In the past three years, over 3,000 leaders of volunteers in 18 countries have taken the annual Volunteer Management Progress Report survey.
Now in its fourth year, researchers have the opportunity to share new trends for professionals who lead, manage, and coordinate volunteers.
If you work with volunteers, don’t miss your chance to participate in the largest crowdsourcing of volunteer administrator data in the world. This “state of the industry” survey includes questions related to volunteer management practices, challenges, and needs.
By participating in this survey, you will help fellow volunteer-led organizations, volunteer resource managers and nonprofit capacity builders become better advocates for making positive change. Volunteer resource managers will benefit from seeing how their colleagues rate their own priorities, challenges, and opportunities and be able to advocate for themselves, both within their organizations and outside them. Volunteer-led organizations will receive clear benchmarks to help them make meaningful comparisons and informed decisions about their volunteer engagement. And nonprofit consultants, trainers, and capacity builders will be able to identify what are the greatest needs for their field.
There has been surprising consistency of respondent demographics and responses for three consecutive years of surveys, even with an international cohort, and similar challenges are faced by many. This consistency gives us a solid foundation for volunteer management information and trends. Here are some key takeaways from our 2018 report:
- Volunteer Retention is a Challenge on the Rise – Anecdotally, leaders of volunteers increasingly note the challenge of maintaining volunteer involvement over longer periods of time and point out that volunteers increasingly appear to prefer short-term, episodic assignments.
- The Future May Be Bound to the Buy-In of Co-Workers – Volunteer coordinator job satisfaction and intent to stay working in the field is highly correlated with whether or not fellow employees welcome, or are resistant to, volunteer involvement in their departments.
- Training Staff to Support Volunteers Remains the Top Professional Development Need for Volunteer Managers– The top training needs have remained relatively similar between 2015 and 2017. Over one-third of respondents (34.7%) in 2018 selected Training Staff to Support Volunteers as one of a maximum of four training needs, and it was the most cited need in 2017 as well.
The 2019 survey, nicknamed “The Tech Edition,” will explore these past topics plus more including…
- Current capacity levels for volunteers placed around the world
- Net promoter ratings for the most widely used volunteer management software platforms
- Current technology platforms, tools, and frequency of use
- Top challenges for leaders of volunteer management professionals
- Competency ratings for volunteer management and tech skill sets
- Salary & budget trends, cross tabbed by agency characteristics
So, please help spread the word about the 2019 Volunteer Management Progress Report. The more people that participate, the more information we have to advocate for our profession!
As a bonus, everyone who completes the survey will be invited to a free “sneak peek” webinar on January 23. The survey takes less than 15 minutes to complete.
Take the survey Now! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2019VMPRSurvey
The deadline is December 7, 2018.
