Knowing whether and how an organization engages volunteers reveals a great deal about that organization - facts that any funder, accrediting agency, or donor would want to know. When your organization seeks donations or grants, does it include relevant information about volunteer involvement to bolster its case?
Head counts and tallies of hours served are of least importance, as these do not explain who volunteers are and what they actually do. Present data to your executives in ways that actively support fundraising. For example:
- Specify what percentage of volunteers come from the immediate community or population the organization serves, to indicate the level of support or acceptance from those in a position to know firsthand. Also, if you engage volunteers from your target client population - whether youth, seniors, people with disabilities, or others - it demonstrates a willingness to work with as well as for the people you serve, and gains the opportunity for useful input and perspective.
- Effective engagement of exceptional volunteers shows the ability to attract and manage all the resources available to the organization. When volunteers bring a wide variety of skills, beyond those already available on staff, they enable you to diversify the scope of service programs considerably.
- The presence of student interns from various universities and disciplines is an indicator of the high professional standing of the staff.
- Explain how volunteers experiment with or pilot test ideas that are not yet ready to be funded. What an organization asks volunteers to do on the behalf of its mission demonstrates creativity and determination to find new solutions.
- Vibrant volunteer engagement that includes people of all ages and demographic diversity, and that is able to recruit new volunteers all the time, shows that the organization is staying current.
Conversely, prospective donors can be influenced in the opposite direction:
- If the volunteer corps is totally different from those served or lives far away, might there be issues of local community acceptance?
- A moribund volunteer corps that is "aging in place" with no new participants may be a significant warning sign of other concerns.
- The absence of volunteers (except, of course, on the board of directors) may indicate poor fiscal stewardship, since the organization's leaders see building the payroll as the only way to staff the services. There are some of us who will not donate money to an organization unwilling to involve volunteers beyond special events and clerical work. Shouldn't this be of equal concern to foundations and government granting officials?
In the last analysis, donors and funders should be helped to understand the philosophy of volunteer engagement of an organization. Most important is to differentiate those who involve volunteers because they are "cheap labor" from those who have a vision of volunteers to expand the capacity of the organization to do the most effective work.