Too Many Volunteers?

by Fonda Kendrick, VolunteerHub.com

It’s a perfect storm when it comes to volunteerism in America right now, based on several factors that we’ve blogged about in the past. The baby boomers are retiring, the unemployed are looking for activities to hone their skills for resumes and simply to fill their free time, and President Obama has issued a massive call to action on the volunteer front. Based on these three streams of supply, nonprofits are currently seeing an unprecedented demand for volunteer opportunities.

In an ironic twist, many organizations that have seen a rise in their volunteer numbers have also seen a downturn in resources. Lindsay Firestone of Taproot comments, “It’s like a Greek tragedy. We’re thrilled to have all of these volunteers. But now organizations are stuck not being able to take advantage of it because they don’t have adequate funding.”

Just a few months ago, The New York Times reported a huge surge of volunteers in areas all across the country. (One hundred thousand in New York City alone!) Suddenly, many nonprofits nationwide are saying something they never thought possible: we have too many volunteers! In fact, the Times quoted one anonymous nonprofit exec as saying, “Can you make them stop calling? Everybody’s inspired by Obama,” he noted. Then he tacked on, “They also don’t have jobs.”

Others echo the executive’s sentiment. Bertina Ceccarelli of United Way in New York, states: “It’s sad but true, but the irony is that sometimes it’s almost more work to find something for a volunteer to do than to just turn them away.”

Having too many volunteers can be chaotic and counterproductive; both volunteer coordinators and volunteers can become frustrated with this situation. However, as we researched deeper into this topic, we found some tips for regulating volunteers within an organization:

• Before recruiting new volunteers, take stock of your current needs. List the tasks you would like to assign to volunteers, how many people you will need for each task, and how many hours per week should be devoted to these assignments.
• Write up a “wish list” focusing on a variety of areas within the organization. What have you been wanting to do/try? In particular, you may want to focus on fundraising efforts, marketing/PR/graphic design, and maybe even maintenance work such as cleaning or painting. Again, assess the hours and number of individuals needed for these tasks.
• Create a “crowdsourcing” area on your website. Have members of your organization brainstorm on challenges that hinder them from attaining some of their goals. Ask your volunteers (or the public in general) to offer ideas for solutions, then use those suggestions, in tandem with volunteers, to put those plans into action.
• Get creative. What new programs or teams could you start with additional volunteers, even on a shoestring?
• Develop a list of tasks that can always be done with little direction/supervision.
• Hold monthly informational meetings for potential volunteers to find out more about your organization and its volunteer opportunities. This will minimize time spent on this aspect of recruiting and maximize the amount of individuals reached each month.
• Cultivate one or more volunteers to manage and/or train other volunteers.
• Start a waiting list for volunteers. As we all know, some volunteers have a short-lived enthusiasm. If some drop out of your volunteer pool, it helps to have more ready and willing contacts at your fingertips.

Handy hint: Once you have new volunteer opportunities planned, don’t forget to use VolunteerHub’s event slot limit feature to set boundaries on the number of volunteers registering. (Make sure to use the waitlisting feature, too!)

Remember, with a surplus of volunteers, this is your time to be selective. You have the right — and the responsibility — to interview volunteers to make sure they are a good fit for both your organization and the projects you have outlined. And, by partnering with other organizations in your community, you can refer individuals that do not mesh well with your agency to other groups to which they may be better suited.

Perhaps most importantly, keep in mind that this is your chance to make a lasting impression on your volunteers. Take the time to evaluate your need for volunteers and match those willing to help with challenging, meaningful tasks. If they have a fulfilling, well-planned experience, your volunteers are likely to maintain their ties to your organization for years to come.

Related article:

“From the Ranks of Jobless, A Flood of Volunteers,” by Julie Bosman, in the New York Times, March 16, 2009

Older Adult Volunteers Bring New Expertise and New Life to Nonprofits

(ARA) -When Margaret Ross retired from a career in nursing, she had no idea that her new life as a volunteer would lead her right back into healthcare. Neither did Mike Chesnut, whose work building retail partnerships looks a lot like his volunteer service for a group of Denver nonprofits that are fighting homelessness. The same is true for retiree Berlin Hall. Since leaving his accounting executive career, Hall’s desire to help at-risk families led him to volunteer to manage the books for a family services agency.

