We’ve talked about having a volunteer engagement strategy at length. That’s because, at Giveffect, volunteers are what keep nonprofit organizations running, moving and growing. Volunteer-heavy organizations rely on a lot of part-time and temporary manpower to get things done and, to a certain extent, keep their doors open. Without volunteers, it’s nearly impossible to reach the goals that an organization has set for itself.
The great thing about this time of year is that while every nonprofit is vying for volunteers, more and more people are willing to give their time and energy to help your nonprofit do all that it needs to do to help the surrounding community. Because of that, it’s the perfect time to do more with your volunteer engagement strategy. Your organization may see spikes and surges in volunteer engagement at specific times of the year, but the time right after Halloween is when you can count on the desire of people to volunteer more to rise exponentially. So, as a nonprofit organization, how do you take advantage of that need?
Earlier in the year, we wrote about some steps to increasing volunteer engagement and making sure volunteers keep coming back shift after shift with your organization.
Specific steps we suggest you take to improve your volunteer engagement strategy:
- Develop a volunteer management plan.
- Find the right volunteer management software.
- Build a better volunteer application.
- Pay attention to volunteer preferences.
- Offer a variety of volunteer opportunities.
- Engage local businesses with volunteer campaigns.
- Turn volunteers into donors.
But during the holiday season, it’s a good idea to take things to the next level to increase volunteer engagement. With the holidays being a time with a focus on family and togetherness, it’s not a great idea to create some original ideas for increasing volunteer engagement.
A few ideas to increase your volunteer engagement:
- Highlight past years’ successes for volunteers
- Create incentives to drive volunteer sign-ups
- Host an event to get potential volunteers involved
- Give a tour of your facilities
- Do speaking engagements at holiday events
So how can Giveffect’s all-in-one, completely integrated and automated software system help you with increasing volunteer engagement at your nonprofit and improve your overall volunteer engagement strategy this holiday season?
- You can more easily create volunteer campaigns
Volunteer campaigns give your organization the ability to raise awareness for volunteer opportunities, while also enabling your constituents to donate to your cause or project. These volunteer campaigns are in that anyone elected to volunteer for your organization can be retargeted by donation appeals in the future. And creating a volunteer campaign in Giveffect only takes a few clicks on your keyboard. To create a volunteer campaign, you just have to navigate to the main sidebar, click Campaigns, and select “Create New Campaign”. It’s just that easy!
You can create a volunteer calendar more easily
In addition to the ease of use in creating your campaigns, you can create and plan out your volunteer calendar more easily. This will come in extremely handy during the holidays seeing as you will have many more people who will want to volunteer for your organization from November until, and possibly through, January. The volunteer management system makes it so that you can schedule your organizational regulars, as well as those volunteers that are either new or temporary to your organization for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. The calendar feature also allows you to easily manage shifts, send out private and public online calendars to your volunteers, and more. Exactly what you need for the hustle and bustle of the holidays that is sure to come.
You can check volunteers in and out of events more easily using Event Buddy
Our free mobile tool allows your volunteers to check in and be checked in to your holiday events by making any mobile device into a check-in kiosk. So whether you have an upcoming blanket drive for the homeless, a holiday movie night or an ice-skating event for children, any and everyone who attends can be checked in on your phone, laptop or tablet. No need for scrap paper, an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Doc when Giveffect has this tool available for you with our system.
And while Giveffect offers all of these tools combined into one software system that streamlines your daily processes, it is Smart Automation that makes things moved and stay connected overall. All of the time-consuming work that goes into managing donors, volunteers, leads and contacts that can takes away from your valuable time is automated and updated in the back end of the Giveffect software platform without you having to lift a finger. So you can now devote even more tie to the planning and execution of your holiday gala, winter fundraiser, or any other get-together you can think of.
This holiday season, we encourage you and your nonprofit organization to look into Giveffect. We would love the chance to show you how we can save you the time and the resources you need to engage your volunteers to the fullest extent and make your holiday events, campaigns and fundraisers all that they can be.
Want to learn more about how Giveffect and Smart Automation can help your nonprofit organization better engage your volunteers? Schedule a demo with us today.