Volunteer Management: The Complete Guide for Your Non-Profit

Encouraging Volunteer Success, Retention, and Loyalty through Effective Management

Volunteers are a vital resource for nonprofits. Dedicated individuals who believe so deeply in a cause that they willingly give their time without expectation of recompense — they truly are incredible people. But for many nonprofits, managing their volunteer force has become a recurring issue. Without the right tools and techniques, it can become difficult to retain volunteers over time, to make them feel that they are accomplishing something, or even to use their time and effort effectively. Many volunteers cite either a lack of communication or of clear focus in their roles as primary reasons why they have left an organization. Feeling like they didn’t make a difference was another.

The thing is, when non-profit organizations use best practices for volunteer management, these problems disappear. Your volunteer force becomes much more efficient, their satisfaction in their work increases, and they become more invested in helping you achieve your long-term goals. And because volunteer recruitment and onboard training can become very expensive, creating long-term relationships with your current volunteers has an exceptional intrinsic value to your organization.

What Is Volunteer Management?

Simply put, volunteer management is about how your organization cultivates a relationship with the people who donate their time. It’s an ongoing, multi-tiered process that begins with recruitment and training, continues through day-to-day operations, and ends only when a volunteer leaves your organization (and even this last stage can be managed effectively, helping you to ensure greater retention with future volunteers). It’s about encouraging growth and productivity, but it’s also about making the work feel rewarding.

After all, these are people who give their time to you without financial compensation. While it’s true that money isn’t everything, it’s necessary to live, to have food and shelter. People will put up with a certain amount of frustration for a paycheck, and considerably less without it. So it’s your job to not cause that frustration; rather, to create a volunteer experience that’s worthwhile. Remember, there is a strong difference between an employee, with a salary and benefits, and a volunteer, who gives their time out of belief in what you’re working towards. Respect that difference, and you will make a difference yourself.

How to Effectively Manage Volunteers

Diagnosing the Problem

Volunteer organizations need to start with clearly identifying the causes of issues that they are having with their volunteers. If you aren’t already, you should begin conducting exit interviews with volunteers who decide to leave your organization. In addition, you can conduct surveys with your existing volunteer force in order to determine the issues that are important to them.

Once you’ve identified key areas for improvement, you can create an action plan for addressing each one. For example, if you identify that volunteers are becoming frustrated with roadblocks that pop up as a result of poor communication — a common cause of problems in any workplace — then you can remedy this by creating a framework for clear, accurate communication between departments so that everyone is aware of what is expected of them and what needs to be done.

With a successful diagnosis, you can build a better system of volunteer management, and then maintain it by following best practices.

