in and shoulder to the wheel, we realize we’re more alike than different.  

Jennifer: That’s the importance of voluntary action. You know, doing things rather than just talking or discussing. I mean, I think that’s what really distinguishes volunteering over other. Bridge building kind of activities. Is that it, right? It that shared common purpose? It does, it builds a, a bridge between differences and that’s transformative, which is what makes me passionate about what we do. 

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s talk about the big picture before we dig into this report and Points of Light’s, mission to build capacity and find more support for our system. We all know that it’s, it’s bending under the weight of what’s going on, but let’s start with a big picture. What inspired points of light to develop the report from nice to necessary? What does it mean for today’s civic landscape? Give us an overview of, of sort of what it does for us, what it. What it’s about?  

Jennifer: Yes. Well, we must start with the context of kind of the state of volunteering today, if that’s okay, Tobi, because that’s the context for why the report. But to begin is the, we all know that. 

Our volunteering in our country has been, has not been growing. It has been on a decline over the last few years. We did just have an uptick last year. Yeah. Which was a post pandemic click up as we know, but not to pre pandemic and certainly not where we need to be. Right. When we, when we look at the landscape of America’s nonprofits, which we just both talked about how much we believe in them, one third of the workforce of our nonprofit sector is volunteers. 

And we both know, because we’ve worked in them, organizations where it’s much more like four H is. Significantly. It’s, it’s a hundred times the number of volunteers as paid staff. When you think about scouting other organizations, master Gardeners, that number of a third of the workforce is volunteers. And our data from the, we have a, at Points of Light, we have a network of volunteer action centers around the country. 

Mm-hmm. And, and around the world. Our data from our annual report from them has been telling us that 50% of the slots that they must fill, so they work with hundreds. We work with about 60,000 nonprofits to help fill their volunteer slots, and about 50 of the thousand, 50% of those go unfilled a year. So, if a third of your workforce is volunteers and half the spots are not being filled, we have a huge gap. 

And that’s why we looked at what are the barriers to that happening, and that’s really what gave us the idea to do this report and to do the research that we wanted to look at. If we’re going, we must change that trajectory. We need more volunteers in our country because of what it does for our communities and society and us as individuals. 

All those things are so important. And there are barriers. We need to talk about what they are, name them and see how we can begin as a country to invest in different ways to make a difference.  

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I often, you know, in our volunteer management progress report, we ask what’s your biggest challenge? And it’s an open-ended comment and we hand code over a thousand responses every year. And mindset buy-in, et cetera, in an organizational level is often a barrier for the leader of volunteers who sees all the potential but doesn’t get the investment or the understanding. Sometimes you also studied. 

Jennifer: This report is for them. 

Tobi: I know, I know. I know what I was reading. I’m like, yes, yes, yes. You need to give this to your board, but also funders and policy makers also don’t really understand. How different it is. The report certainly is going to start shifting this mindset. What were the kind of, what are kind of the key mindsets that you’re seeing, that you’re hoping to shift with this report? 

Jennifer: There are several things because once we got into it, we unpacked, like there’s things that came out that we didn’t totally anticipate of it. So let me just start with a couple of big, some of the big highlights. Sure. One is, is we know those of us, especially in volunteering, know that the impact of volunteers is enormous. 

Yes, but it is not sufficiently quantified. So, we, the data behind it, even that number of the one third of the workforce and 50% not there, that number isn’t out there. We’re just getting that out there. Now, the importance of that, right? So, first is that, is quantifying the impact of volunteers and there’s a lot of work we need to do on that. 

Yes. Um, second is the other thing that hasn’t been quantified sufficiently and your volunteer, everyone on this podcast is going to know. Is the cost of volunteer engagement. Like, it’s like everyone thinks they’re free. Yeah, they’re just free. They’re volunteers, they’re free. We know it’s not free. 

They’re, you know, I come from, coming from youth development, that’s a lot of cost to do the, the background checking, the training. When you’re talking about youth safety, it’s huge. Mm-hmm. The amount of investment in volunteers, so that has not we, and I feel like. Having run a nonprofit and I ran a local one to a regional one is something we’re kind of shy about and that’s something we’ll need to talk about. 

The second big piece is that we saw that that lack of data, those two things we just mentioned, the impact and the cost, that lack of data is really getting us out of alignment with the funders For you, us needing that infrastructure investment, but not knowing or having the tools to ask for it. Yeah. To, to do it. 

