posted
02/11/12
A Message from Our President
I am the first to admit that we simply did not have the time to put together a January newsletter. January broke all monthly records by far in terms of usage and new organizations registering for our service. Even though our numbers are growing, we are still committed to providing exceptional customer service and website performance to all of our users, whether they be on Deluxe or Free accounts.
With this in mind, we are using this February newsletter to announce a couple of exciting new features as well as dispel a few myths about our service. Most importantly, I want to reach out to those who felt that our service was too difficult to set up, too difficult to use, or missing important features. Please contact us at support@yourvolunteers.com so that we may work with you to improve our service.
Sincerely,
John Wagoner
President
New Feature: Constant Contact® Integration
Quite a few of you have contacted us asking for a feature allowing you to synchronize your volunteer list with your existing Constant Contact® account. It certainly was not easy, but we have just released a beta of the new feature included on both the Deluxe and Free accounts. The integration will allow you to utilize all of the features of Constant Contact® including their email tracking. Many thanks to all of you that requested the feature and we appreciate your patience as we put it together.
New Feature: Public Calendars
By popular request, we’ve added the ability for you to provide your potential volunteers with a public calendar. You have the choice of embedding the calendar on your own website or simply providing them with a URL to view a calendar without having to first register on our site. The calendar does have a filter to only show shifts that still need volunteers and a popup with shift information will appear when they click on the shift name. Public calendars are available on both the Ongoing Needs and Special Events accounts in both the Free and Deluxe versions.
Myth #1: Errors on our site are because we are trying to push you toward the Deluxe products
Errors on websites happen. We who create them laugh in the faces of rocket scientists and mock the simplicity of their work. We keep a folder on our network with screenshots of big companies with website errors as evidence that it’s not just us. To be clear, we do not and have never used errors that you may encounter to nudge you towards paying for the Deluxe account. If you report the errors to us, we will do our best to ensure that they never happen again.
Myth #2: The purpose of our screening process is to sell you on our deluxe accounts
99% of the organizations that use our service stick with the Free versions and we are happy to provide them to you. As many of you who have been with us for a long time know, we are terrible at upselling and simply do not want to do it. The screening process is quick, and if you provide enough information when you request a Free account, you will not be contacted to verify the information.
Myth #3: The purpose of our screening process is really so that we may prevent certain legitimate groups from using the service
We do not discriminate against any legitimate group who operates within the confines of the law as long as they use volunteers. Period. All organizations, regardless of your politics, your geographical location, and your raison d’etre are welcome to use our service. The purpose of the screening process is primarily to ensure that you are a legitimate organization and not someone who would do harm to our service or who would use our free online volunteer management system to do illegal activities.
Myth #4: The YourVolunteers profit model is unsustainable and we will be out of business soon
We received a message from a user stating that a sales person from another online service told them that they shouldn’t bother setting up an account with us since we would be out of business soon. As the kids say, LOL. We have been providing an online volunteer management system since 2004. YourVolunteers is not our business – rather, it is one product of Primary Key Technologies, Inc. and we have been providing cost-effective web, software, database, and mobile app development services since 2002 to organizations around the world.
GiftingWishes.com Update
As mentioned in our December newsletter, YourVolunteers partnered with NPcatalyst in Reno, NV to create an online charity fundraising service at GiftingWishes.com. Since our launch, we’ve had more than US$10 million in wishes posted and interest from large organizations to create branded solutions for their fundraising efforts. As many nonprofit organizations have learned, the current world economy makes it difficult for individuals to make large donations. Gifting Wishes helps a charity to crowdsource funds for specific needs. The service is free for charities to post wishes and they receive donations directly through PayPal or Google Checkout.
posted
02/10/12
We are very happy to announce that we have launched our first beta of our Constant Contact integration feature. We have received quite a few requests for the feature since some of our users have been managing separate lists on both services. Now, a quick click of the button will ensure that your email list on YourVolunteers is synchronized with a list on Constant Contact. This will allow you to utilize all of the features available in Constant Contact including email tracking.
