How to Secure Funding for Your Volunteer Programs We often get questions about where to find grant funding for volunteer programs. After all, while volunteers may work for “free,” engaging and supporting them is not. Despite this reality, grant funding that is directly earmarked for volunteer services is uncommon. With the notable exceptions of the Leighty Foundation and [...]
Volunteer Engagement Tips From Our Top 10 Blogs of All Time Can you believe we’ve been running this volunteer engagement blog for over SIX years!? We’ve been writing content week after week that offers support, insight, resources and more to leaders of volunteers. And, it's been a labor of love. But soon, it will be time [...]
How to Give Meaningful Volunteer Gifts that Volunteers Will Love If you’re like most organizations that rely on volunteers, you naturally want to show your gratitude with small volunteer gifts or tokens of appreciation. But, do the volunteers really use what you give them? Do they value these gifts, or do they just end [...]
Volunteer Teamwork for Better Results Looking to improve volunteer teamwork with staff to get things done? There may be something to learn from others who are crossing traditional boundaries in service of better outcomes. In healthcare, for example, traditional professional boundaries are being challenged. Interdisciplinary teams, made up of professionals from a variety of [...]
What Nine Days on a Boat Taught Me About Volunteer Team Development and Being a Leader Volunteer team development can be tricky – we want our volunteers and employees to work in harmony. But how do we pull it off? Sometimes, it’s by reflecting on our own experiences. I was both privileged and pushed [...]
Do Volunteers Have a Role in Capacity Building for a Nonprofit Organization? Capacity building for a nonprofit organization is defined as engaging in activities and developing processes that strengthen an organization’s ability to fulfill its mission. Activities might include strategic planning, updating communications strategies, technology upgrades, operational improvements, board development, and improving community and volunteer [...]
The Power of Intergenerational Volunteer Programs to Build Strong Communities In addition to satisfying the psychological needs of participants and achieving the goals of nonprofit organizations, there are benefits to the community at large from intergenerational volunteer programs. Intergenerational programs bring children and older adults together, with opportunities to interact and create relationships for [...]
The Value of Volunteerism: 5 Real Life Measures That Truly Count According to research, there has been intense debate over whether and how to calculate the economic value of volunteerism, ever since the notion of assigning it economic value began in the 1960s. Some have argued against quantification, citing the “statistical [...]
Volunteer Impact Reporting: Why and How to Measure the Value of Volunteers Are you looking for a way to accurately build a volunteer impact report that shows what your contributors have helped your programs and clients accomplish? We hear it all the time: measuring volunteer impact (and then showing that impact) can be a tricky skill to master! In order [...]
The Importance of Volunteer Pulse Surveys While volunteer pulse surveys are relatively new, in the corporate world these kinds of surveys are a common tool when it comes to employee engagement. And, while they have not really been used very much in the volunteer space they can be particularly valuable, especially during the current [...]