As they move into roles in service and volunteering, older adults like these are discovering that what they know is just as important as how much time they can give. Their help couldn’t have come at a better time. With demand for nonprofit services skyrocketing, fundraising and revenues are way down. Some experts predict as many as 100,000 nonprofit organizations could run out of money for their programs completely.

The recession has spurred more interest in volunteering among older adults, particularly among boomers, says Jill Friedman Fixler, a nonprofit consultant and co-author of “Boomer Volunteer Engagement.”

“This is a group with abundant skills and profound circles of influence and they believe they can have an impact in their community right now,” she says.

That was the idea for Chesnut. After leaving his job as a retail sales executive with Procter & Gamble, Chesnut, 64, spent several years as a counselor for small business owners. When he moved to Denver a few years ago, he decided to focus on helping nonprofits. As he explored his options, Chesnut was struck by Denver’s homeless problem. Millions of dollars were being spent pulling families out of shelters, but programs that were trying to keep families out of them to begin with were underfunded. After organizing a coalition of local nonprofits, Chesnut began a research project that eventually led to a successful $600,000 grant.

“Coming from the corporate world and working with large retailers, you learn to look for common interest,” he says. “What I did was put numbers to the problem.”

Nancy Benyamin, a volunteer coordinator for Jewish Family Service who worked with Chesnut, says he’s an example of the increasing importance of skilled volunteers to nonprofits that want to expand their capacity in lean times.

“Mike really enabled us to apply for this large grant,” Benyamin says. “Without his assistance, the new funding just wouldn’t be happening.”

For Ross, 72, the serious needs she saw as a volunteer for SeniorsPlus in Lewiston, Maine, made her rethink the decision to step away from healthcare completely. After retiring as director of nursing for a state Medicare program, Ross signed up to help answer a referral phone line for SeniorsPlus, an agency that helps the local aging population get services and support. The organization was so impressed by her knowledge of medicine and healthcare benefits that they asked her to take on a new role as a counselor, and even get additional training. Seeing the healthcare system from the point of view of at-risk seniors has been an eye-opener, Ross says.

“[In my old job], I rarely was aware whether the patient was insured or not,” she says. “Now I’m on the other side of the fence saying, ‘Let’s get this person the coverage they need.’”

For Hall, a Hughes Aircraft retiree, volunteering for Family Assessment, Counseling & Education Services (F.A.C.E.S.) was a way to shield some families from the challenges his own family faced when his father, an alcoholic, left. After reviewing Hall’s background, Mary O’Connor, the executive director at the Southern California nonprofit, asked him to set up a new accounting system for the cash-strapped group. Five months later, the books are on the way to being balanced and Hall has become a strong F.A.C.E.S. supporter. He says his experience getting involved on a skilled basis, while frustrating at times, has been extraordinary.

“If my mother had access to this kind of thing, I can see how much better off we would have been,” he says with emotion. “But I had no idea that the kind of challenges this organization faces even existed.”

To find skilled volunteer opportunities, visit www.VolunteerMatch.org.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Volunteers Are An Excellent Source Of Fundraising Ideas

This Tip of the Week is reprinted with permission from The Nonprofit Times Weekly. Go to http://nptimes.com for more information.

Do you have so much to do for your capital campaign, with so little time? Think about including your most zealous volunteers in your fundraising program, according to Michael J. David-Wilson, executive director for the Middlesex County College Foundation in Edison, N.J. Why not use your best supporters to cultivate other organization members?

David-Wilson presented his ideas in a session at the 46th annual Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) international fundraising conference in New Orleans. Here’s how to turn your volunteers into development participants:

• Volunteer participation. Volunteers can be a great addition to your fundraising team. Just make sure if they are asking others for gifts, they make one of their own.