Image: sheelamohan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
posted
12/15/11
Copyright © 2011 by Primary Key Technologies, Inc. and brought to you by YourVolunteers.
2012 is nearly here and given the slow recovery of the world economy, your organization may be looking to improve upon its 2011 volunteer strategy to either expand or better utilize an existing volunteer program. We offer a few tips to consider when building a new volunteer strategy.
Volunteer Involvement
CVS Northhamptonshire makes a great point about the importance of involving volunteers in the development of a strategy (“Developing”). The last thing that you want is a mass exodus of your existing, dedicated volunteers because of changes to your program. Keeping your volunteers aware of upcoming changes is vital to keeping your volunteers happy. If you plan to expand your program, volunteers need to know that their efforts were not lacking. Additionally, if the duties of the volunteers will be expanded to cover more of what paid employees used to do, it’s important to know that the volunteers agree that the new duties are appropriate.
The Recruiting Plan
We’ve previously offered tips on how to recruit volunteers, but as a volunteer manager, you still have to decide whether you will be interviewing all applicants yourself, if you will be asking trusted volunteers to help, if you will be accepting all who want to help, and if necessary, what your budget will be for background checks. Consider spending a significant amount of time developing precise job titles that let your potential volunteers know exactly what your potential volunteers will be doing. Expecting that all volunteers will be willing to spend their time peforming all of the tasks that your organization has is a quick way to lose said volunteers. It should be noted that giving a volunteer position the wrong job title is the Seventh Deadly Sin of recruiting volunteers according to VolunteerPower.com (McKee).
Expanding the Virtual Volunteer Program
We have recently offered some tips on managing a virtual volunteer program and have received good and bad feedback. Good from virtual volunteers and bad from volunteer managers. When developing a volunteer strategy, it may be easy to think that expanding or creating a virtual volunteer program might be the answer to your organization’s limited space, to your recruiting challenges, and to finding the specific skills that may be mostly contained in individuals who are not generally available during your office hours (e.g. web developers). However, as we mentioned in the post and as we received in feedback, working with virtual volunteers may be challenging since you do not have them onsite for a set number of hours and they may be distracted by other work, by their families or by the excellent season of television. If you will be adding a virtual program to your volunteer strategy, be sure to remember that you may need to include generous timelines and you should definitely seek to recruit more volunteers than you think you need.
Changing the Way that You Manage Your Volunteers
It should be crystal clear that we are partial to one particular free online volunteer management system, but we are fully aware that there are other systems available. If you will be expanding your volunteer program and you do not currently use a system, you should consider including the use of a volunteer management system in your plan. In addition, if you are expanding your program because your organization has fewer paid employees, it’s likely that your duties will be expanded beyond the management of volunteers. More volunteers mean more management, more data to enter, more spreadsheets, more emails, more phone calls, more training and more more more more. Online systems allow your volunteers to come to a website and enter their own information and to help manage their own schedules. If their updated schedule information is available online, you will less likely to be contacted when a volunteer has a question.
In leiu of or in addition to using a volunteer management system, you may want to consider creating a hierarchy where a volunteer reports to another volunteer (with a proper title, of course). However, as many of you know, volunteers are not always willing to follow the rules of traditional hierarchies (McDuff et al, 2009) and may want to report directly to you anyway to get faster answers and to move into different volunteer roles.
Build in the Ways to Thank Them (or Not)
There have been numerous articles, posts and books dedicated just to the topic of thanking volunteers published in the past few years which reflects the recent emphasis on gratitude. Nonprofit organizations are now competing with the increasing volunteer needs of schools, libraries, parks departments and for-profit corporations. Volunteers need to know that their work is appreciated and word will spread that your organization is one that understands the value of their service.
However, in an article he wrote for Nonprofit World, Nick Levinson makes the case that you should forget the “thank you” and you should instead take full advantage of what they have to offer and encourage them to grow and learn like you would a paid employee (Levinson, 2004). This could mean setting aside funds for educational programs that would benefit both the volunteer and your organization. Further, Levinson states that volunteers are self-motivated and generally do not expect a plaque or certificate and would prefer the constant recognition of their contributions rather than just an annual dinner (Levinson, 2004).
