This week on the Nonprofit Jenni Show, we chat with Abby Lehman, the Director of Development and Partnerships at Photo Start. Abby explains how her nonprofit has been able to thrive during the pandemic thanks to skilled volunteers who provide vital digital marketing and fundraising support.
What is a Skilled Volunteer?
Your nonprofit may offer volunteer opportunities that almost anybody can participate in, like walking dogs at your animal shelter or packaging up school supplies for kids in need.
But skilled volunteer opportunities require volunteers to use their professional skills to complete more specialized tasks for your organization. For example, skilled volunteers could help you build your nonprofit’s website or work with your board to develop financial forecasts.
In this week’s podcast episode, Abby shares how skilled volunteers support her nonprofit and offers advice for leaders who want to start working with volunteers at a deeper level. These were some of my biggest takeaways from our conversation:
1. Find out what motivates each individual volunteer.
Abby has found that her skilled volunteers appreciate different types of experiences and recognition, including opportunities to:
Try working in different departments or areas of the organization
Practice new professional skills and build their resume
Receive letters of recommendation based on their volunteer work
Earn volunteer hours for their job or school
When you learn what motivates your volunteers, you can match up their goals with appropriate volunteer opportunities.
2. Streamline your volunteer screening, onboarding, and feedback processes.
Photo Start connects with skilled volunteers through their Catchafire profile because this platform does a lot of the hard work for them. Catchafire facilitates the volunteer engagement processes by providing project description templates, offering recommendations for communicating with your volunteers, and creating a transparent system of accountability for everyone involved.
In our interview, Abby also describes the volunteer portal Photo Start has developed to standardize volunteer onboarding and training.
3. Consider what information each volunteer needs to learn before working on their assigned project.
I asked Abby how she finds balance in respecting volunteers’ time while also requiring enough training that volunteers can actually produce useful work for your organization. Abby acknowledges that different volunteer projects may require more training than others.
With each project, Abby suggests, “Figure out whether this project requires sustained commitment — Is this something that requires historical knowledge and continuity, or is this something that can be done fairly quickly? … Ask about how much somebody really needs in order to accomplish this task.”
Listen to the Full Episode
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Jenni’s Favorite Resources This Week
Join Jenni’s Book Club — I extended the application deadline for my June book club study until Wednesday, May 19. If you don't feel like you can commit to engaging in a Facebook group or our live Zoom event at the end of the month, you can still follow along with our book study via weekly emails! Sign up for our book club updates at tinyurl.com/jennimail.
Podcast About Pro Bono Partnerships — In episode #76 of the podcast, I chatted with Danielle Holly, CEO of Common Impact, about how nonprofit leaders can forge productive pro bono partnerships with businesses. Search for episode #76 wherever you get your podcasts to listen!
Jenni’s Nonprofit Photo Guidelines — Want to take photos of your skilled volunteers in action to use on your website or social media? Download my list of best practices for taking and sharing high-quality photos.
My once-per-week email newsletter — Get a short summary of every podcast episode plus free marketing and fundraising resources!
Connect With Jenni
I’d love to hear from you! What challenges are you facing at your nonprofit right now? Schedule a call with me to pick my brain about your marketing, development, or leadership questions.
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