 Welcome to the nonprofit show. We're so glad you're back. And today we have with us a brand new guest joining us, but not new with the company. So Bloomerang, Melissa Pinard is here, really glad to have you joining us, Melissa, to talk to us about best practices as it relates to volunteer management. So I'm excited to have you on and we'll be asking you to share a little bit about yourself in just a moment. But before we do that, we want to remind all of you who we are. So hello to you, Julia, Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, and I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And Julia and I are so very honored to have the continued support from our amazing presenting sponsors, including Bloomerang, where Melissa joins us from, also the American Nonprofit Academy, fundraising academy at National University, nonprofit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. 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So today's guest, as I shared just a bit earlier, joins us from Bloomerang. In fact, from Canada. So really excited to have you here. Melissa Pinarad, Head of Product Management, Bloomerang Volunteer, welcome to you. Thank you. It's so great to be here. And first and foremost as well, thank you to the nonprofit show. And thank you to all of your listeners out there too for the opportunity to share. It's an up-loop privilege to be here. So thanks for that. So my name is Melissa Pinarad. I am the Head of Product Management here at Bloomerang Volunteer and actually the previous co-founder of that product. So I have been living and breathing the volunteer management problem for well over a decade now. And I have seen a wide range of how organizations go about solving this problem and how they go about kind of tackling things, right? So I've learned a lot of great tips over the years and I'm just really looking forward to sharing them with you today. I think this is fascinating. And so congratulations and good for you because it's one thing to understand the ecosystem of volunteer management, what's in it for everybody, but how we get to the best practices so that everybody is happy, the organization is successful, the volunteers feel successful and the management of it really, I've seen so many times when people walk away and they're like, oh, this organization, this was the worst or others that are like, oh my gosh, if I win the lottery, it's going 100% to them tomorrow, right? I mean, it seems like it's two ways. So first and foremost, on the best practices, for number one, you say create job descriptions. Talk to us about that, Melissa. Yeah, absolutely. So job descriptions play a key role in the volunteer recruitment process specifically. So the more specific you get with them, the more it will allow volunteers to kind of self screen and it will also give them a stronger purpose and understanding of what they're supposed to be doing, right? So when I say self screening, I mean, it gives them enough important information that the volunteers will know whether or not they're interested or can even perform the job before they even sign up, right? That self screening will help eliminate any friction points on the administration side and save a lot of time. Okay, I'm fascinated because I was thinking when they walk through the door and they sign in, then that's where you're communicating this. But you're saying way before that. I mean, Jared, I interrupted you, but do you see this, Jared? You know, I've started to see this more and more and I value this greatly because it brings clarity, right? To both sides of the party. But my question was going to be, Melissa, does the word job description confuse them? Are they expecting a paycheck at the end of this? Good question. Yeah, so yeah, yes and no. Job description really is all about the role that they're going to be performing. And when you're creating, if you want to call them job descriptions, role descriptions I've heard in the past too, you really want to touch on some key points on those. So for example, obviously you want to outline what the job entails, right? Maybe include how many hours, how frequent you're going to want their help. Does it require certain qualifications, certifications or skill sets, right? Maybe you even want to talk about who they report to. Some things I've seen too outlined in these are, is it labor intensive? Like, will it require you to lift a certain weight limit? Maybe they're working at a food bank and they have to carry around those heavy food campers. Can they even do that? Some of them have age restrictions. We mentioned earlier, where is it happening? Is it virtual, is it indoors, outdoors? Is it accessible? Can you access it by public transit, right? So also in those descriptions, whether they're job descriptions, role descriptions, recommendations on what to do, what to wear, maybe they need to wear clothes, toe shoes, what they need to bring as well. So water, sunscreen, you know, maybe they're working in a garden and need to be in worker gloves, but just getting really descriptive with the recommendations. Now, what I've also seen in the past with these are some additional motivators. And these are kind of what I call the cherry on top, where they're a little bit harder to write, but they go a long way. And this is all about addressing how their work in this job is gonna contribute to the organization's objectives and goals and really try and hit on what will they personally gain out of the experience working for your organization, right? Because they're not giving their money, they're giving their time. What are they gonna receive in return? Oh, I love that. And that's what I have seen that's missing, right? Like I don't see that piece of it, Melissa. So I really appreciate you doing that and talking more about it. Tip number two is interesting to me too. And it's about valuing your volunteers. And I'm curious because what you just said about like the benefits of this, what are they going to learn? How is this going to impact the mission? Talk to us about valuing our volunteers because I'm really curious if that does tie into what you previously just said. A little bit actually. So most likely everyone in your organization