Best Practices for Volunteer Management

• Start off on the right foot. A common pitfall that volunteer organizations encounter is that the roles and responsibilities of a new volunteer are not clearly defined from the start. This can result from poor training or a lack of communication, so make sure that, in the early stages of your relationship with new volunteers, you take the time to help familiarize them with the organization. During volunteer recruitment, outline the values and mission of your non-profit, provide new members with clear and precise job descriptions and appropriate training, and make yourself available to answer questions. You can also get off to a good start by letting volunteers start small ad work their way up to taking on bigger tasks over time, so as not to overwhelm them.
• Integrate your volunteers and your employees. This may seem like a no-brainer, but train your internal staff to work alongside volunteers. It is important to make sure that your paid and unpaid workers are able to communicate, cooperate, and collaborate to achieve a common goal. Sharing an experience with both sides can only make your team and organization stronger. Without volunteer management training for your internal employees, you’re creating your own roadblocks to success.
• Encourage growth and advancement. Feeling like your unique strengths aren’t being recognized and utilized is a major reason why many people, employee or volunteer, leave their jobs. Keep an eye out for those volunteers who show a special aptitude that goes above and beyond their current roles, offer them training to hone those skills, and offer them greater responsibility. Not only is this a benefit to you directly, but it makes them feel greater pride in their work. And as they grow within the organization, they’ll be more likely to continue offering their time in the future.
• Recognize and reward outstanding achievement. There’s nothing more disheartening than pouring your heart and soul into a project, going above and beyond, and having everyone around you just shrug like it’s business as usual. The idea that we should praise the behaviour we want to encourage comes into play in a huge way with volunteer organizations, where sometimes the sense of accomplishment is the only tangible reward. A “volunteer of the month” program is a great example of a way that you can recognize terrific work — showcasing volunteer appreciation and success stories on your website or in your newsletter is another (and it gives those not featured something to strive for; everyone loves seeing their work recognized).
• Communicate and be available. Your volunteers are going to have questions and concerns, and more often than not they’re going to be things you need to hear. It’s also important that you are able to effectively communicate with your team, to update them on the progress of projects and other things they may want or need to know. Consider assigning someone the role of “volunteer supervisor” and task them with being a go-between for volunteers and management within your organization. Someone who is attentive, detail-oriented, approachable, and exhibits active listening and empathy is a perfect match for this role.
• Embrace the power of software. Depending on how many volunteers you have at any given time and the overall size of your non-profit organization, volunteer management can become a tremendous challenge. If you have volunteers of different ages, with different schedules, different needs, different levels of experience and ability, then you’ll certainly have your work cut out for you if you’re not using a dedicated software solution to iron out the wrinkles. If you’re not comfortable investing in an untested solution, or simply don’t have the budget for it, there are a number of free and trial-version programs you can download, though it’s often worth it to buy a full program as you may find yourself using the more advanced features more than you originally thought you would. To maximize your limited budget, it is highly recommended to start with a nonprofit time tracking solution — it’s quite affordable and often comes with additional capabilities to help stretch that dollar a little further.
• Learn as you go.. Let’s face it: you’re not going to get it exactly right on the first try. And that’s okay. Good volunteer management practices aren’t just going to magically materialize overnight. It’s going to take work and dedication to fine-tune the details until they work just right for you, and even then it’ll still be an ongoing process.

Volunteer Rules & Regulations

There are strict laws in most countries governing the use of volunteer labor. It is important that you keep these in mind whenever you are changing the way you engage in volunteer management, so that these changes do not incur legal issues for you. For example, you may be tempted to offer incentives to your volunteers; however, even non-monetary incentives could be deemed as compensation, changing your volunteers to employees in the eyes of the law.

In the United States, volunteers fall under the Volunteer Protection Act (while employees fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act). Volunteer work must be less than full time, without expectation of compensation, and may not displace or replace paid employees performing the same function. If you wish to offer a volunteer stipend, be sure to carefully read the appropriate laws for your country, state, or province to determine what you may legally offer while maintaining volunteer status.

For non-profits operating in the U.S., you can find more information and resources through the National Council of Nonprofits.

Success Stories

Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit organization with chapters in the United States, Canada, and around the world. Since 1976 they have been building homes for families that otherwise would never be able to afford them, rely on a mix of professional and volunteer labour. They have worked on over 800,000 homes around the world in that time — a truly staggering figure for a non-profit. A volunteer services manager for the North Carolina chapter detailed the key to successful volunteer retention — and it follows a lot of the same best practices outlined above. Most notably, she touched on building strong relationships with the volunteers, finding their strengths and playing to them, and hosting volunteer appreciation events as key factors in the success of their volunteer program. The use of volunteer management software was also a factor.

Additionally, from the outset, Habitat for Humanity has exceptionally well-defined volunteer roles, which break down the responsibilities and expectations for each volunteer on the application page.

Organizing volunteers across a multitude of chapters in different countries with different legal guidelines for both volunteer work and construction is no small feat. Habitat for Humanity has accomplished something tremendous, and one of the keys to their success has been effective volunteer management.

Next Steps

If your volunteer management strategy has left much to be desired, now you can consider yourself armed with the tools and knowledge to give it a top-down makeover. As a non-profit organization, you rely on those dedicated souls willing to volunteer their time, their effort, their sweat, and their passion. If you take care of them, they’ll take care of you in return. Train them well, be an active listener who encourages communication, provide them room to grow and advance, and recognize terrific work, and you’ll have more volunteers who decide to stay on long-term. Give them a feeling of satisfaction in their work, of accomplishment, and you’ll see them striving to deliver exceptional results again and again. It’s not hard to create a great volunteer management strategy — it just takes dedication, willingness to learn, and adaptability to really shine.