Excerpts Series: Volunteer Recruitment and Management
The Basics of Volunteerism
DEFINITIONS: You can look up the definition of volunteerism and find lots of different entries. Here are a couple that we’re gonna talk through to give us a basic understanding of what we mean when we talk about volunteers.
One definition is a noun: “Persons who freely offer to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task.” They’re not under duress, their doing this of their own accord. They want to be a part of something. That’s one way that we use the term volunteers.
“Volunteers” is also a verb, meaning to: “To freely offer to do something.”
So both of these are correct when we talk about the word volunteers.
One of the definitions I really like, because I think it speaks to what we’re trying to convey today, is to think about volunteers as: “An unpaid workforce that’s available to further your goals and help you meet an array of needs in your nonprofit organization.”
What I like about this definition is that the distinction isn’t made of the role or the function, but it’s really about whether or not they are paid. Many times when we talk about volunteers, we’ll even talk about unpaid staff. Sometimes people are fulfilling really critical roles in an organization, they’re just not on payroll. But that doesn’t diminish the value they bring to the organization and the work that you’re doing.
So you can decide what is comfortable for you and what you see as a specific term or a defined way that you would look at volunteers, but I really like this concept of thinking about them as being an unpaid workforce that’s brining value to your organization on an ongoing basis — they are a part of your team. They are a part of your staff. They are a part of what helps make this organization flow and do the work that you are doing. This is the definition that we tend to lean into when we talk about volunteers, especially for this particular session.
The definition of volunteering is: “The practice of people that are working on behalf of others without motivation of financial or tangible gain.” I like this definition because it’s stating - if I’m the volunteer, there’s nothing in it for me that’s tangible. I’m not getting a paycheck if I am volunteering. We can have conversation and perhaps even a little debate about “tangible gain” because we’re gonna talk about some motivations that people may have, like doing community service or perhaps doing volunteer for credit for college — that’s a tangible gain of sorts, so that’s a little nuance that might be something we want to talk about. But the idea here is that this is of my own accord. I’m not getting anything tangible for it. I’m just doing it because I want to be able to give back or I have some other altruistic motivation.
That’s where we are in terms of definitions of some of the terminology we’re going to use around this idea of volunteerism.
A FEW FACTS: I want to share some facts that may interest you, especially if you are a numbers person. I am a numbers person. I think these are really interesting and I extracted some of these facts to share with you today.
80% of nonprofits report using volunteers to further their mission. So the majority of nonprofits, four out of five, are using volunteers in some capacity, which is great. They should. It would be the exception of nonprofits that shouldn’t use volunteers. It’s one of the advantages you have when you’re a nonprofit. We should be using volunteers and it looks like the majority are, so that’s really good news!
Only 55% of nonprofits measure the impact of volunteers on their organization (Software Advice Volunteer Impact Report). This is an area that, as an industry, we can grow in. We could do better. I’m hopeful that after today’s training you’ll be asking yourself: Do I measure volunteer impact? Do I know the impact that volunteers are having on my organization? We know that only a little over half of organizations that use volunteers measure it in anyway. That’s pretty significant.
Another fact is that 25% of Americans volunteer (CNCS). One out of four Americans are volunteering and that’s good. I think 25% is a good number, but man, 75% are not volunteering. How can we engage the rest of American adults in this idea of volunteering? That would be something, to have that number go up.
Individuals between the ages of 35 and 54 are the most likely to volunteer their time (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Volunteers under the age of 24 account for 22.6% of all volunteers (Volunteer Hub). These are things to consider when you think about your own volunteers as far as: who you could recruit or who might make sense for you to recruit: Be thinking about some of these data points as an interesting way to start the conversation in your organization. What do you do with this information and how does this impact your organization?
Volunteers spend an average of 52-hours per year volunteering their time (Nonprofit Source). I was blown away by that number — this isn’t the first time I’ve seen that number — but I think it really speaks to people becoming a part of the organization they volunteer within. People really get in and they move and do. That is an hour a week for the average volunteer. This is good for us to know when we measure: are we doing that? Are most of our volunteers in that vain? What would the average be for our organization? We can use this data to think about what this means.
Greater than 75% of volunteers find opportunities online (initlive.org). This number is going to grow. This is how we get the word out now. This is how a lot of volunteers are finding those opportunities. Make note of these facts as you’re thinking through how you recruit and how you get your volunteers. How you put information out is important.
35% of volunteers indicate one reason they volunteer is to socialize (Sterling Volunteers). We’re going to talk about the motivation of volunteers in one of our sections today because this is really important to think about. This is a big number. More than a third of those volunteering are doing it for social reasons. They’re doing it to connect with people. We’ll come back to that particular point later in the training, but it’s an important stat to note.
Over 72% of volunteers work with only one organization each year (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Another really important one for you to make note of. If you get a volunteer, chances are they’re not volunteering everywhere. You become their person. You become the organization that they are committed to. This is an important fact to recognize. 72% is a big number.
85% of volunteers financially support the nonprofit where they volunteer (Global Trends in Giving Report). We’re going to come back to this point as well. We’re going to talk about this engagement to investment continuum. We also talk about this in our Donor Development Training. The idea of engagement to investment is just such an important one for us to realize. Until people know — meaning they are engaged and they know what you do — they don’t invest. So when you have people that are in it with you, that are volunteering with you, that are giving you their most precious commodity, which is their time, their financial support will often follow. That’s an important fact to really understand and know, especially as we talk about integrating volunteerism into the larger part of the organization and building the capacity of your organization. If people will volunteer with you, chances are financial support will follow.
There are a gazillion facts to know about volunteerism if you’re interested, but I wanted to pull out the above because they are pertinent to our conversation today.
