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 [...]
Nonprofit Leadership and Management: How to Modernize Now Developing best-in-class nonprofit leadership and management skills may, at first glance, seem like an easy thing to do. Leadership development may seem like something that just “happens on its own,” without any support. Or, maybe you subscribe to the “born this way” philosophy. You believe that [...]
Recruiting Volunteers with Two Simple Marketing Strategies When recruiting volunteers do you post to VolunteerMatch, your website, and social media and call it good? Ask volunteers and staff to tell their friends and you’re golden? Send an email blast to your entire list and pray for the best? Maybe these will work, but perhaps you [...]
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 [...]
Your Simple Guide to Improving Nonprofit Impact In addition to the obvious, there are many reasons to track and improve nonprofit impact and efficiency in meeting missions. These secondary issues might be because a major funder requires accountability to a set of outcome measures, or the Board of Directors is asking why goals aren’t being [...]
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 fact, [...]
How to Unlock Service-Learning's Power for Your Nonprofit Service-learning offers a unique opportunity for nonprofits to connect with students who are actively seeking volunteer experiences that support their professional and career development. According to SOURCE, the community engagement and service-learning center for the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Schools of Public Health, Nursing, and Medicine, service-learning [...]
How to Build an Awesome Volunteer Network A colleague and I were chatting today about the ever-present issue of finding enough volunteers to support your cause. We seem to focus all our attention on the individual we hope to recruit instead of taking a look at how we can use our volunteer networks and larger [...]
If you’ve been involved in volunteer management for any length of time, you’ve inevitably come across people who just don’t get it. They either view volunteers as widgets who can be automatically plugged in to shore up the organizational need du jour, or they think volunteers are too much hassle to be worth it. If the decision makers in your organization feel this way, you’re not likely to get the support you need.