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Many conservation organizations mobilize volunteers for events, but find few of those volunteers become long-time supporters. This seems counterintuitive – these are people who make the effort to show up, learn about the organization, and probably share a commitment to its mission. But on average fewer than half volunteer again (according to our research) and less than 20% ever donate.
Why? One of the biggest reasons is that the event organizers are overwhelmed with the task of managing the event, and don’t have time to connect personally with participants.
The problem shows up in various ways:
- Events may be very large, such that organizers don’t have time to make personal contact with the participants. (Organizations that run smaller, more personalized events seem to have better success generating volunteer donations and better volunteer return rates.)
- Organizers don’t have time to record the names and contact information of their participants, or if they do, they don’t enter them into their database until later. Usually, they are just too busy and have to move on to the next event as soon as the current event is done, and the information is lost.
- They don’t systematically cultivate those volunteers, inviting them to attend another event or take the next step in the organization.
- They don’t track volunteer history and may not recognize long-term volunteers.
- Volunteer organizers turn over frequently. When they leave they take with them their internal rolodex of valuable contacts and much of what they learned. The next organizer starts from zero.
A database or client relationship management (CRM) system like WaterGrass can help, and here’s how:
Facilitating Volunteer Registration: CRMs can manage client registrations with online signups, and also handle paperwork like instructions or waivers. When users sign up online into a CRM, their information is automatically recorded in the database and doesn’t need to be entered manually later. (Stand-alone volunteer management systems like Eventbrite or SignUpGenius also have online signups, but their information isn’t submitted to your organizational database so that you can track and cultivate them. Importing the lists into your organizational database is an extra step, which may or may not happen.)
Letting Volunteers Manage Their Own Events: If the CRM has a feature like the WaterGrass Volunteer Portal, volunteers can manage their own list of interests, cancel their participation, review their work history and even log their own hours. Some volunteers take great pride in seeing their contribution grow, and really appreciate being able to track it themselves. Organizers like having up-to-date interest lists.
Targeting Invitations to the Right Volunteers: CRMs can track volunteer interests, allowing you to easily send invitations to volunteers who have indicated interest in a particular type of event.
Making it Quicker to Process the Participation List: Some CRMs have forms that facilitate the entry of volunteer hours. The WaterGrass “Process Participant List” reduces the work necessary after the event – when most organizers are eager to just go home. This makes it more likely that names and contact information of “walk-in” participants gets into the CRM right away. Thank you messages can go out on time.
Finally, a computerized volunteer management system structures the work so that new employees can adopt the same system and continue to enter data in a uniform way. It maintains and builds the organizational history which makes outreach easier, and it keeps the data clean and reliable.
All this amounts to more time for organizers to focus on the volunteers, to enjoy the work that they do, and to build connections between volunteers and the organization.
Do you organize volunteers? Reserve your spot for the Using a CRM to Manage Volunteers webinar series, which begins with a free introductory webinar on March 20th at 1 PM Eastern Standard Time: