Effective Volunteer Engagement
Recently I read an interesting article in e-Volunteerism on how best to ensure the effective engagement of volunteers within our organisations and programmes. The key question asked was "how should the volunteer engagement in our organisation be structured to best support our services and programmes?"
An interesting concept on having a specific strategy for engaging volunteers within our organisations rather than the often organic "hit and miss" or traditional methods.
Some questions you should be asking within your organisation are:
- How can we best unify multiple programmes that engage volunteers?
- How can we best maximise our volunteer resources?
- How can we best leverage volunteer talent to support our organisation's overall priorities?
Viewing volunteer engagement as a strategy, rather than a programme, shifts the focus to a more partnership model between the volunteers and other staff in achieving your organisational mission. Instead of measuring success in terms of how many volunteers are recruited, how long they stay, how many hours did they contribute, success could be measured by the impact of the volunteer efforts.
Having a strategic focus for volunteering within your organisation means that volunteering is clearly seen as a means of achieving all strategic priorities and is then more in line with what volunteers today want through their volunteering experience - meaningful work with a measurable impact!
If you need further advice or just to discuss further please contact us.
Cheryll Martin
General Manager