And then that does limit the flow of money to us, to us and for this work. So, it is interesting that we did highlight that the companies are doing a little bit more of investment, but still not a lot. So anyway, that’s the, the biggest highlights. What we, we really found.  

Tobi: I mean, di didn’t you find, I mean this was shocking to me, less than 1%. It was like from foundation giving, it was. 0.19% of all foundation giving goes to the capacity building, the volunteer management, the, the fuel of volunteerism. Right?  

Jennifer: It’s hard to believe that’s, that was the biggest aha for everybody was that number, and that really, thanks to BridgeSpan for doing all, they did that research for us. But it’s shocking because we know. How these missions cannot be done. No, no. Cause can be addressed without volunteers. And so that, that’s what this report is really designed to do a wakeup call to say, we can’t do that. I also feel there’s an important role of us. Elevating the volunteer infrastructure up to the same level as like the technology you need in an organization elevating to the same level of the evaluation that you need of your program. 

There’s other infrastructure that over the years, in my career, 30 years, I’ve seen get elevated tech valuation m and e. Even boards and fundraising, like you can now get funders to invest in your fundraising and give you a ramp to do fundraising, even marketing, but somehow the volunteer part has not been elevated and that’s what we’re doing with this report. 

Tobi: Yeah, I mean, I think from the, even from the volunteer and I do want to call out, I’m going to post these in the, because when I was reading the report and looking at this 0.19, I want to call out some of these 0.19 percenters. That have been investing? Yes. So, Volunteer Nation, episode 71. We talked about partnering with funders to support volunteer engagement. 

We talked with Jane Justice and Betsy McFarland with the Lady Foundation. And then in, just recently in episode 158, we talked with the Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond about nonprofit capacity building, which they do, they’re a local, and you found this in your quote port that the local foundations are more likely to, the community-based foundations are more likely to invest in volunteerism, and that’s an example. I’ve worked with them for several years now to help their volunteer managers grow their skills and they, they provide, they are, they are Dan. With it. This isn’t a one-time thing, it’s like year over year, over year. So, it’s amazing that some of these funders are really understand.  

Jennifer: I think it’s a huge opportunity. I do think, and Community Foundation of a Greater Richmond. I’ve been there and met with them and they’re awesome and I think that’s a huge opportunity for us as a movement is to engage the community, foundation, family. 

Tobi: Yeah. I think also. From the volunteer management side and from internal of org internal to organizations. There are a few things that I’ve noticed as I work with the staff to help them build skills and to come up with strategic volunteer engagement. You know, just to really move their missions forward by improving, and as you said, like elevating their strategic approaches. 

One thing we found in our, we do a Vision Week strategic planning bootcamp every October, November to plan an annual volunteer plan for the coming year. It’s the skillset around strategic planning. Needs to be worked on. Most people don’t have that skillset, so we explain how it works, and we do a short like volunteer plan just for 12 months. 

We’re not doing these three to five to, we’re not doing that. And, but I will recommend to our participants who are volunteer managers, that they get their hands on their organization strategic plan so that they can align their goals and so that their goals ramp. Roll up to the organization’s goals and it’s very clear that there’s a direct line between what volunteers are doing and what the organization’s ultimate aims are. 

You would not be you. It would blow your mind. How many people cannot get their hands on their organizations, nor are they invited to the table when this planning is going on, even though volunteers are. Are a human resource, a wow, a chosen human resource. It blows my mind.  

Jennifer: That’s, well, you’re so right to, to coach that way and encourage that. It is to all of us that are leaders. We know that plan is what guides us and it must be connected. But that’s a good insight. Tobi and I want to make sure we think about that as we work with you and others to build how we build the skills of the sector.  

Tobi: Yeah. And budgeting is an also an area that we do training on that most volunteer managers don’t have a separate line-item budget. And I said that’s okay, but you can create your own and then you can advocate for that budget. If it’s within a different department or the line items are, you know, I used to run a three half million-dollar budget. I know how to do budget, so I said, then maybe the line items are in different departments and whatnot. 

Your HR department can tag these, and they can provide you. I think there, that’s a basic foundational place for people to understand budgeting and the basics of you can’t calculate ROI unless you know the spend, and That’s right. I think it’s even more difficult when you’re not allocating certain, you don’t understand the percentage of FTE in other departments that are supervising.  

Jennifer: Well, and you’ve brought up a good point. Sounds like you work a lot with volunteers that are leaders of other volunteers. So that’s even, there’s a, that’s another barrier to that information sharing, which is huge. And then also I think those same things apply often to the paid volunteer managers as well. 

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, your report calls out sort of the cost. That there’s, there’s, where do you think the biggest costs. Transparency is missing. Where is it most opaque? That yeah, we can look at that in our budgets. We can see the cost of the volunteer manager salary, their benefits, maybe some recognition supplies, maybe the cost of our, our background checks, that kind of thing. Training materials, maybe. What do you think are the hidden costs? That organizations are having a hard time quantifying, right?  

Jennifer: You’ve listed many of the parts of the cost. I think there’s also a, a technology insurance. There’s all that risk management that is also there. That’s not. Always quantified. You’ve certainly outlined it’s, but it’s also, it’s I think, even that narrow of a view of the volunteer manager and their budget in those specific transactional tasks. What isn’t contemplated in that is an organization that welcomes volunteers, so that goes beyond. That volunteer manager. Volunteer or paid, paid or unpaid, and it goes to how the program is built and how is, is that staff trained in how the programs are built? 

How is the physical space built so that it welcomes volunteer? Just the experience of the volunteer. Is hard to quantify, but in a world especially where we are moving to at, at least in the US and Canada, valuing the experience. Is huge. And that’s something any volunteer or organization mobilizing volunteers must be thinking about. And that is hidden costs kind of throughout the organization.  

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. The, the, in the design, the becoming the architect of the volunteer experience is what I call it. Like how we think about it because it is, it’s the. And when that special sauce happens, there’s more effective use of all resources, right? 

Jennifer: The other part I would say that’s a bit hidden is. When you think about, I think, to a person who doesn’t do volunteering, the thought about what does a volunteer coordinator do, sounds very transactional, and it’s keeping a list, sending emails, ordering the pins and the cups and the mugs and the t-shirts and all of that. 

Like you think of that, like we mentioned, that design is a part of it. The intentionality of the designing the experience for two reasons. One is the impact on the mission. Not just transacting. Second is the impact on the volunteer. That doesn’t happen through a coordination only mindset. It happens through a mindset of impact and measurement of that impact. 

So, I think that sophistication, which is what is going to keep today’s volunteers, they must know they’re making a difference. And it must be a seamless experience. It must have a technology component that makes it easy. It must have a rewarding, a personally rewarding experience. It must feel like the other experiences and ways you use your leisure time, and that’s, that quality is hard to build if you’re just doing it on the really. 

Low end, it’s, it’s hard to compete. And I think that’s part of the reason. So, this is my opinion. Now, this isn’t from our report, but there’s several reasons we’re dealing with a lowering of volunteering. But I’m sure one of them, what we’re hearing from our affiliates is the, we’re. What that experience needs to be for the volunteer. 

Tobi: Yes. We, I’ve been talking a lot about team building and sense of belonging and, and inclusivity and how people. Even people from different walks of life, as we talked about earlier, they just want to be seen and accepted as who they are. And that takes work, it takes management by walking around. I remember when I, I was running a grassroots organizing program throughout Tennessee, and when we would do events, my, I knew my number one job was management by walking around. The volunteers were doing the work, and I was as the state director just walking around and talking to people, hey, so nice to see you here. What made you come volunteer today? Where are you from? Do, do, do, do? How do you know this was healthcare access? So, I was like, how does healthcare, why does that matter to you? 

And that does that five, 10-minute conversation. Is like gold, but volunteer managers are in their offices managing spreadsheets.  

Jennifer: Right, right. Staff. So that’s a capacity issue. We’re not staffing it enough. You know that sort of, yeah. That sort of thing. That’s right.  

Tobi: Let’s talk about impact a little bit, because when I was reading the report, what came to mind to me was the funders are saying, well, we need to see impact. And I’m thinking, well, for mentor programs that are primarily staffed by volunteers, how is it that the learning gains or the attendance rates at school or the personal development, youth development are, are funders not seeing those as volunteer? Owned impacts or is there something else that they’re not seeing when they say, we don’t know, we don’t understand volunteer impact.  

Jennifer: I think that’s an excellent point. I think some of it is in how we, as the nonprofit leadership talk about the impact of volunteers. I think the mentoring one is one of the easiest, clearest ones, obviously. 

