Your Nonprofit Marketing Plan: How Fundraising, Marcoms & Volunteer Services Can Work Together When it comes to strategizing a nonprofit marketing plan, it’s the exception rather than the rule that the development department, the communications department, and volunteer services all work together in harmony. Or, even put a joint plan in place for that matter. It’s [...]
5 Simple Volunteer Email Campaigns to Engage Your Community Volunteer email communications are most often used to answer questions, send reminders, and share basic logistics, but they can be used for so much more. Emails can entertain, inform, and inspire. They can prompt action. They can deepen friendships and spread compassion. They can also [...]
COVID-19 & Volunteer Organizations: Business Continuity & Recovery Planning In our VolunteerPro Membership Community, there’s been plenty of conversation about COVID-19 and volunteer organizations. Should volunteers be included in the response effort in organizations that can’t shut down due to the nature of their essential services? How can volunteers be protected? How can volunteers continue to [...]
Volunteer Supervision: It's Time to Ditch Nagging in Favor of Inspiring Several years ago, my Aunt Deanna expressed her frustration in an email to me about the lack of effective volunteer supervision at an agency where she volunteered. She is an avid volunteer and was disappointed that many of her fellow volunteers didn’t show up for a [...]
The Best Time Management Tips for Increased Focus We recently published our 2020 Volunteer Management Progress Report, and we found that volunteer managers are citing a lack of time as one of their top challenges. We can write about time management tips and productivity hacks week after week; however, the report clearly shows that you need easy wins [...]
Volunteer Management Best Practices: What You Need to Know We recently wrapped up a lengthy analysis of the data we collected from our 5th annual, state-of-the-industry survey, which gives us first hand knowledge on volunteer management best practices. We are so inspired by all of the information volunteer management professionals from around the world shared [...]
Reflections on 10 Years of Volunteer Resources Content I’ve been writing volunteer resources blog posts and creating content for over ten years, first here on my Tobi Johnson & Associates blog and then for the past five years on our VolunteerPro blog. Truth be told, my writing hasn’t always been consistent. Back in 2009, when [...]
Managing Volunteers in 2020: You Need to Do Less to Do More As we approach the new year you tend to reflect on what you’d like to achieve when managing volunteers — whether it be a refreshed web site, a new training series to create and market, conferences to attend, networks to connect with, etc., [...]
Nonprofit Leadership: How to Embrace Failure for Success It’s funny. In the private sector, it is common to hear about failure, but we don’t hear much about it in nonprofit leadership circles. The world is filled with stories about scrappy entrepreneurs who toiled, even went bankrupt multiple times, before they finally hit it big. In [...]
A few days ago, I learned that my beloved judo teacher, Sensei (Master) Keiko Fukuda, was awarded her 10th degree black belt. At age 98, she is the only woman in the world to ever receive this honor. Her promotion reminded me of many of the leadrship lessons I leanred from judo that I still use today, years after I left the sport.