Have you converted Volunteers to Donors?

Have you converted Volunteers to Donors?

Looking to grow your donor base? A fantastic place to start is to convert your Volunteers to Donors. According to Abila’s Donor Loyalty Study, 75% of those who volunteered say they are more likely to donate. That is an overwhelming statistic and one that nonprofits should leverage. Studies also show that volunteers donate 10 times more than non-volunteers.

So how do you convert volunteers to donors for your nonprofit? Here are five best practices to help you convert volunteers to donors.

Acknowledge Volunteers like you do Donors

Treat your volunteers right. They may not make monetary contributions.  But the time that they donate to your nonprofit has a tangible monetary value. According to the Independent Sector, the  value of Volunteer Time in 2019 was $ 25.43 per hour. So a volunteer who spends 10 hours with you, has made a contribution of over $ 250 to your nonprofit.

Are you telling your volunteers how much you appreciate their time and effort? Try and do that at as many opportunities as possible. If you can, try to quantify their activity into how much money or time they’ve saved your organization.

For example, “The supporters that you brought to the Annual Walkathon helped us raise an additional $ 5000 this year. This will help us serve another 100 people. Your time and effort helped make this possible!”

Track all volunteer activity

Do you track all volunteer hours diligently? Do you have reports that tell you how many hours a volunteer spent with you this year vs last year? Can you track volunteer retention rates?

Tracking each volunteer interaction gives you a better understanding of the volunteer’s engagement with your organization. And, if you don’t know how the volunteer helped, how can you appropriately thank them?

Tracking all the volunteer hours spent with your organization provide great statistics for grant requests too.

Acknowledge Volunteer Milestones

Volunteer Awards Report

Volunteer Awards Report

Tracking all volunteer hours lets you keep track of specific volunteer milestones. Set up simple acknowledgements or rewards for when volunteers complete specific hour-based or time-based milestones. For example, a volunteer reaches 50 hours this year or completes 3 years of volunteering with you. Reach out to the volunteer. Make a public gesture. Show them that you are aware of their effort and interest in your cause.

Give your volunteers opportunities to share their experiences

Social media share

Social media share

Give your volunteers easy ways for them to share their experience on social media. Use their experience quotes on your website, in a newsletter. Talk to your volunteers about why they do what they do. They can become great ambassadors for your cause. And that may inspire their friends to become donors to your nonprofit.

Ask your Volunteers

Finally, just get down and ask your volunteers for donations. Communication is key, whether it’s with volunteers or donors. According to the Institute for Fundraising, 8 out of 10 people donate after being asked to do so. Don’t assume that your volunteers know your cause and therefore will donate automatically. Maybe they don’t know that your organization needs the money; they may just know that you need volunteers. They may not even know the best or easiest way to donate.

So a simple , straight forward ask may suffice. Perhaps you could set up a way for volunteers to donate a small amount every month. Think of it as a SIP donation plan for volunteers. They could give you $ 10/20/50 every month. That may be easier for some volunteers.

Have you already converted some volunteers to donors? How did you do it? Do share your stories with us.

Checking in volunteer groups with V4S Kiosk

Checking in volunteer groups with V4S Kiosk

Checking in volunteer groups is one of the toughest things to handle for volunteer managers. Having a group of volunteers come in to volunteer together is fantastic. But tracking those new volunteers and their work time? Now that is a real challenge for you as a Volunteer Manager or Coordinator.

Multiple volunteer signup by number

Multiple volunteer signup by number

Volunteers for Salesforce gives you the functionality of adding in the number of volunteers that come as a part of a group. The point person for a group can set the total number of people in the group. This screenshot shows you how a group leader signs up a group of 20 volunteers using V4S Personal on her mobile.

But that’s really all you can record with the standard Volunteers for Salesforce data structure. The fact that the group leader is bringing in 19 other people, other than herself. There’s no way to track who the individual members of the group are. Or any of their contact information.

Extend volunteer value

For your organization, that individual volunteer data is critical. You want to be able to keep track of every volunteer that ever comes in touch with your organization. A volunteer that comes as part of a group could very likely become a repeat individual volunteer.  If you build a deeper relationship and extend communication with that volunteer, she or he could contribute to your organization by becoming more involved.