So that one is very, and the organizations that use those vol, it’s a, it’s a different ball game for them. It’s a. It’s a life or death, you know, those volunteers. Right. But I would say, I also think where we’re in, as we’ve looked at the research and what’s out there first. We really believe at points of light that the kind of a theory of change around volunteering and its impact is centered on three things, and that is the impact on the individual, the impact on the community. 

So that means needs are getting met, so kids are getting tutored, seniors are being visited, animals are being sheltered. And the third is that impact on society. When you aggregate those individual actions into things in a community and you put those together. It does change the nature of a community and a society where we can have those bridges being built and understanding and trust being built across differences. 

So that’s our theory of why volunteering is essential, why it matters, and so. We have discovered that there is research around some of those things, but not all those outcomes have been proven scientifically. Certainly, there’s a lot of data on the impact on individuals, and thank goodness for our surgeon, our previous surgeon General, who really called out loneliness and called as a prescription for the future, serving as a part of the antidote to loneliness and volunteering so that that research is clear about the impact on, on individuals. And we all know people. We know people in our family, in our homes, ourselves. We all are struggling with our wellbeing and mental health, and volunteering is one of the things that really makes a difference. 

So, it’s critical. Right now. It’s some of the other, the other two areas of like impact on community needs being met and an impact on our society. There are studies underway, there’s work underway. There’s anecdotal, but there isn’t as much of the scientific backing to those impacts of volunteering that we believe needs to be invested in. 

Tobi: Yeah. I love the framework of. When you think about a logic model, you have immediate outcome, intermediate, and that’s right. The ultimate and the ultimate outcomes, which is the impact on society, et cetera, is the hardest to quantify for any, any endeavor where you have a logic model and the intermediate impact is really the impact on the people served. 

The immediate, immediate is the volunteers themselves, not surprisingly, most of the research is on the impact on volunteers themselves. That’s right. I also think what would be fascinating is the comparison between when we can get to have. This research around impact on communities because there’s a lot of people doing like Main Street work, et cetera. 

So, there is, there’s already research on what happens when a community comes together and creates this sort of main street, small business, et cetera. What happens when that’s there and when it’s not there? So, with organizations and nonprofits, what happens? The, the most interesting thing to me is what is the impact on that local community for when there is volunteerism present amongst the, the sort of, you can’t go one, one organization at a time because we’re in a in, we’re in a network usually locally. 

But what happens when there’s not? Strong volunteerism in his c in a community, and that would be interesting to a funder be awesome.  

Jennifer: We, that’s the kind of level of research that we are looking at and we’re, we’re building a research advisory council to kind of help us see what’s already out there, what’s in the works, make sure we’re not duplicating, but yeah, that level of transformation is where we need to focus the volunteering research in the future.  

Tobi: Yeah, and I think there’s a fair amount of. Research that goes on because I, you know, I used to be a member of a novo, which is an academic research society of social scientists, basically. And there’s very few, you know, we were in a small group called academics, so we were trying to translate research into practice and help people on the field know, and Sue Carter Kale is good at that. 

Nathan Deets is good. They’re, they’re good at translating research practice, but a lot of folks aren’t, and. That stuff that, that the learnings are stuck in academic journals that folks don’t have access to, even if they go on Google Scholar, nor do they have the time to parse out what’s, is it a research study of five people or, or is it a re, is it something that has, that’s statistically relevant or whatever. 

Right. And folks don’t know how to. Analyze whether the research is valid. Some of these are like folks PhDs. Not to say it isn’t valid, but people are learning sometimes with their, so it’s interesting the whole, because there’s a lot of people out there researching civic engagement. There are. 

I mean, it blows my mind. It could be a not getting us whooping. I know. Well, we need to set the agenda. I’m so glad. Points of light of setting the agenda. Hey gang, let’s take a quick break and when we get back we’re going to talk a little bit more practically about what you as organizations, because I know most of you listening are with organizations, some of the things that go on inside organizations and how to maybe. 

Points of light has pointed out in this report the cycle of unmet need and maybe ways you strategically might and, and maybe Jennifer can advise us on this to reach out to local foundations, et cetera. So, we will be right back after this break with our chat with Jennifer from Points of Light about getting more funding y’all, so don’t go anywhere. 

