Beyond Hours: Communicating Volunteer Value to Your Board

Here's an irony: Board members are volunteers themselves. Yet, volunteer engagement strategy and impact often receive surprisingly little attention in the boardroom.

When volunteer engagement does make it onto the agenda, the conversation frequently centers on familiar numbers: How many volunteers did we engage? How many hours did they contribute?

That's a missed opportunity. Organizations that engage volunteers strategically are better positioned to expand capacity, adapt to changing needs, and sustain and scale their impact. Helping the board understand that value can build support for—and investment in—a robust volunteer engagement strategy.

So how do you get the board's attention? Start by talking about what the board already cares about.

Boards are responsible for ensuring that organizations fulfill their missions while remaining financially sustainable, strategically focused, ethical, and accountable to the public. Don't ask the board to care about volunteer engagement as one more issue. Show how volunteer engagement advances the issues already on its agenda.

1. Finances: What Are We Getting for Our Investment?

Boards are accustomed to asking whether investments are producing results. Volunteer engagement should be part of that conversation.

Go beyond reporting the estimated dollar value of volunteer hours. Calculate Return on Volunteer Investment (ROVI): What does the organization invest in recruiting, training, supporting, and recognizing volunteers—and what value does that investment generate? Use this template to calculate your organization's ROVI.

Then look even further. Track the connections between giving time and giving money. How many donors also volunteer? How many donors volunteered before making their first gift? How do volunteers expand your network, introduce new supporters, or open doors to partnerships? (And if you can't access your own data, share some national data about the overlap between giving time and giving money.)

2. Mission: What Do Volunteers Make Possible?

Sometimes volunteers are viewed as competing with programs and participants for limited resources. Volunteers require staff time, technology, training, and support. Why not direct those resources elsewhere?

Answer that question by connecting volunteer engagement directly to mission.

Show how volunteers extend your reach, allow more people to be served, expand access, strengthen relationships, or improve the quality of services. And don't just report that 500 volunteers contributed 12,000 hours. Explain what those hours made possible.

Did more students receive individualized support? Did more families access services? Did community members receive follow-up that staff alone could not provide? Did the organization reach neighborhoods it could not otherwise serve? (Leveraging such technology as Better Impact can help you tell that story, of course, and VQ offers templates to help as well.)

3. Employee Engagement: Do Volunteers Add Work—or Build Capacity?

This is an important question, especially at a time when employee burnout is high and retention challenging.

Poorly planned volunteer engagement can become one more responsibility for already overwhelmed employees. Strategic volunteer engagement should do the opposite. Volunteers can help address backlogs, extend services, contribute specialized skills, and tackle projects that otherwise remain on the wish list.

But don't assume that's happening. Train staff to partner effectively with volunteers—and then ask them.

Are employees who work with well-supported volunteers able to focus more time on higher-priority work? Do they have greater capacity to accomplish their goals? Do volunteer partnerships affect job satisfaction or the ability to focus on mission-critical responsibilities?

4. Public Trust: How Do Volunteers Connect Us to the Community?

At a time of growing public skepticism toward institutions, volunteers can be a powerful bridge between an organization and its community.

Volunteers aren't simply unpaid helpers. They are community members choosing to invest their time, skills, relationships, and credibility in the mission. They bring community perspectives into the organization, extend its networks, serve as ambassadors, and demonstrate that the organization's work is rooted in the community.

Tell that story through a community-centered lens. How does volunteer engagement benefit the people you serve? The organization? The volunteers themselves? The broader community?

Keep counting volunteers and hours. Those numbers still have value. Just don't stop there.