The Best Volunteer Management Practices

By Sebastian Troup


While it might seem difficult to organize a giving and volunteer program at your company, with proper management the task is far less cumbersome. Your first priority should be to make it simple for employees to give or to sign up for a volunteer opportunity. Pre-organize an event and provide plenty of different options so that your staff only needs to look at sheet, find a spot that works and fill in their names. Be sure to publicize the event as much as possible. Hang posters in your staff break room or in other spots where workers congregate. Don't forget to discuss the event and pass around a sign-up sheet during staff meetings.

As administrators, we are always busy, so incorporating workplace philanthropy is much easier if you make the program very manageable. Assign someone to act as the liaison between the charity and your company, as this will ensure that the information is passed along and all details are well coordinated.

In addition, when it comes to corporate volunteerism, be sure that your volunteer efforts are a seamless fit with the other philanthropy programs in your company. When you build upon your current charitable efforts, this creates a synergy that produces the best possible results. If your main corporate goal is promoting a cleaner, better world environment, make sure that your volunteer events and giving program support this goal. On your company website or intranet, list all of the volunteer options for your employees and make it easy for them to find volunteer tasks, make a donation or see any other possible option. Showcase the idea that there are many ways for employees to help. By keeping all of this information in one, easily accessible location, it reduces your management burden.

Another crucial task for volunteer program management is keeping top-notch records. You will need to record the number of hours employees volunteer, track financial donations and other contributions as well as any other important data. Not only does this help track the performance of all your charitable endeavors, it showcases which areas are really working well and which areas need some help.

This is not something you should try to track yourself on a spreadsheet because it will quickly become unmanageable. A volunteer management software tool can make your record keeping simple, accurate, and reliable, plus real-time reporting and analytics will mean you're always prepared to report back to company leadership on the effectiveness of your program.

To reiterate an earlier point, while your employees might want to help out, if you don't make it easy, then participation tends to be fairly low. Provide many easy, accessible options for volunteerism rather than making staff go out on their own and try to find information. The easier you make it, the more success your program will have.

Remember that input from employees is often extremely helpful, and some of your employees might already be volunteering for a cause for which they have great passion. Be sure to ask employees to share information about events in which they are participating and suggest ideas for the corporate giving program. Encouraging their ideas is a great way to make employees feel like they are truly a part of the program.

You might be surprised to learn that the biggest reason why employees don't take part in volunteer and giving programs is because no one asked them to participate. Be sure to ask and using multiple sources to get employees involved from inviting them personally to use company emails, staff meetings and sign-up sheets. It is also equally important that when employees do volunteer that they be recognized for their efforts as this will encourage further participation and make your program a great success.




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