• Major gift donations. Try to tackle big gifts early. Use your own board’s participation as examples of campaign giving.

• Volunteer training. Ensure that your volunteer solicitors are properly trained before they ask for gifts. Team your professional fundraisers with volunteers for some role-playing in donation asks.

• Give information. Compile important donor information for your fundraising team. Set up a gift amount to ask for and what that gift amount would do for the campaign.

• Set up success. Everyone needs a boost of confidence. Arrange some telephone solicitations for your volunteers with donors most likely to give. That will put your volunteers on the right foot for in-person asks.

• Provide backup. Volunteers don’t normally ask donors for gifts – so they may lose their confidence at the meeting. Couple volunteers with a professional development staff member who can move in if the volunteer gets too nervous.

• Celebrate successes. Make volunteer solicitors excited about their hard work. Think about building some friendly competition among volunteers by tracking donor visits or the amount raised.

Fundraising Planning – A Vital Key To Nonprofit Success

As a professional grant writer and consultant, I am often amazed at how few nonprofit organizations actually have a fund development plan beyond a vague idea of applying for a few grants and sending out an annual appeal letter. Recognizing that lack of planning, I am not amazed at how often these same organizations have rounds of emergency budget cuts when they realize that they have no assured streams of income.

Very typical is the agency that has received a large grant to run their programs for one year. Then, in the tenth month of the grant period, comes the realization that they have no idea how they will fund the next year’s programs. With less than two months of money left in the bank they go into emergency fundraising mode.

Their first impulse is to start applying for another large grant. But at most foundations, the process – from letter of inquiry to proposal to acceptance – typically takes at least three months, and often six to eight months.

Their next idea is to turn to their individual donors with a panicked letter that essentially says, “Send us money now or we might go out of business.” That, of course, is the least effective fundraising letter you can write. Donors want to invest in your successes, not bail out your failures.

So, how do they avoid these situations? The answer is to plan. Through the planning process, you will achieve the following:

• Limit crisis fundraising: This, as the example above illustrates, is our primary reason for creating a fund development plan, but there are others as well…

• Diversity builds in flexibility: Changes in other sectors of the economy can have a major impact on nonprofit funding. A cut in the state budget can be passed down as fewer contracts for local service organizations. The dot-com bust of a few years back cut foundation endowments, reducing the funds they had available to grant. Agencies that had become comfortable relying on one or two sources of funding found themselves struggling to survive these changes. Those with plans and diversified funding bases had the flexibility to adapt and survive.

• Planning for diversity brings in more opportunities: Through the planning process you come to identify funding opportunities you never knew existed. Further, when you stop having to scramble to pay next month’s bills, you will be able to devote more time to developing new sources of income for your agency.

• Setting priorities, strategies, and goals: New opportunities present themselves all the time, if you are open to receiving them. But which opportunities should you pursue? When you have a clear mission and a plan, the answer becomes clear. By following the plan, you know where your efforts are most needed at any given time, and you can turn down distractions that don’t further your defined goals.

• Increasing board involvement: I always hear nonprofit staff complaining about either their un-involved board members or board members who meddle too much without knowing what they’re doing, and yet they don’t create opportunities for the board to be constructively involved. Asking your board to be a part of the development planning process will both motivate them and educate them at the same time.

• Integrating fund development with other program activities & plans: If you’re lucky enough to have staff who work on fund development full-time, you’re also risking a disconnect between program people and fundraisers. The result is an annual event that’s held the same week as the busiest part of the program staff’s season. Written plans that are shared by all staff help to avoid such conflicts and encourage a working team environment.

• Most productive use of team’s time: The bottom line is that by being organized, and having clarity as to what is expected of every team member, all your activities will be more efficient.

So what’s holding you back? Put your team together and start planning for success today!

