Month: July 2010

8 tips for successful volunteer management from VolunteerSpot

Posted on by Case Foundation

This post was written by Sokunthea Sa Chhabra on behalf of the Case Foundation:

The other day, a friend asserted that all of the volunteer management tools out there seem to be geared towards either helping individuals in large cities find volunteer opportunities or are set up for large organizations with time and resources to manage their projects.

But what about the suburban PTO mom who coordinates several volunteer programs a year, or the three person nonprofit that can’t afford the dollars or time it takes to set up some of these management services?

I don’t know how exactly how valid her points were, since they were based on anecdotal observations, but as luck would have it, I was introduced to Karen Bantuveris, Founder and CEO of VolunteerSpot, the same week I had this discussion. And, she has the simple and straightforward solution that any individual, group, or nonprofit can use for managing their volunteer projects.

I asked Karen a few questions to better understand VolunteerSpot, and here’s what I learned:

Sokunthea: Can you briefly tell us about VolunteerSpot?

Karen: Glad to. VolunteerSpot makes volunteering easy! We help volunteer leaders, committee chairs and teachers by simplifying the time-consuming task of scheduling, signing up and reminding volunteers. Since we make it so easy to sign up to volunteer, schools and nonprofits report more people are showing up to help – up to 20% more!

What’s most exciting is that our simple time-saving tool is making a powerful difference – teachers are inviting more parents into the classroom as helpers and local volunteer-led groups are able to expand their services. One example is Open Books Chicago, an innovative literacy social venture serving kids from low-income families. By improving how they coordinate volunteers (using VolunteerSpot), they have been able to expand from one to three programs.

Sokunthea: How did you get started, and who uses VolunteerSpot?

Karen: VolunteerSpot was born out of my personal frustration watching good people wanting to volunteer at my daughter’s school and for local Austin nonprofits supporting Hurricane Katrina evacuees, but opting out because small communication hassles got in the way. It was often the same story – reply-all-email overload, showing up and not being needed, or wanting to volunteer and not getting a call back.

At schools, parents are called on to bridge critical funding gaps – helping in the classroom, supervising in the cafeteria and library, and supporting fundraisers like carnivals and concessions stands. VolunteerSpot gives parents and teachers a simple way to coordinate help that’s familiar to them, similar to launching an online party invitation. Because we’re so easy to use, and anyone can launch a sign up calendar, VolunteerSpot quickly spreads mom-to-mom, teacher-to-teacher, group-to-group from school, to Scouts, to soccer, etc.

It turns out the same moms who are volunteering at school are also very active in their workplace volunteer programs, in community nonprofits and faith-based service activities. In a little over a year, VolunteerSpot has powered all kinds of service: after-school mentoring programs, building projects, church-run soup kitchens, literacy programs, art festivals, public radio pledge drives, animal rescue teams, immunization clinics, and more. It has been such a rewarding year; we just reached a quarter-million volunteers served!

Sokunthea: What makes VolunteerSpot different from all of the volunteer management platforms out there?

Karen: VolunteerSpot’s ‘special sauce’ is that ANYONE can launch a volunteer schedule and invite others to sign up to help – in a handful of minutes. Other volunteer management platforms require board approval, budget meetings and training to get started. They’re absolutely the right tool for many professional volunteer managers in large organizations. However, 80% of nonprofits have just two paid staff members and a tremendous amount of volunteering happens more informally with committee chairs, corporate volunteer captains, and neighbors who don’t have access to formal volunteer management software. Instead, they are left to Excel spreadsheets, email and frustrating online groups to coordinate volunteers. We don’t think it’s right that people who raise their hands as a volunteer leader get saddled with cumbersome administrative to do their jobs.

Our basic service is free and gives leaders everything they need to schedule, sign up and remind volunteers of their commitments. We’ve added additional tools for nonprofits and groups in our new premium service including volunteer hours tracking and multiple registration fields – so if you’re organizing a large charity race, for example, you can capture volunteer t-shirt size and the group a volunteer is affiliated with.

Sokunthea: What tips or advice do you have for volunteer leaders?