VOLUNTEER PRO IMPACT LAB 

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Tobi: Okay, we’re back with our discussion with Jennifer, on the state of investment in volunteer engagement, points of light have taken this on. Thank you so much for that, Jennifer.  

Jennifer: We know it takes money to make this happen to, I know. Make impact. It takes money equals impact.  

Tobi: That’s right. We know. How do funders view the state of volunteer engagement currently? What? What did your researchers and your investigations reveal about what they think about how volunteerism is going. 

Jennifer: Well, it was interesting, what we got from the funder perspective was kind of two things. First was, well, you’re right, we haven’t thought about that about, so there was a. Kind of an awareness. What I would say first was what we heard, and the second was very encouraging. It was, we’d be willing to look at this. 

We understand what the business model is in some of these for some of these missions for organizations, but we would need the nonprofit to bring that forward. Mm-hmm. What I thought was, well, we have kind of a visual in the report that’s a circle with two arrows and it’s showing that it’s kind of a cycle when we’re. 

Shy in nonprofits about not saying what we really need, which we do on all levels, not just with volunteering. We’re always very careful about what we say we need, but when that happens, then it’s not elevated. So, funders aren’t putting that on their list of critical infrastructure that they do know what. 

It takes to run programs. I mean, they’ve been, the funders have been around a long time. They’ve seen good, they’ve seen bad, they’ve seen struggle, they’ve seen triumph, and so they know what it takes. But it’s interesting that, that, that, that, the volunteer part of it, the volunteer infrastructure does not come up on that list of like the checklist either on paper or in their head. 

That they’re looking at to see, I want to make sure we’re funding this to be a healthy organization. And they know to fund the technology, they know to fund the HR, they know to fund these other pieces m and e, but they, it’s just not something we’ve elevated. So, it’s partly on us as nonprofits. And that’s, that was the other insight I would say we had been that there’s opportunity that if we bring it forward, there wasn’t a resistance to it, it was more a lack of awareness.  

Tobi: Yeah. I mean, I’ve thought about different funding schemes and talked about them with our community around you could include volunteerism if you had many. Programs across your organization. You could include it as part of overhead, but that’s just, that’s just like a, a slippery slope and overhead ends up being critiqued. 

And so, it’s not overhead. It’s not overhead, it’s program costs. And so, I don’t understand why people aren’t saying like, look, we have three programs that. Use, utilize volunteers. We have one volunteer, main volunteer coordinator. We have supervision staff that supervise volunteers. Let’s parse out in our grant proposals and call that out. Are people just not doing that? 

Jennifer: That’s my guess. I mean, that’s what the funders told us was, we’re not interesting. Not seeing it. When they show program costs, when you bring us, your program costs forward and you say, to do this program, we need this and this and this and this, the volunteer infrastructure has not been included. 

Tobi: That’s fascinating.  

Jennifer: At scale. At scale. Right. Doesn’t mean some aren’t, I don’t mean to say, I’m sure there’re, and especially organizations that really the vol, the, the only delivery system is volunteers. Those right are, are in, are going to be, obviously that’s a big part of it, but it’s, it’s not something that is traditionally called out. 

You don’t, if you think about a template that the templates that. The funders have that they share with us. Very rarely does it have anything in there about volunteers. They’ll make sure you put your other things in, but very rarely volunteer.  

Tobi: So that’s what creates the, in some ways, that cycle of the shyness maybe. And the lack of, because, well, the funders aren’t asking us for that. So, we believe that it, it’s not part of what we can receive and therefore we don’t include it. And so, fund funders don’t think we need it.  

Jennifer: Exactly, so that’s a a part of it, and that’s why we did this report was to kind of do a breakthrough, kind of like an intervention and say, it’s okay. It’s okay to ask for this, and the funders aren’t going to reject you for it. They’ve said to us they’re open to it if it is. If it is included and, and certainly as we work as a movement to quantify the impact even deeper.  

Tobi: I think too, the other challenge I will just call out when. You know, engaging in funding requests is, we’ve did this, our last volunteer management progress report, we, we asked about recruitment strategies and clearly, we asked about a lot of digital marketing. 

Where are organizations in digital marketing? How are they using digital marketing? Are they search engine optimization? I mean, you name it, drip campaigns, et cetera. What the rest of the world is using to cultivate audiences and to build support and. Some of that is not on the volunteer manager. It’s really on the Marco Comms department because they’re the ones with the tools and expertise, et cetera, and they’re not really working that closely together. They’re kind of siloed. So, in some ways there’s also that cost.  