Working with group volunteers in V4S Kiosk

Based on requests and interactions with several of our V4S Kiosk customers,

Checking in group volunteers

Checking in group volunteers

we’ve now introduced a new feature to check in multiple volunteers that come in as part of a group. If the group leader comes in a little earlier than the Job / Shift start time, then she can Signup the other volunteers in her group to the specific Job / Shift. Note the

Volunteer group dropdown

Volunteer group dropdown

way that the Add multiple volunteers screen is set up in V4S Kiosk. If you have multiple volunteer groups that are coming in, you could sign up people from different groups using the same screen, by selecting the right group name for the specific volunteer that you are signing up.

If your organization requires that each volunteer sign a waiver form, you would be able to set that up. When the individual volunteer checks in to start work on the Job / Shift, she would be asked to read and sign a waiver form, right within V4S Kiosk.

Volunteer data in Salesforce

volunteer data in salesforceAll the new volunteers signed in on the V4S Kiosk get added to Volunteers as Salesforce as Contact records, with the configured Volunteer Group field updated. If so configured, the Date Waiver signed and the actual waiver signed along with the signature is stored inside Salesforce. Now you have the luxury of being able to get to all volunteer data easily and securely, right inside Salesforce.

Just imagine how much effort and time you would save with group corporate volunteers. Additionally, using the Waiver add-on would give you the ability to save effort with tracking volunteer waivers and being compliant legally. Now isn’t that something you should be checking out?

5 great reasons for tracking volunteer time

5 great reasons for tracking volunteer time

Last week, I was talking to the Executive Director of a small nonprofit. She said they had only 4 full-time employees, but over an 18 day period just before Christmas, they have over 2,500 volunteers who make their annual program possible.

The value of a volunteer’s time donated to a nonprofit is enormous. But tracking those hours is a challenge for most nonprofits – how many hours volunteers contributed and the impact of those hours (what was accomplished? what difference was made?). With volunteer time outweighing that of paid employees for most nonprofits, volunteer hours are exceptionally valuable.

So let’s take a quick look at 5 great reasons why tracking your volunteers’ time and including it in your budget and financials makes sense.

1. Money, money, money.

Funding for nonprofits

Funding for nonprofits

One of the biggest issues for most nonprofits is funding. It’s key to keeping your nonprofit afloat. Tracking volunteer hours can help your organization prove more qualified for a grant.

When reporting your organization’s impact on a grant provider, including volunteer hours, makes a huge difference. Independent Sector recently released the value of volunteer time of $ 25.43 per hour. If your nonprofit records just 8 hours of volunteer time per day, that works out to over $ 52,800 a year, calculated for just for 5 days a week.

The power of your nonprofit stems from the fact that so many individuals come together to work for your mission – something that is bigger than any single individual. When tracking and sharing your volunteers’ time and impact, grantors clearly see that you have a team of people that believe in your mission and that you are making a positive contribution to your community.

2. Keep ’em coming.

Retain volunteers

Retain volunteers

Volunteers appreciate the recognition. Remember that we always count what we value. So tracking volunteer time, clearly shows your volunteers that you value the time that they are putting into your nonprofit. Sometimes, volunteers don’t see the connection between their donated time and your mission. This is the primary reason why volunteers don’t build long-term relationships with nonprofits. By crediting the volunteers’ time and recognizing them when they hit certain milestones, you automatically build a system of transparency and trust. And this can be key for volunteer retention.

3. Build an A-1 reputation.

Build a great reputation

Build a great reputation

Use your volunteer hours to attract new volunteers and donors. Use your tracked hours to build a great volunteer narrative. Let’s say, 300 volunteers, put in, on an average 10 hours each over the year. That gives you a total value of 300*10*25.43 or $ 76,290 of volunteer work. Use that number not just to thank your volunteers, but put that in front of your donors and your grantors. When they see the impact of your volunteers’ time, they are more likely to want to be a part of your nonprofit. And the fact that you actually have concrete data, makes your organization seem more legitimate to prospective donors and grantors.

4. Get your ducks in a row.

Analyze your data

Analyze your data

Once you start tracking your volunteer time and where it is being spent, you can start improving your volunteer programs and ultimately strengthen your organization. Make sure that you ask your volunteers to track what they are working on, in addition to tracking the actual time spent. Once you collect this data, you can put it to good use to adjust your programs.

Let’s say, you notice that the total number of volunteer hours has increased, but you are actually getting fewer school backpacks packed. You look at your volunteer data in detail, and you see that 60% of your volunteer time is going towards marketing and administrative tasks and only 40% towards packing the backpacks.

Now if your short-term goal is to grow your nonprofit through marketing efforts, then this may be fine. On the other hand, if you want to get more backpacks out to school kids, then you can easily adjust your volunteer programs to need more volunteers on the backpack packing job. There are countless ways you can improve and strengthen your programs once you have the volunteer data to back it up.

