12 Steps to Building an Engaged Volunteer Base (Introduction)
Building a reliable volunteer base is crucial in a nonprofit where staffing opportunities can be limited.
We all know that staffing a nonprofit can be a struggle for many reasons — there isn’t much time or designated budget to market the position, there is too much red tape from a grant monitor or governing agency and lower salaries make it hard to attract top talent. Because of all these reasons and many more, committed volunteers become the life blood of a healthy nonprofit.
However, developing and maintaining a committed volunteer program can seem daunting and may have been unsuccessful in the past. Every volunteer has other obligations — a job, a family, other philanthropic priorities and the list goes on and on. But truly the key is understanding that a volunteer cares about your organization, wants it to meet its mission and craves to help it get there by using their strengths, despite their other commitments.
Creating a volunteer program based on strengths-based engagement is vital to its success. It is just like building an organization or a company based on the strengths of the staff. You are no longer asking for what you need, but letting your volunteers help build out the strategy drive the execution.
Taking this approach within a business has been proven to increase engagement, stimulate growth, spur new ideas and encourage innovation. Nonprofits deserve these same benefits.
Asset-Based Community Development
Asset-Based Community Development is a step in this direction by thinking deeply about the assets of a community. ABCD was developed in the early 1990s at Northwestern University. It is different from Needs-Based Community Development because ABCD focuses on identifying the skills and opportunities within a community instead of simply focusing on the issues present in an area.
This takes steps in a very interesting direction — that people are the answer. This strategy is all about community mobilization and how set up people with certain gifts and strengths to aid their own community that needs those gifts and strengths.
There are several guiding principles for ABCD
- Everyone has gifts: everyone has unique gifts and wants to use them to help their community
- Relationships build a community: people must engage with one another to build community
- Citizens at the center: citizens should be part of the solution, not just recipients
- Leaders involve others: a few leaders alone cannot solve all of a community’s problems
- People care: people want to help if you’re willing to listen
- Motivation: people have distinct passions, pay attention to what motivates others
- Listen: decisions should be made by listening to others
- Ask: ask questions instead of trying to solve a problem in a silo
- Inside-out organization: community members are those driving action
- Institutions serve the community: organizations should take the lead and then release to the community
ABCD Success
Roanoke Area Youth Substance Abuse Coalition, RAYSAC, was developed in 1985 by a group of concerned citizens that wanted to find a solution for the youth substance abuse in their community. They began as a small group of individuals who would meet regularly to discuss the issues present in their area. This group has grown to over 50 invested leaders in the community who come together monthly to discuss how they can use their skills and networks to continue solving the alcohol and drug issues impacting teens.
Over the past 30 years, they have brought together educators, prevention specialists, treatment professionals, community and governmental leaders, law enforcement officers and business leaders. Since then, issues associated with substance use and abuse have dropped and awareness of these issues has grown.
RAYSAC is still driven by one full-time employee and support from a local prevention organization. Their work is driven by the needs of the area and the skills that they can provide by rallying and motivating community members with the gifts and investment in a healthier community.
A Step Further
ABCD lays a great framework, but just by simply following those steps won’t get you to a volunteer program that stays engaged. The 2 crucial pieces of success are
- Inspiration
- Strengths
Inspiration comes from one’s passion about a cause, a movement, an issue and their perceived ability to add to that cause, movement or issue.
Strengths are inherent in a person and can be one’s ability to communicate, to focus, to connect with someone one on one. These strengths can then lead to gifts like a knack for social media, an ability to fundraise or develop a web page. Just because someone lives in a community with needs and has a certain skill, does not mean that they will have the proper motivation to be an engaged volunteer.
So what does this look like?
Stengths-Based Engagement in Action
Right after I graduated from college, I started working at a nonprofit called Youth of Virginia Speak Out About Traffic Safety. The main focus of YOVASO is to reduce teen traffic crashes and fatalities by educating, encouraging and empowering students to become leaders and advocates. When I started working at YOVASO, I decided to teach myself design and revamp the campaign materials going out to our schools. This is when I saw the true value of design.
In 2014, as I was transitioning out of YOVASO and into my marketing role at a B2B company, I decided that there had to be a way to bridge the gap between design professionals and the nonprofit community.
From that, Make a Mark was born. Make a Mark started as a 12-hour design and development marathon benefiting nonprofits. You can read more about it in my article, From Nonprofit Advocate to Designer and Back.
In 2016, we established a 10-person Advisory Board, something that I had been avoiding since the idea for Make a Mark entered my mind. You ask many nonprofits what keeps them up at night and they will say their board.
But the Make a Mark Advisory Board has been full of energy, excitement and a huge driver for the whole organization. I attribute much of that success to strengths-based engagement.
Stay tuned for next week’s blog post where we break down the 12 Steps to Building an Engaged Volunteer Base.
For more info, subscribe to the newsletter or send an email to me at hello@letsmakeamark.org.
