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A great tactic for scaling impact at your nonprofit related to how you inspire volunteers for your organization.
On Scaling Impact we’ll interview leaders in strategy and impact at mission driven organizations that have dramatically increased the level of impact at their organizations.
Hi everyone, Sean here. Today I want to talk to you about something you can invest in at your nonprofit to help you grow and scale impact. That category relates to the volunteers that partner with your organization and what you can do to inspire them.
Now I saw this reiterated as well in a very popular book in the space called Forces for Good written by Leslie Crutchfield. It talks about the importance of inspiring the volunteers that partner with your organization and what that might mean for your ability to grow and scale impact.
Now, I can speak from experience because I've lived this experience myself personally. When I originally was working back in corporate numerous years ago, the organization I was working for had a dedicated day at least each year that everyone that worked at that organization could choose to leverage to partner with different impact driven organizations to donate their time to help them fulfill their mission. As part of the first time that I experienced this when I was working for this company, I had the opportunity to choose from numerous different organizations to partner with on that day, and I ended up finding one that was that really interested me, the organization was called Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia. And what that organization did its mission was to help basically family members and members of the community that were unfortunate victims of violence in and around their home or their community. So that mission to me, seemed critically important, and it was obviously taking place in the city of Philadelphia. That's where they were doing their great work.
I had the opportunity to choose an event that they were hosting, which was a block party type event for the children and the families of a neighborhood in the city of Philadelphia. Now, I found that event through the organization I was working for, and then I completed the entire event. Because they gave me that opportunity and they connected me to that organization and it was an amazing experience of mine. Got to just go to the city enjoy and see kids and the families all hanging out together and doing really cool things. Just having a lot of fun. There was this bounce house that I was responsible for, you know, managing how many kids could be in it at any given point in time, which as you can imagine, all kids want to be in a bounce house at the same time. So it was fun, organizing that effort and they were climbing all over and it was just like they were having a blast. I was having a lot of fun. It was really cool. They also did cookouts and face painting and there was all kinds of really cool stuff going on. So overall, just a really great day and I was super grateful to have that experience. It left a really lasting impression on me to meet the members of the organization of Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia, as well as the clients that they help and serve and just other members of the community that left such a significant impression on me experiencing and in that way that I ultimately a little bit later I investigated what it might take to become just a more consistent supporter of the organization besides donating and I wound up serving on their board for a number of years, which then enabled me to help them in different ways.
I was able to take the things that I was good at tech and software and things like that and help them with a number of those areas where they needed it. And that helped continue to drive and scale the impact the organization was capable of and many of those things are still in place even still today so the point of this story is that me having the opportunity to experience the organization in that way to become immersed in that experience and to see what it is they do really left a lasting impression on me and inspired me to want to get more involved and help them with other things that I could as well also.
So that's the what I refer to as kind of hacking impact strategy that I wanted to share with you here today is that if you are able to immerse volunteers whenever possible, in the full experience, so to speak of what it is your nonprofit organization does. Who it helps why that's so important. It might just inspire a percentage of that population to get more involved and help you with your larger mission for scaling impact.