Chapter 5: Managing Your Volunteer Program

Once you’ve designed your program, outreach calendar, recruited volunteers, and set up your pools, it’s time to roll out your new platform. Here are best practices for equipping volunteers and keeping things running smoothly all year long.

Put together a coaching session for your volunteers

We’d love to help you set up a plan to roll out your program! Contact your Customer Success Manager at EverTrue to help strategize and structure content so that you will be prepared to train volunteers.

Launching the Program

Start small. Pick a group of “beta testers” and invite them to join Volunteer by EverTrue. If you already have a fundraising program, pick a few of your most dedicated ambassadors to join the platform before you invite your entire volunteer base.

This will help you work out the login process and develop answers to common questions. Not only that - but the initial commitment from this group of people who know how to use this platform will be immensely valuable as you continue to organize Volunteer programs in the platform. You’re essentially growing a group of users who can help spread the word to other volunteers when it’s time.

Build momentum as you near your go-live date by letting volunteers know an invite is coming. Get your already signed-on ambassadors to help spread the word, too, and share their excitement.

Organize training sessions/webinars

As you invite your volunteers to download the app and join the platform, host at least one live webinar to train your volunteers. This is a great way to keep the momentum going, walk through common questions, and create a training video that you can use moving forward. 

Provide Training Videos and FAQs

Follow-up your training kickoff event by sharing the broadcast, our volunteer-facing help site, and any program-specific handbooks or FAQs you’ve prepared.

Bonus: Give volunteers the handbook via a custom link within the app. Log into console.evertrue.com/app/notifications and add a link to your handbook there.

Plan Regular Check-ins and Promotions

You can easily track which volunteers have logged into their pools in EverTrue. While we’d love to tell you that 100 percent of volunteers do what you ask 100 percent of the time, that’s not the case. They’ll need regular reminders to access EverTrue, download the volunteer app, and to work on their assignments.

You can also use these reminders as times to share progress to-date (which volunteers can see in EverTrue) or talk about the great things happening on campus. You’ll build momentum with each outreach.

If you have regular conference calls with volunteers or check-ins with pool leaders, make sure to include reminders about Volunteer by EverTrue as part of the agenda to continue to drive adoption.

You can see how many times volunteers have logged in and their last login time in the admin screen of Volunteer Management.

Over-Communication is Key

Volunteers are busy and they miss things. So even if you’ve shared an outreach calendar or a task list at the beginning of the fiscal year, they may have forgotten all about it just a few weeks into the campaign.

Before every important date or push, be sure to give volunteers a heads up and articulate what you’re asking them to do. Deadlines work as great motivators, so don’t hesitate to set a date for their tasks.

Set Goals, Use Competition as Motivation

Most volunteers are goal-oriented. Create goals for them that align with your initiatives.

Setting goals around dollars raised in a certain time period, the amount of interactions logged, or even establishing competitions between different pools can keep your volunteers engaged and accountable to work as an extension of your office when it matters the most.

You can also incentivize your volunteers with giveaways. Who doesn’t love a t-shirt from their alma mater or seats on the 50-yard-line at homecoming? Create raffles or drawings for early adopters, volunteers who have secured gifts, or those who have connected with the most assigned prospects.