Secret to a Brilliant Volunteer Week? Pay For It.
This Volunteers Week, I had a cracking time at a volunteer celebration for two reasons.
1. I felt genuinely valued, thanked and inspired as a volunteer
I volunteer on the trustee board of the charity, which manages two Neighbourhood Networks in Leeds, Bramley Elderly Action and Older Wiser Local Seniors. 50 incredible volunteers came to our Volunteer Week celebration. Minibuses drivers, befrienders, shop volunteers football coaches, quiz masters, choral leaders and a whole host more enjoyed:
Classic Bramley Elderly Action buffet spread (mini cheese rolls are mandatory)
Quotes from our older people, describing the difference a volunteer had made to them
Tea break care package - goody bag featuring tea (Yorkshire Gold, naturally) chocolates and a thoughtful note
Full contact details of the brand new Volunteering Team
Thank you card, volunteer feedback form, volunteer lanyard and photo ID
Introductions and thanks and open discussion with the new Volunteering Team, Chair and CEO
Two hours later and we had a hard time shooing 50 smiling, excited, caffeinated and highly valued volunteers and their new friends out of the door - a hugely successful event. We’ve always involved volunteers in our charity, but like a lot of smaller local charities haven’t been able to fully crack great volunteer engagement - until now.
2. I could see and feel what strategic investment looks like
As someone who has been a volunteer engagement professional their whole career, it’s no surprise I make it my business to raise volunteering at the strategic level on boards.
As a fundraiser I know that resourcing should never be an excuse for failing to invest in volunteering. Volunteers are mission critical and it’s disheartening to see many organisations fail to invest, or even cutting back on existing resource. Luckily our Chair and CEO agree with me and we:
Consulted staff and volunteers
Agreed at board level that volunteering key priority for organisational spend
Designed our new volunteering programme - Action
Trustees made the decision to invest a large portion of a recent members legacy
Wrote and won a National Lottery Community Fund bid for the remaining costs
Wrote clear job descriptions, set highly competitive pay and benefits package and advertised in the right place
The result of this investment of volunteer time, staff time, board time and strategic financial commitment to getting this right resulted in the appointment of 4 incredibly skilled, experienced and innovative volunteering experts who we are thrilled to have recruited, Dom, Beth, Zoe (all above pictured L-R) and Nicola.
And my goodness what a difference this volunteering team has made.
In just 3 weeks of being a full team they’ve:
Run a staff and trustee away day upskilling us all on important volunteer management skills
Tackled a huge range of small, practical but incredibly important tasks like getting all volunteers an ID badge and lanyard,
Spoken with hundreds of our current and lapsed volunteers,
Cleansed our volunteer database
Met many of our older members to asses the need for, and impact of volunteer roles
In our previous configuration, with volunteer coordination being tacked onto the end of a number of different job roles, this simply would have taken us years.
Let’s talk about the money
You might be reading this thinking, it’s alright for you lot - you had a legacy.
Yes we did - but if there was no legacy we would have done this anyway. We haven’t received any large legacies in the past, and can’t expect another any time soon. As a small local organisation we’re not sitting on large reserves and our income streams all carry risk. As a board we faced a choice of using the legacy to sustain the organisation, or take a risk and invest the funds, backed up with a fundraising strategy to minimise this risk long term.
The silos we put volunteering and fundraising in are huge problems in our sector. In some recent research I asked volunteer managers at 30 different national charities how their job was funded and very few could confidently answer. Consistently my research with organisations over the last 5 years has found on average 4 in 5 volunteers are already donors to your organisation.
As charities we love to put people in nice little “volunteer” “donor” “campaigner” “trustee” boxes - in reality we miss the magic when we don’t open the boxes up and allow people to give what they like, how and when they want.
In the words of our CEO,
“A volunteer left us a gift and paid for half of this, volunteers wrote the bid that paid for the rest. So get used to us talking about money with volunteers! If you can’t give it, you can help us get it. As we say round here you don’t get out for nowt!”