Works Cited
“Developing a volunteer strategy.” Retrieved 12/14/2011 from the website of CVS Northamptonshire at http://www.cvsnorthamptonshire.org.uk/.
Levinson, N. (2004). What’s Wrong with “Thank You?” Plenty. Nonprofit World.
MacDuff, N., F. E. Netting and M. K. O’Connor. (2009). Multiple Ways of Coordinating Volunteers
With Differing Styles of Service. Journal of Community Practice.
McKee, T. The Seven Deadly Sins of Recruiting Volunteers. Retrieved 12/14/2011 from the website of VolunteerPower.com at http://www.volunteerpower.com/articles/7Sins.asp
Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
posted
12/05/11
We were happy to have assisted the Nevada Youth Empowerment Project (NYEP) in a website redesign project. It’s hard to take too much credit, though, because the staff of the organization did an exceptionally good job at building the content and look of the site themselves.
NYEP does something amazing for our Northern Nevada community and is an organization that deserves the support of those of us who live in the region. From their new website:
NYEP opened it doors to serve the needs of this homeless teen population. NYEP provides its own unique residential programming to develop older teens to self sufficiency. Our housing program is designed to replicate “real life”. Teen residents sign a lease and commit to the Community Living Program (CLP) which is intended to move them to stability and self sufficiency. Our programming includes safe housing, food, clothing, life skills training and daily interaction with trusted positive adults. Upon entrance to the CLP, teens are typically homeless, lack their high school diploma, are unemployed and lack an income, are not involved with their community in a meaningful way and do not posses the skills necessary to influence these factors.
posted
12/05/11
Happy International Volunteers Day!
To all of you who work each day to make your communities and the world a better place, YourVolunteers thanks you. We are constantly impressed by the work that so many of you do which is why we are continuing to build upon our system to help you to help others. After asking for suggestions that would make our system better, we’ve received a lot of great responses that are now on our work lists. Please keep those suggestions coming, and read down below where we descibe one of the upcoming changes involving volunteer availability.
Sincerely,
John Wagoner
President
New Service: GiftingWishes.com
YourVolunteers collaborated with NPcatalyst in Reno, NV to create a new service that allows nonprofits to create an online wish list for free and then receive donations for those items directly. The setup process is simple and donors send funds directly to your organization via Google Checkout. Donors receive the satisfaction of knowing exactly how their money will be used. Just this morning, the new service received a fantastic review from the Southern Arizona Nonprofits blog. You can read more about GiftingWishes.com on its website.
New Feature: Add a YourVolunteers Button to Your Website
Want something that gets more noticed than a text link? You can now add a YourVolunteers button to your website. After logging in as an administrator, go to the new Button Gallery to get the HTML code to paste onto your website.
New Blog Post: Be Kind to your Virtual Volunteers, for a Nerd May be Somebody’s Husband
On this International Volunteers Day, we should not forget about those volunteers that you may not see, but still contribute nonetheless. This blog post details the experiences, good and bad, of a virtual volunteer and how you can best structure the relationship that you have with them. The blog post is available here.
Coming Soon: Volunteer Availability Changes
One of the most powerful features of YourVolunteers, and one that differentiates our system from other ones that are online, is the fact that volunteers can enter their availability and administrators can see who is available for an assignment a particular task. However, many of you have told us that you would like to see this step eliminated. If we eliminate the step, we’d get suggestions asking us to add an extra step where volunteers enter their availability. What we’ll be doing is making the step optional. Those organizations that do not choose to use the availability feature will then have volunteers simply routed to the calendar or list of all shifts to build their schedules. We’ll have the new process up and running before our next newsletter.
Coming Soon: Ala Carte Pricing
We’ve received numerous suggestions that $59 per month is too much for some organizations to pay but they would really like to use some of the features of the Deluxe Packages. For example, some organizations do not mind the ads on each page, but would like to send schedules by email. We’ll be adding ala carte pricing to our service before the next newsletter. Thank you for the suggestion.