appreciates your volunteers and what they do for you, but do your volunteers know that, right? So valuing your volunteers is all about cultivating and fostering volunteer relationships. That's something that takes time. It takes multiple key touch points, right? And they need to feel appreciated, which is kind of like the secret sauce to volunteer retention. You can't just interact with them once, think them once and be done with it, right? It's just like any relationship it's give and take. So they keep giving their time and you as an organization need to keep giving back to them in other ways, right? And there's all sorts of strategies and stuff I can hit on. If you guys are interested in hearing about some of those ideas that you can take a little bit further. Yeah, tell us what one of those might be. Yeah, give us a taste of that because that's a fascinating discussion I think to really drill down on. Yeah, okay, I get so excited about this because there's so many things you can do but even something as simple as a mass thank you email even after they've finished their work or completed a task. Something as simple as remembering their birthdays or even their anniversaries with the organizations calling them out. One very obvious one is if you ever see them in person, thank them, that actually goes a very long way. Tracking their hours worked and communicating their overall impact on a regular basis. It's really motivating for people, you know, you could even give out certificates when they've achieved a certain amount of hours worked within the organization. I think to something like callouts, so calling them out so that everyone across the organization even the paid employees know who they are or those appreciation posts on social media. I've seen some organizations even go as far as hosting award ceremonies at the end of the year or even just calling out and celebrating National Volunteer Week every year. It always happens in April, that's something you could do too. One thing I do wanna mention too is when you think about kind of all of those little micro tasks and those micro interactions is what I call them, managing those across an entire base of volunteer that can kind of seem overwhelming, right? If you have a base of 800,000 volunteers, how do I kind of make sure I'm hitting all of those touch points? And I will say, however, that there are volunteer management systems out there including Bloomerang Volunteer that kind of help with automating some of those really key touch points so that you can still focus on your mission but also keep that thankfulness more personal, more meaningful, more frequent too. So it's not just a full-time job of making sure everyone's getting hit, right? You can kind of automate all that. Great tips and I just wanna state that many of them did not cost a lot, if anything at all, right? I love the, and it seems so simple but when you see a volunteer, think of volunteer, right? And some of the organizations I've had the privilege to work with, Melissa, they give them a different color lanyard or a different color t-shirt and so they really stand out. And how amazing if like during the day, right? They received multiple thank yous from staff members and that goes such a long way. So a lot of the tips you said really didn't cost a lot of money. Yeah, it's like you can just breed that culture within your organization too and just teach everyone that that's a thing. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I love it. Melissa, talk to us about this one because this is also one of those interesting things that I don't think enough of us do or if we do it, it happens very quickly. And you say best practice number three, provide that volunteer with an orientation. Is that something that is done digitally or in person before they get there? I mean, what does your structure look like for that? Yeah, okay. So short answer is both but for this one, when I think about volunteer orientation I like to put myself in the shoes of a first time volunteer, right? So sometimes it can be very intimidating to show up to a job site that you've never been to, right? You don't know anyone, you don't know where to go. You're not really sure how to do the task at hand. And it can be a really uncomfortable situation for some people. And as an administrator, if you have multiple people in the same boat kind of showing up at the same time not knowing what to do or where to go things can get disorganized pretty quickly and can actually turn into a little bit of a liability issue, right? Like think about that situation happening in a warehouse with heavy machinery, right? So putting a plan together ahead of time and inviting volunteers to an orientation before the actual work starts is a really good idea, right? So again, this could be that virtual training session. There's a lot of value in providing that session in person. I find there's always extra motivation too for people to come in when there's food involved. So I've seen a few organizations drive people with a little pizza party to come on in. But yeah, that training session you'll have a chance to walk people through their roles, their responsibilities, rules, expectations even hone in on the organization's mission, right? And kind of echo that. You'll also be able to use that time to walk them through the volunteer management system you're using or even the workflows that you've set up as an organization to kind of track them and their attendance. But I think for me personally, I do like the in-person if you're able to and it's not an actual virtual training session. It's super important because volunteers will be able to ask their questions ahead of time which will boost their confidence, right? But also what I love about this is that it will give them a chance to meet their other team members. They'll kind of get to know people ahead of time. And then most importantly, obviously you're gonna avoid that first day disorganization of people not knowing what to do or where to go. Melissa, are you seeing some organizations automating this? So really creating perhaps an evergreen orientation video or maybe some elements, right? Can be automated into a video to shorten the