Tracking volunteer time will help you align your organization goals and your volunteers’ efforts.

5. No taxes, yeaaaah!

As a nonprofit, you don’t have to pay taxes. That’s great, but you still can’t escape

Nonprofit taxes

Nonprofit taxes

the paper-work. Use the Form 990 to your advantage. Since this form must be made public and the data is available on sites like Guidestar, donors, and grantors use it to evaluate organization (s) that they want to engage with. Displaying accurate volunteer hours, is not just the right thing to do, it can also help with your funding efforts.

Never assume that your volunteer hours won’t look impressive, the fact that people in your community believe in you, to put in their own time is a huge testament to your nonprofit. Being transparent with your volunteer time gives you a great image with the public, with funders, and with the government.

With Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack and Volunteers for Salesforce, managing donors and volunteers is now easy. And with V4S Mobile, you can now track volunteer hours very easily on mobile devices. Reach out to us at info@pk4385708235.wpcomstaging.com, for more information on volunteer tracking. We’ll be happy to help.

The Power of the Hub!

The Power of the Hub!

It was a cold and stormy night…. Nope, not the start of yet another horror story. In fact this story is the exact opposite. At 2 AM on a chilly Bangalore night, there I was typing responses into an online spreadsheet. And feeling pretty good about it. But let me start at the beginning…..

In the summer earlier this year, TJ Warfield put up a wish-list for an Event check-in tool for nonprofits on the Power of Us Hub (The Hub, as it is sometimes called, is an online community for Salesforce.org customers, certified partners and staff). Caroline Renard, who knew of our work in the mobile app space for nonprofits, brought us into the conversation. Over a lively discussion on the Hub involving multiple people, a detailed list of functionality came up. Looking at that list, it seemed to us as something we could deliver, given that we had so much of the Salesforce and mobile infrastructure already. So we took it upon ourselves to deliver an Event add-on to our V4S Kiosk product over the next couple of months. That started a hectic round of design, development and testing internally, running into September.

Come the end of September and it was Dreamforce time. And time for virtual conversations to become real. At the Amplify breakfast, I met  with TJ and Caroline and spoke about what we had done with the wish list for Events. It was truly exciting for all of us to see how a conversation in the Hub had turned into something concrete.

Back home after Dreamforce in mid-October, we connected across the world, our team in Bangalore with TJ in San Francisco and Caroline in Seattle. And we were back in the virtual world to review the Events add-on. TJ was very happy with what we showed and graciously offered to demo and test the add-on at the Salesforce.org Open Source Community Sprint, held in Portland, OR  (#SFDOsprint) in end-Oct.

We were of course thrilled with the idea, but we were also very aware of the many things that could go wrong. TJ had seen the app near-complete, but the last 10% takes 50% of project time, right? Our team in Bangalore worked pretty much round-the-clock to put together a demo org for the Sprinters to use. We made sure there was a reasonable amount of data, a clear set of instructions and other resources for the Sprinters and a shared Google spreadsheet to collect suggestions and feedback.

The Salesforce.org Community Sprints are amazing events. Participants discuss everything from best practices to general experience to solution requirements. Working in teams, participants go all the way to produce solutions with documentation, code and data models. And everything produced by the teams goes back into the Community, making the whole ecosystem better for everyone. The Portland Sprint had that same terrific energy and enthusiasm. With 130 people at the event covering the Nonprofit and Higher Education sectors, we had a large number of people trying out the Event add-on.

With our mobile app still in beta on the iTunes Store, we did some pretty hairy

Across the world on a mission for nonprofits

Working for a mission

back-and-forth using the iTunes TestFlight platform to get our friendly Sprinters in Portland on board. It was incredible seeing the Sprinters in Portland, our awake-at-midnight team in Bangalore and the Test flight platform (wherever that is hosted :)) all coming together for a good cause. Watching from across the world as multiple Sprinters installed V4S Kiosk via TestFlight was awe-inspiring, to say the least. And as suggestions and feedback came flying into the Feedback sheet from the Sprinters, it truly felt great to be typing in responses at 2 AM :).

Kudos to all the Sprinters who dedicated their own time to test and review the Events add-on, all for the cause of enriching the product range for Nonprofits. Thanks to these hard-working Sprinters, there’s now a terrific set of feedback and suggestions that we will add into the product. A product that nonprofits can use to raise money, manage volunteers and deliver education. Which goes to prove that “All for One and One for All’ is not just the Three Musketeers slogan but a way of life for a lot of people!