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Strategic volunteer engagement recognizes those who volunteer as vital partners in community service, performing work critical to an organization’s ability to advance its mission and accomplish its goals. Organizations that embrace strategic volunteer engagement prioritize and invest in supporting volunteers to ensure success. Strategic volunteer engagement provides tangible and long-term benefits for funders and nonprofits—it’s good grantmaking and good business.

Strategic Volunteer Engagement in Practice
Strategic Volunteer Engagement is most successful as a shared responsibility—when all involved are invested in its success and sustainability. Strategic volunteer engagement requires resources, support, and leadership, just like any core business function.
When appropriately invested in, strategic volunteer engagement:

• Increases an organization’s capacity
• Enhances funder ROI leading to lasting, positive change
• Strengthens community

When nonprofits actively engage their community as volunteers, they are more effective at meeting their missions and supporting their operations. The research demonstrates the following benefits:

• Improved fundraising. Volunteers donate to charity at twice the rate of non-volunteers.8 Research clearly shows that volunteer engagement is directly related to increased funding for an organization. People give their money where they give their time.

• More adaptable, sustainable, and scalable organizations. Volunteer engagement helps nonprofits meet their goals and advance their mission, vision, and strategy, by tapping people power, lived expertise, and community knowledge. Organizations that involve 50 or more volunteers and leverage their time and skills effectively are significantly more adaptable, sustainable, and capable of scaling.

• Leveraged impact of grant and budget dollars. When engaged effectively, volunteers augment an organization’s financial and in-kind resources, producing greater value for each dollar invested. Funder investments and organizational budget dollars stretch farther when a nonprofit engages volunteers in mission-focused activities.

• Increased impact and awareness. Volunteers can enhance the impact of a nonprofit’s work by bringing in new skills, resources, and perspectives that complement the work of staff. They also can amplify awareness of the nonprofit’s work when they take their experience back out into the community.

• Stronger community ties. Thoughtful volunteer engagement supports nonprofits’ work to become more equitable and better reflect the needs of the community. It provides a vehicle for diverse community members to work together and see the mission in action.