by Jayne Cravens

Measure the ROI of your nonprofit's volunteer engagement by grading each volunteer activity

Some organizations want to evaluate ROI (return on investment) regarding volunteer engagement by comparing the cost to the organization for a particular volunteer activity versus how much that volunteer activity brings in in terms of financial donations.

I don't think that's a good evaluation method, in part because you do NOT know, for sure, which volunteer activities have resulted in donations. For instance, there may be no way to prove that, as a result of a group of employees from the local Amazon warehouse volunteering at an event, the nonprofit that was supported received a donation from Amazon two months later. There may be no way to prove that, as a result of regularly seeing social media posts featuring photos of volunteers engaged in activities to support a nonprofit that a person decided to donate financially to that nonprofit.

I also think it's a lousy method because the value of volunteers is rarely shown via a dollar value. And I refuse to measure volunteer value by assigning a dollar value to each hour a volunteer contributes, for the reasons I've written about again and again.

Here's a method I think is a much better way to judge the ROI of volunteer activities, to help in your discussions about what acitivites are worth continuing and what activities might need to be ended. You can do this evaluation by yourself, as the manager of volunteers, or you can do this as a team exercise with a variety of employees and lead volunteers. And you absolutey can and should revise these questions based on your own experience with volunteers.

Below are questions to ask regarding EACH volunteering activity. Each question reads as if the answer is a “yes” or “no.” But instead, you grade the activity with a number:

Absolute, or at least highly probable YES	Mostly YES	Weak Yes or somewhat Yes & No	Somewhat probable NO	Very probable NO	Cannot even guess or absolute NO
5	4	3	2	1	0

The higher the overall score, the more likely it is that the volunteer activity should be supported.

The lower the overall score, the more the volunteer activity needs to be assessed and its value to the organization improved.

But note: it is IMPOSSIBLE for every volunteer activity at your organization to score a 5. The goal is NOT for every volunteer activity to score 60 (or close to it); rather, it’s to see which activities aren’t getting any ratings of 5 on any criteria. Plus, there may be a volunteer engagement activity your organization will NEVER eliminate because it is too central to your mission or identity: for instance, if your nonprofit is focused on bringing volunteer mentors together with students who are struggling in school, you aren't going to end that volunteer engagement no matter what score that activity ends up with (the assessment below WILL, however, help you see ways to improve the program). What is a good total score for a volunteer activity? THAT IS UP TO YOU. Quite frankly, I'd keep any volunteer activty that gets a "5" for number two, Are the volunteers doing something that must be done in order to meet the mission or vision of your organization? no matter how it does in the other categories. Maybe you will choose to weight these questions differently. What I'm trying to get staff to do is to honestly think about the value of different volunteer activities. Maybe it leads to getting rid of a volunteer activity. Maybe it leads to the organization being more deliberate in encouraging volunteers to share photos on social media. Maybe it changes the minds of some employees who don't understand why volunteers are doing this or that.

Also note: the numbers for volunteer activities, and the order presented, are not an indication of importance.

And a final note: you may not have data to determine answers exactly. Your answers may be more about staff perceptions than actual data. That's fine for an initial assessment, but also use this tool to help you determine what data you should be collecting about volunteer engagement so that you can answer these questions based on data, not feelings.

Remember: you do this evaluation for each volunteer activity, NOT for your overall engagement of volunteers. That means, for instance,

if you were a Habitat for Humanity affiliate with a ReStore, you would do this evaluation for your regular core group of home-building volunteers, then again for your one-time/episodic individual home-building volunteers, then again for corporate groups that engage in home building, then again for volunteers at a one-day neighborhood revitalization event, then again for volunteers in your ReStore with ongoing roles, then again for one-time/episodic individual volunteers in the ReStore, then again for your board of directors, etc.
if you were a nonprofit community theater, you would do this evaluation for the actors in your productions, or just one production, then again for the volunteers who regularly work backstage, then again for your volunteer ushers, then your volunteer administration staff, then again for the volunteers that helped at your gala fundraising event, then again for your board of directors, etc.

Volunteer Activity Name or Description:

	Evaluation Questions:	Score
1	Are volunteers doing a needed task that would not get done otherwise, for whatever reason (lack of enough employee time, lack of expertise among employees, etc.)?
2	Are the volunteers doing something that must be done in order to meet the mission or vision of your organization?
3	Are the volunteers learning about those they are serving, or the cause they are serving, and why the organization is important to the community or to the world in general, and could this learning affect how they think about certain groups or certain issues, and perhaps, even how they vote?
4	Do people or organizations fund your organization specifically to fund this volunteering activity? Or have you attracted grants because of this activity, or because volunteers are engaged in this activity?
5	Does this volunteer engagement activity reach people from demographics your nonprofit is not reaching otherwise, or needs to be more focused on/engaged with?
6	Do volunteers frequently / regularly recruit new volunteers?
7	Do most volunteers engaged in this activity donate financially?
8	Do at least some volunteers share about their volunteering experience on social media?
9	Does this volunteer engagement activity demonstrate that the community is invested in your organization and its mission? (the demonstration can be because of the activity itself or even just the number of volunteers)
10	Does this volunteer engagement activity help build trust in the community regarding your organization and its programs?
11	Have this volunteer activity resulted in media coverage in the past - and has the potential to do so again?
12	Has this volunteer activity attracted VIP participation (electioned officials participating, local "celebrities" participating, etc.)?
13	Have you received a corporate donation because of volunteer engagement by a corporate employee or group of employees?
14	Is this volunteer engagement activity photographed, and are the photos something that help show the value of your volunteers in your outreach materials (social media posts, annual report, grant proposals, etc.)?
15	Are volunteers in this activity self-managed, requiring very little employee supervision or observation?
16	Does this volunteer engagement activity save the organization a substantial amount of money, or generate income for the organization (such as volunteers leading classes that people pay a fee to you in order to participate, or volunteers pay to participate in the volunteering activity)?
17	Do the volunteers enjoy what they are doing for your organization in this specific volunteer activity?

You may note that I don't have the question "Does this volunteer activity help volunteers learn a skill or explore a career?" That's a question to ask if your organization has, as a part of its mission or vision, a goal of helping people learn a skill or explore a career. That a nice benefit for volunteers, but this evaluation is focused primarily on benefits regarding volunteers to the organization. But, again, feel free to add questions if you think it will help in evaluating your ROI regarding volunteer engagement. Please adapt this to YOUR needs.

You may also note that I mention volunteers paying to participate. Isn't this unethical? No - I believe there are scenarios where it is acceptable for people to pay to volunteer.

Have more ideas for questions to ask to help evaluate the ROI on a volunteer activity? Share them here.

If you use this matrix at your organization, contact me! Let me know how it worked out and what you had to change to make it work for your organization. And if you think there's anything I should add, or clarify, also let me know!

Also see:

The Volunteer Management Audit. by Susan J. Ellis. The link goes to a page where you can download this book for free.
Recruiting Volunteers
Recruiting volunteers is easy - and, sadly, too many nonprofits recruit volunteers before they are ready. Please don't click on this link unless you have prepared policies, written out tasks and roles, written a mission statement for your volunteer engagement, etc. - all of which is detailed here.
Creating Roles & Tasks for Volunteers
A key to retaining volunteers is having roles and tasks well-defined and IN WRITING, so that expectations are clear. This is yet another step to undertake BEFORE you start recruiting volunteers - and if you don't, don't be surprised when you can't keep volunteers and your volunteer engagement flounders. Added challenge: this is NOT the primary responsibility of the manager of volunteers; a variety of employees and leadership volunteers should be creating tasks. This resource not only has ideas for roles and tasks for volunteers, but also the steps necessary to encourage (require?) staff to do so.
Examples of online volunteering roles and activities (virtual volunteering).
The most comprehensive list anywhere.
How Volunteers Can Help With Fundraising Activities.
Also the most comprehensive list anywhere.
How Volunteers Can Support the Person In Charge of Volunteer Engagement
The person in charge of volunteer engagement at a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school or other civil society organization or mission-based program primarily recruits and manages volunteers that are supporting other staff: the program staff, for instance, may need mentors for clients or people to clean up a public space or to foster animals. The fundraising staff may need volunteers to staff a donor event. But the person in charge of volunteer engagement should also be thinking about how volunteers can help with volunteer engagement - with recruitment, onboarding, training, support and recognition of volunteers. This resource provides information on how and why to do that
Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential "tech" volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such short-term projects. This is a list of short-term projects for "tech" volunteers -- assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a couple of months to complete.
One(-ish) Day "Tech" Activities for Volunteers
Volunteers are getting together for intense, one-day events, or events of just a few days, to build web pages, to write code, to edit Wikipedia pages, and more. These are gatherings of onsite volunteers, where everyone is in one location, together, to do an online-related project in one day, or a few days. It's a form of episodic volunteering, because volunteers don't have to make an ongoing commitment - they can come to the event, contribute their services, and then leave and never volunteer again. Because computers are involved, these events are sometimes called hackathons, even if coding isn't involved. This page provides advice on how to put together a one-day event, or just-a-few-days-of activity, for a group of tech volunteers onsite, working together, for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), community-focused government program, school or other mission-based organization - or association of such.
Creating One-Time, Short-Term Group Volunteering Activities
Details on not just what groups of volunteers can do in a two-hour, half-day or all-day event, but also just how much an organization or program will need to do to prepare a site for group volunteering. It's an expensive, time-consuming endeavor - are you ready? Is it worth it?
Make All Volunteering as Accessible as Possible: advantages for your program & how to do it

Return to my volunteer-related resources

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