Karen:

  • Make it easy for volunteers to help you, and let them!
  • Post clear instructions on your website for how folks can get involved and a link to sign up to volunteer (if practical).
  • Remember the ‘little things,’ details like where to park, what to wear and bring, and who will greet them when they arrive.
  • If volunteers reach your voicemail, let them know on your message when to expect a call back and where else they can find commonly requested information, such as a website.
  • Reach out on multiple channels where your volunteers are listening. Share information via email, Facebook, Twitter, phone calls, etc.
  • Invite volunteers to share their stories and experiences through photo sharing websites, Facebook groups and other social media. Make it easy for volunteers to invite their friends to help, too.
  • Ask volunteers what special skills they may bring to the table that your group could benefit from – you may find your volunteers are also artists, web developers or have accounting or marketing expertise and are willing to share.
  • Of course, use VolunteerSpot =).

How can nonprofits plan for growth and impact?

Posted on by Case Foundation

This post was written by Rohit Menezes on behalf of the Case Foundation:

Growing or scaling an organization and its impact in any sector is hard. All leaders face the day-to-day challenge of operations – what one of my heroes has called “the constant grind to get folk to do what they agreed to do.”

In the nonprofit sector, this challenge is compounded by scarce resources and an incomplete understanding of what works. In this context, simply thinking about growth is difficult, and planning for growth can feel like an indulgence.

In my experience, however, planning is a vital element of effectively scaling an organization and its impact. For nonprofits, there are many ways to learn about planning for scale including resources available at The Bridgespan Group’s website. In this same spirit, I want to share some practices I have noted of organizations that have scaled successfully as fuel for dialogue. They are:

  • Focusing on critical relationships
  • Embracing opportunism
  • Thinking exponentially

Focusing on critical relationships.

Fundamentally, you grow a business at the rate you are able to grow relationships. In the for profit world, customer relationships are paramount. In the nonprofit sector, relationships with funders, stakeholders, and political champions can make the difference for organizations. To grow effectively, organizations must “planfully” scale those relationships. In some cases, this means developing even more relationships. In others it means upgrading existing relationships to get the kind of engagement you need. Either way, it requires recognizing that relationships are critical catalysts for scaling and impact. Developing board members and re-developing the composition of a board over time creates ferment for growing a broader set of relationships – an approach taken by many organizations. At the same time, most organizations need to be even more focused on external stakeholder relationships.

One local affiliate of a national network in Texas took this challenge very seriously. Its funding historically had come mostly from special events, so it pushed to diversify its revenue sources through the cultivation of state government funders. But it encountered a problem: the organization’s leadership did not have any relationships in the state capital. To connect itself more purposefully to government funders, the affiliate actively recruited board members with the right relationships, including the former chairman of a critical state agency. It also created a position called honorary state chairman, which rotates bi-annually to a new appointee. A succession of powerful policymakers has held the position, including the attorney general and a U.S. senator, helping to contribute to a dramatic increase in government funding.

Embracing opportunism.

Sometimes growth and scale come not from formal planning, but from flexibly identifying and responding to the right opportunities. An organization’s ability to respond to opportunities is shaped by many factors – including decision-making processes and IT infrastructure. Advance thinking and planning around goals, and the ways and means of achieving them, can allow an organization to contextualize opportunities, respond swiftly and appropriately to the unanticipated, and be “strategically opportunistic.”

Thinking exponentially.

Scaling impact is about more than replication. At Bridgespan, we have been asking the question: how do you get 100x impact with just 2x the organization? To answer this question, leaders need to think creatively about leverage – from the use of technology, to scaling leadership or sharing knowledge, that create a true ripple effect. Think advocacy, or new technology such as social networking. I increasingly hear clients and others speak of “starting a movement” as opposed to providing “just” direct service. Bridgespan’s managing partner Jeff Bradach wrote of this in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in June describing among other examples KaBOOM!, which helps communities build new playgrounds for children. In its first 10 years, KaBOOM! built nearly 750 playgrounds. But its reach was partly limited by the number of staff it could deploy to each site. Then KaBOOM! shifted from hands-on management to a Web-based platform that helps communities organize their projects. The result: approximately 4,000 more playgrounds in just three years.
But these are just three observations from my experience about scaling. What are yours?

Guest blogger Rohit Menezes works with the Bridgespan Group, where his recent client work and research has focused on youth development and place-based initiatives.

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