About the Author

Ken Goldstein is a grant writer and consultant working and living in Silicon Valley. Since 1989 he has been an executive director, a board member, volunteer, and consultant to nonprofits. His education includes a BA in Politics from UC Santa Cruz and a Master of Public Policy and Administration from CSU Sacramento. Goldstein Consulting can be found at goldsteinconsulting.com. Ken is also the author of “Introduction to Fund Development Planning” – Please see fundraisingplanbook.com for more information.

(c) 2006 by Ken Goldstein, all rights reserved.

Eight Reasons All Non-Profits Need a Website

A nonprofit organization can take advantage of the Internet for at least eight purposes:

• publicity
• public education
• fundraising
• volunteer recruitment
• service delivery
• advocacy
• research
• communication

Let us look at brief examples of each of these uses in turn.

Publicity

Good sites gain attention. Attention or awareness is exactly what all non-profits need… it accelerates fund-raising efforts, and enhances all the following essential needs:

Public Education

There’s a fine line between grabbing the public’s attention and educating the public about an important social problem or cause.Whatever the mission statement of your non-profit organization is, it needs to be presented with clarity to the various “publics” that all non-profits must influence if they are to be successful. All organizations have several different “publics” which they must influence in a positive way in order to achieve their organizational goals. Read more

Are The All-Volunteer Groups Taking Over?

Twenty years ago there was something of a mystique about raising funds for a nonprofit organization. Getting 501 (c) (3) status from the IRS was a difficult matter. The process was long and confusing. There were few sources of information about the process available and most of those were complicated and confusing. Even if an organization obtained 501 (c) (3) status, therefore making it possible for donors to make tax-deductible donations, most fledging nonprofits did not have someone on staff who was fully versed in any but the most rudimentary fundraising techniques.

Quite often “fundraising” was synonymous with the annual campaign letter. Only those in the “big leagues” of nonprofit operations seemed to be involved with such sophisticated techniques as “planning giving” or extensive grant writing.

According to the IRS there are twice as many 501 (c) (3)s today as there were 20 years ago. No doubt many of the small nonprofit groups (those making less than $25,000 a year) are all-volunteer groups. Even some with larger incomes (who, therefore, must file returns with the IRS) operate only with volunteers. And guess what? Some of these groups are doing a fantastic job of fundraising! They are writing successful grant applications and raising large sums of money for their nonprofit endeavors. Just nine miles away from the offices of The 501 (c) (3) Monthly Letter, an all-volunteer group was recently awarded a $65,000 grant to use in the restoration of an historic ferry house near Lewis, Iowa, population 600. Even closer to home, in Atlantic, Iowa, (7,000 population) volunteers are conducting a campaign to raise $7 million for a town recreation center . . . and it looks as though they will be successful. This is happening all over the country.

There is a new breed of volunteer out there toiling in the trenches . . . dedicated, educated, and resourceful. They have passion for their mission and are willing to use the information age to achieve their objectives.

As many as 90 percent of the e-mail inquiries to the editor at mmiller@nishna.net are from neophytes wanting to know how to set up a nonprofit organization.

So, how long will it take for the number of 501 (c) (3)s to double again? We are willing to venture that it will be closer to five years than twenty.

Do these emerging groups pose any competition for donor dollars? You can bet they do! So, remember that the mystique of fundraising is gone. Others are willing to take the time to learn how to be successful fundraisers. They do this on their own time, at no pay, and they love doing it.

So, beware, professional fundraisers. In order to do a better job of attracting donors than the “amateurs”, the professionals among us must keep honing their skills. Just as importantly, they need to keep their mission vital.

Look back at the founding days of your own nonprofit organization. Did it begin with a small group of dedicated volunteers? Were these same people able to engender enough support so that the organization could eventually have paid staff? Do you, perhaps, owe your job to the efforts of such people?

While you are at it, take a look at the volunteers that presently serve your organization. If they come “to work” with more eagerness and dedication than your paid staff, it may be time to start “tuning up” your internal communications for your own “most important audience”.

Excerpted from 501 (c) (3) Monthly Letter and written by Marilyn Miller.

Found in the Energize Website Library.