Jennifer: Right? I actually love that insight. I think that would be a fun thing to look at a little deeper or a tool we could work to create or tools around how to work together with your marcoms team. That’s an excellent insight.  

Tobi: I did a volunteer pro impact lab, and I’ll post this in the show notes with Kibby LaRue Miller with nonprofit marketing guide, and we talked about how volunteer managers, the volunteer services departments can work better with the Marco Comms departments in nonprofits. 

But there’s also like other things like evaluation. Usually, you have an IT and evaluation group that might be helping the volunteer manager. Dig deep into the data. So that’s a different, again, it’s sort of back to that hidden cost conversation where it’s not just about the volunteer manager or the people supervising volunteers or the volunteer leaders, it’s about all these other, even HR, they may be involved in some way and background tech check processing, there’s staff time there, so it really training. 

Yeah, I mean, onboarding. Mm-hmm. Strategic volunteer engagement is volunteerism is everybody’s job. And so that makes it even more difficult for that funding request. So, I mean, there’s so much to talk about here and we don’t have much time left, but, so I want to get to as an, if a nonprofit leader wants to use this report to advocate for greater support of their volunteer engagement activities, what’s your advice for getting started? 

Jennifer: Well, we very much hope they that they will use this report for that and use some of the quoting it in your proposals and everything. And we are working on a set of tools that we’ll have on the website that folks can use for their proposals. My dream is to see the market cap of investment in volunteering increase over time. 

Like that’s my dream and that’s our dream at Points of Life because we know that will allow. More volunteers to find their purpose, their meaning through the work that we all do. So, using this report to validate the fact that investing in volunteering is important, you’ll find quotes in there about that. 

You’ll find quotes from other funders about why it’s about what needs to be different, and you’ll find quotes about also in, in. Content in there about why volunteer impact is important for nonprofits. So those are the kinds of questions you sometimes need and support. I started out as a grant writer, so I, we, we built this for sure to support those that are writing grants and writing proposals and seeking support. 

Tobi: Absolutely. And I think even when I, I started an employment and training program for homeless youth in San Francisco inside of a. Longstanding, very respected organization. They hired me. They said, look, we’re going to give you carte blanche. We have seed money from; it was James Irvine Foundation. And I said, awesome. 

And I got to work in collaboration with the folks at James Irvine Foundation and build out the outcome metrics for my program as we move towards understanding impact. Better understanding outcomes, better on the volunteer, on the service beneficiary, and even more in, we’re in non-direct service nonprofits like arts and culture organizations, right? 

That, I believe, and based on my experience with funders, that starting a conversation and even putting that as a goal as part of your grant proposal would pique the interest of a funder who said, you know what? We are interested in making inroads and innovations into understanding volunteerism. So, you’re, you’re grant proposal is serving two purposes. 

It’s helping the funder understand how are we going to do this? How can we innovate? How can we try things out? Pilot test things, but also how are we just funding this program? Right.  

Jennifer: Well I think it would be so amazing if we heard, began to hear stories six months a year from now, that like funders are like people are including this in there. Yes. That would be fabulous. Absolutely. If that, if that was the case, that that’s certainly one of our goals.  

Tobi: One other I want to mention before we close that you also were investigating supervisory ratios, which a few years ago we tried to, tried to figure that out in the volunteer management progress report and it was like impossible. 

Like the, the organizations are so different, and I was like, okay, the data we got, I don’t even know what to make of it. But you’re starting that conversation about what is adequate. Staffing capacity when you’re trying to scale. And our number two. Number two, behind recruitment this year in our report, lack of time. 

Number two, challenge. Wow, lack of time. Not, not buy-in, not training volunteers, not retention, not any of that. It was recruitment. And the second one was lack of time. And I think as budgets get stretched. Folks are taking on more and more and that, as you talked about, the volunteer experience, it starts to be degraded. 

Jennifer: Yes.  

Tobi: So, tell talk about supervisory ratios just a little bit because I think when you’re looking, if you’re putting things in your grant proposal, that is something you must address.  

Jennifer: Well, I think that, as you said, that is having worked in several types of nonprofits that is of it, is totally a variable. 

