‘If nonprofit leaders want highly skilled volunteers to come and stay, they need to expand their vision of volunteering by creating an experience that is meaningful, develops skills, demonstrates impact, and taps into volunteers’ abilities and interests’ The New Volunteer Workforce, Stanford Social Innovation Review Winter 2009.

Working with the volunteer initiative of Grameen Foundation called ‘Bankers without Borders’ has given me important insights into the critical components of a volunteering program. The key stakeholders in the program include the volunteers, the project managers, organizations from where the volunteers are sourced, communities being served etc.

The key components of the program may range from

• Market research & community needs assessment.
•  Marketing of the program to prospective volunteers, source organization
• An internal marketing plan for staff.
• Putting together policies, procedures, process flows in place feeding into the program manual.
• Training modules for volunteers and project managers.
• Interviewing, screening & selecting volunteers.
• Ongoing supervision & management.
• Volunteer database management.
• Recognition & volunteer development.
• Measuring outcomes & evaluating the process.

A much needed approach is that planning around volunteering must take place within the overall context of human capital. One needs to take stock of job functions and identify areas that will be most appropriately served by paid or unpaid talent.

Measuring the total impact of volunteering is another important factor in presenting the efficacy of volunteer programs. This can be done in different ways for instance if a non profit did not use volunteers, what it would have to pay someone to perform a particular volunteer function? An organization should divide the total volunteer value by the total volunteer investment to determine the return on investment for every $1 spent in executing its volunteer management strategy.