How to Advocate for Your Nonprofit Budget for Volunteers When you think about increasing your nonprofit budget for your volunteer program, do you see a chain link fence or a wide open field? What you see may impact what you are able to achieve. As industrialist Henry Ford noted, “Whether you think you can, [...]
As a leader of volunteers, risk management is a big part of your job. So, you want to make sure you get volunteer background check requirements right. Read on to correct three mistakes you might be making. Why Conduct Background Checks on Volunteers? According to the Verified Volunteers Screening Trends & Best Practices Report: [...]
As our organizations and work become increasingly complex, we are called upon to find new ways to inspire volunteer leadership. Volunteer leaders can no doubt take organizations to new levels, but only if they are given the space to do so. Social science research offers some insights into both the individual characteristics that promote successful [...]
Leading Volunteer Teams for Increased Productivity Whether you’re working with a volunteer-led advisory group, a task force, an event planning committee, or a governing board, when leading volunteer teams of any kind, you want to be set for success. Investing in team capacity building now can help you not only offer opportunities to new [...]
How to Use Nonprofit Technology to Cultivate Trust The world is experiencing emerging distrust in all institutions that is spilling over into skepticism around causes and charities. Nonprofit technology may be a way to refill the nearly empty well. The Edelman Trust Barometer report offers some bad news for nonprofits and government agencies that engage volunteers. [...]
In Part 1 of this post, we noted that volunteer program assessments are a great way to get candid volunteer feedback and boost leadership at the same time. We also noted some of the benefits of involving volunteers in an audit of your operations and identified three preliminary steps to setting up your volunteer team [...]
Volunteer program assessments are a great way to get candid volunteer feedback and boost leadership at the same time. Unfortunately, most organizations don’t take time out to reflect on their current practices in a purposeful, comprehensive way. But, if volunteers are truly essential to your mission, doesn’t it make sense to maximize their environment so [...]
Although we’d like to think that volunteers learn most of what they need know during our formal volunteer training, in reality, most of what we learn, we learn by doing when we’re on the job. This makes mentoring volunteers of utmost importance. On-the-job training may, in fact, be the most effective training strategy—even more [...]