orientation perhaps an in-person orientation. What are you seeing for that? Yeah, so sometimes I see people pre-schedule virtual session kind of like a Zoom meeting. It's like, okay, everyone tune in on this date. We're gonna do a live presentation. Other ones I have seen automate through a learning management system. So they actually have to go through steps and training and fill out quizzes and responses on the rules that they're about to do too. So yeah, there's different ways you can take it, but. Great, yeah. I love it. You know, I think it's such an important thing too, especially in an environment where you might have disclosure issues such as HIPAA, working with minors, safety issues and domestic violence, stuff like that. I mean, this would be the time where that gets addressed or would it be more back in the job description? How do you see that play out? So usually part of the screening process, if there is something that would require, you know, a background check ahead of time, usually the background check should be approved before they even attend the training session and start learning about some of those more in-depth materials on the role. Yeah, that's good advice. Yeah, that's really good advice. And then what about, I think for the fourth one, we're gonna talk about defining goals and how we measure success. Is that mentioned in the orientation or when does that come into play? Good question. That is a great question actually. Me personally, yes, I would love to hit on that in the orientation, but I think it would go a much further way if you kind of sprinkle those impacts over a regular frequent occurrence to the volunteers. But just like any volunteer program, right, or any program at all in your organization, it needs to be clear, the goals need to be set and you need to figure out a way to measure what success looks like, right? So from a volunteer perspective, six-tricks could include things like volunteer satisfaction ratings. Maybe you wanna survey them and see how they're doing and how they're actually feeling about everything. Overall attendance rates, right? Like it's one thing to have people sign up, it's another thing to have people show up, right? So how many people are signing up versus showing up? Anything to do with recruitment really? So how many net new volunteers did you bring into the organization? How many are repeat volunteers, right? Retention rates are really important. One thing that's also really important too is measuring your turnover rates. So understanding who isn't coming back and why, right? So on average, actually I have a little stat here from the Volunteer Management Progress Report from 2023. On average, across organizations, 15.4% of volunteers become inactive or churn within the organization every month. So how can we measure that and how can we figure out how to get that number reduced, right? The highest level? Yeah, that's important because I know many of our friends in the nonprofit sector really rely on their volunteers to fulfill their mission. So we need to keep them happy for sure and keep them coming back. Yeah, and I think too, once you figure out the metrics that you wanna define, it's gonna better help you communicate your overall impact to your volunteers too, right? And having them achieve that mission. Yeah, Melissa, I love the direction that you're taking us on. And one of the things that just kind of struck me with is that I'd love to get your feedback on that. Is there a difference in some of these best practices for like a one and done, a group, a one day action versus an ongoing, you're gonna be here every Tuesday from four to six. I mean, do we look at these types of volunteer experiences in a different way? Oh, absolutely, yeah. So having something that can kind of break those types of volunteers down there is what we call episodic volunteers that show up sporadically throughout the year. Then you have your hardcore continuous ones who've been with the organization for 10 years. You have your one-time volunteers, right? Maybe you're running one-time fundraiser where you need to kind of bring in a lot of people, maybe some volunteer groups too. So breaking it down at that level and measuring those rates even, super helpful. I think, Julia, we're gonna have to have her back on. I know we're not done, but to talk completely about like donor, or sorry, volunteer retention. Yeah, I think it's a retention. I think so too because I'm struck by that. And I know, I mean, like intuitively I can sense that, but to really apply metrics to it and to really understand how we can be measuring that, I was just reminded of a really interesting story that a CEO told me of a major food kitchen situation. And he had a volunteer that served the dinner rolls at this kitchen and he had done it for more than 25 years. And an international celebrity came through for like a media event and they said, oh, here, this would be a great photo op. You serve the rolls to the people coming through the line. And the volunteer freaked out and he said, no way, this is my job. I've been doing this for 25 years and it caused like a big brew hop. It's a good purpose. Yeah. Yeah, this job and he's like, no, I'm not, this is my job. And it was literally putting a roll on a plate, right? Yeah, yeah. It was a fascinating thing and hearing you speak about this, it really kind of made me remind, reminded me of that. Last but not least, and this is something that I would have never really put into your best practices, create a budget. Wah, wah, what's that mean? Yeah, so even though your volunteers are technically working for free, there is always an associated cost to managing humans and to successfully running a program, right? So there are certain expenses that you're gonna wanna plan for and budget for. I kind of have a list of ideas to help you think about. Some things you might wanna consider. But yeah, first and foremost, your overall tooling, right? So your chosen volunteer management system that you're gonna be using. There are things like recruitment and training materials, project materials. We mentioned this earlier, but if your organization requires background checks for certain roles, like you're gonna be working