Question. So, knowing that is critical for your mission and knowing what the industry standards are for what your mission is would be critical. Yeah. And then that is an excellent external third-party validator of why these costs are in there, not just, our report is kind of an umbrella. It’s designed to give everybody air cover for the ground war. 

Right. But that external, once like we had that in youth development, we knew what the industry standards were and that really is an, an excellent way of third-party validation of your requests. So again, just really emboldening our nonprofits to be able to ask for what they need to create. Volunteer experiences that are good for the volunteer and that truly advance the mission, and we all must be thinking about how we can measure that impact. 

I don’t have all the answers on that. We don’t have all the answers on that at points of light, but it is a, a worthy pursuit that we are going to invest in and collaborate with others on.  

Tobi: Yeah. And I like what you said about industry standards by type of organization. Maybe it’s size, maybe it’s budget, maybe it’s what is the mission and have a collection of, you know, well, you find yourself and then you can find the industry standard for yourself. 

Mm-hmm. So, we don’t need to. Sometimes I think organizations say, well, we’re also different, therefore we can’t approach this. We can’t try this because we’re also different. And I think that’s, that’s limited thinking. So, I love that you pointed out, hey. Mm-hmm. Actually there is a way to do this. It’s not impossible, it’s just getting the, the infrastructure or getting the investment and then creating the studies to figure it out. 

It’s not easy, but it can be done. Yes, that’s right. Everything is figureoutable. So, thank you so much, Jennifer for joining me today and to points of light for really making this transformative investment and calling out our sector to join this movement of making this in transformative investment. I think at this moment. 

In our history, especially in the us, but I think around the world, I think it may be felt like, well, no, we should wait, and I don’t think we should because in the end, volunteers help multiply our impact. And as organizations feel. Pressure, we can bring the community in and continue to stay strong. And our missions go on whether the funding’s there or that people still have needs. 

And so, I think whatever we can do to pivot and to really lean into asking for what we need, even when it feels like shrinking resources, well then, we just need to be more creative. Volunteering meets this moment. Yes, it does. It does. Oh, you, you couldn’t say it E even Any better. So, thank you so much for joining me today. 

One last question as we wrap up. I ask all my guests this, what are you most excited about in the year ahead? In the year ahead? 

Jennifer: I am. I am very excited about championing, volunteering as a critical part of building our civil society. I think the time is now for influencers, funders, people, individuals, to understand the critical role we play in vol, in those of us that mobilize volunteers alongside many other movements that are advancing our participatory society. 

And volunteering is one of those critical. Movements in a movement of movements to truly move our society, our civil fabric forward, our communities forward. And there’s a lot of people working on a lot of different pieces and parts of that from news and information to elections, to civics education. 

But volunteering is one of the, it’s the way to mobilize people to transform our current society into a more trusting, less divided community, and we play an important role in that, and I’m excited to see and hear that discussed and championed more here in the US and Canada and around the world. Yeah.  

Tobi: Yeah. Thank you to points of light for taking this on. I mean, it’s always been the mission of Points of Light, so it’s the perfect, perfect thing. How can people learn more about the res research? We’ll put a link in the show notes so people can get, grab the report. It’s fantastic, folks. Take it, use it, download it, and if people have questions for you or want to get in touch, how can they do that? 

Jennifer: Sure. So first I just want to say yes, go to our website. It’s points of light all spelled out.org. It’s at the top. You can download it. It’s actually been one of the most downloaded things we’ve ever published, just so you know already. It’s been very popular. And then we have a Contact us in there in right on our website, top right. 

So, if you have a question, we really read those. Just so you know. We have a whole customer care team who reads those and forwards them into our organization and we answer. So, we hope you will use that. Contact us and our customer care folks will make sure you get an answer. Awesome.  

Tobi: Thank you so much for joining me. 

This has been a great conversation. I am really excited about how we’re moving ahead, and I can’t wait to support in any way I can. 

Jennifer: Thank you so much. This has been great. 

Tobi: Okay. Take care and everybody, if you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. Anybody you think could get, who could get inspired. 

I mean, Jennifer’s conversation has sparked some in inspiration in me for sure. And I know it. It can be an inspiration to other people. Gang. We’re going to continue to grow. There is nothing stopping. A group of people who want to make a difference and are united, there is nothing that can stop that. We are an unstoppable force. 

Keep that in mind and we will see you next week, same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Take care everybody.