with children, that also has a cost that you'll want to consider covering on behalf of your volunteers. Not depending on the organization, sometimes the volunteers have to front that, but it is one of those little nice to haves if you can cover that for your volunteers, if you require it. And I mentioned to volunteer recognition earlier. So depending how far you wanna take that, right? If you wanna run that entire award ceremony or like a gallery or a dinner, even if you just wanna print off, those little certificates based on the number of hours they work, there's a cost to that too. Some things that people actually don't consider is the additional time that your paid staff and employees have to dedicate to that volunteer program. There's an associated cost there. And then again, just back to managing humans supporting volunteers. So they're working really long hours. You might wanna consider food, drink, travel budget, any reimbursements they might have. T-shirts is huge with volunteers. You're gonna see volunteers wearing all sorts of T-shirts. All those kind of little expenses add up too. And I actually do have a statue that I wanna share from that Volunteer Management 2023 status report. The average budget size set aside for volunteer management programs for organizations is between $5,000 and $10,000. For volunteer. For organization. For organization. For the whole program, yeah, okay. Great, that is a good stat to know, yeah. And because it's not very much money for what the effect is, but at the same time, Melissa, it can be a real big expense if you're not doing it right. Right, exactly, yeah. I mean, it seems like one of those things it's like looking at what's gonna be the, you know, the outcome of the ROI of that. Super, super important. You know, I'm fascinated that you have dedicated yourself to this concept. We talk about volunteerism so much. I think we have a culture in North America that involves volunteerism. It's in our schools. It's in our, you know, faith centers. It's within our social groups, but we don't talk about the management of it very much. Which, Jared, don't you think that's odd? It's, of course, it's very odd. We tend to do things a little backwards, but you know, this makes me think about the Giving USA report that came out, right? Which shockingly was saying that giving is down, but volunteerism is up. And so here we are talking about this. And so the management of this, the culture of gratitude for this, super, super important. Yeah, they wanna feel known. They wanna feel appreciated, informed. And ultimately, they wanna have a good experience with your organization, right? And that all factors into your overall retention rates. Yeah, and there's so many social benefits to volunteerism as well, right? Like natural endorphins come from this. You know, it increases self-esteem and sense of community, sense of belonging. So there's a lot of really good benefits. One of the things we talked about, probably in the green room, Julia was about the multi-generational conversations we've had over the course of the four years here at the non-profit show. But we see a variety of generations. And again, Melissa, I'm gonna have you booked for like six more shows after this. Yes, please. Oh, I'm so excited, yeah. To talk about how to attract, how to engage and how to retain multi-generations, right? And what does that look like? Because there's so many individuals that want to be of service at all ages. Mm-hmm, yeah. And if you think about the types of people who are volunteering, right? You have your kids who are probably in high school and need to collect some volunteer hours and they're very digitally savvy. And then the opposite side of that, you have people who are coming into retirement to have all this free time on their hands, but maybe they're not as digitally savvy as some of the younger generations. And how do you accommodate for that too? And yeah, even in Bloomerang Volunteer, we have all sorts of features and stuff that can accommodate both ends of the spectrum too. Well, you have been a fascinating guest. I'm just going to recap the best practices that you shared. Number one, create the job description. Number two, value those volunteers that you do have. Provide an orientation is number three. For four, we have define and measure those goals as well as success. And then the fifth one is that budget. So Melissa, you have been fantastic. I'm Melissa Pinard, head of product, sorry, yes, product management, Bloomerang Volunteer, bloomerang.com. Please do check her out and the system. Really fascinating and a really big tool that makes up the entire ecosystem of our sector. So thank you. Yeah, it's been a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, we are getting you back on team, the nonprofit show. So just be, be, Please do, I'm so ready. There's so much to talk about. There is, and we need to be talking about this. And so this is super cool. I have really learned a lot from you, Melissa. So thank you again so much. I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit academy and been joined today by my trusty sidekick, the nonprofit nerd, Jared R. Ransom. Again, we're here talking to amazing folks like Melissa because of our wonderful partnerships that include Bloomerang, American nonprofit academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd, and nonprofit tech talk. You know, these are the folks that join us day in and day out so that we can have these amazing conversations. Yesterday it was about staffing nonprofit labor. I mean, it's different every single day. And so this has really been an amazing thing to get these folks to see the value and what we're doing and get their support. I am really excited about so many of the things that you talked about today. It renews my spirit in how we can harness the goodwill and the intention of our communities. But yet it's not a guarantee. We need to steward it and we need to work it and to understand it. So I loved your approach, Melissa. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was a lot of fun. Hey everybody, as we end every episode of the nonprofit show, we'd like to remind you to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.