Yes, You Can: Build the Case for Strategic Volunteer Support

You know that sinking feeling when another volunteering initiative gets shelved because "it's not a strategic priority"? Or when your board questions why you need resources for volunteer engagement when "volunteers are free anyway"?

You're not alone. Volunteer Engagement Professionals everywhere face the same challenge: convincing senior leadership that volunteering deserves strategic attention and investment.

Here's the truth: you absolutely can influence those decisions. Your task is to position volunteering as what it truly is: a strategic asset that drives organisational success.

Why This Matters Now

Today's volunteers have high expectations, whilst organisations face pressure to demonstrate impact and reduce costs. This creates unprecedented opportunity for strategic volunteer engagement, but only if leadership understands its potential.

Your job isn't just managing volunteers, it's helping leadership see that strategic volunteer engagement drives measurable organisational outcomes.

Making the Strategic Case

Start with their priorities, not yours.

Before presenting volunteer statistics, understand what keeps your CEO awake at night. Funding cuts? Community engagement? Service quality? Volunteer engagement intersects with all these concerns, but you need to connect those dots explicitly.

Volunteers can, for example, provide surge capacity during busy periods, continuity during staff transitions, and community connections that paid staff can't replicate.

Instead of discussing volunteer satisfaction scores, talk about retention rates and recruitment costs. Instead of highlighting activities, demonstrate measurable community impact that volunteers uniquely enable.

Volunteers help organisations do more with existing resources, exactly what leadership wants to hear.

Influencing Strategies That Work

Successful influencing starts with credibility. Ensure volunteer engagement runs efficiently, your data is accurate, and your reports are clear. Leadership needs confidence you can manage what you're asking them to support.

Speak their language. If your board focuses on strategic plans, show how volunteer engagement advances specific objectives. If they worry about compliance, demonstrate how structured volunteer management reduces risk.

Use success stories strategically. Choose examples illustrating strategic value: volunteers whose community connections led to major partnerships, or volunteer feedback identifying service improvements, saving thousands annually.

Make specific asks with clear rationales. Instead of requesting "more support for volunteers", ask for "investment in volunteer management software, reducing administrative time by ten hours weekly and improving retention by 15%". Specific requests with projected outcomes are harder to dismiss.

Building Internal Alliances

You can't influence senior leadership alone. Build relationships across departments and demonstrate how volunteer engagement supports colleagues' work. Help fundraising teams understand how volunteer advocates influence donor relationships. Show communications teams how volunteer stories enhance marketing.

These allies become your advocates when decisions get made. Document collaborative successes and share them widely — internal case studies showing cross-departmental benefits help leadership see organisation-wide value.

Timing Your Advocacy

Choose moments carefully. Budget planning periods offer natural opportunities to discuss investment in volunteering. Strategic planning processes provide openings to position volunteer engagement as capability and capacity building, not just a cost.

Don't wait for perfect conditions. Regular updates consistently demonstrating strategic value build understanding over time. Brief conversations about volunteer contributions to current priorities can be more influential than formal reports that might not get read.

Consider external validation. Invite board members to volunteer events where they see impact firsthand. Share sector reports highlighting innovation. Arrange peer conversations with leaders who've invested strategically in volunteer engagement.

Overcoming Common Objections

"We don't have budget" usually means they haven't seen sufficient return on investment justification. Present scenarios showing cost implications of not investing versus potential returns from strategic support. Highlight the hidden costs of existing weaknesses in volunteer engagement — constant recruitment, training repetition, reputation damage, etc.

"Volunteers should be grateful just to help" reveals misunderstanding of contemporary volunteer motivations. Share research about engagement drivers and competition for volunteer time. Position volunteer experience investment as market positioning.

"Our volunteers seem happy enough" often masks complacency. Present benchmarking data, exit interview insights, or opportunity costs of current versus strategic approaches.

Your Next Steps

Start small but think strategically. Identify one area where improved volunteer engagement could deliver measurable benefits that leadership cares about. Develop a clear proposal with projected outcomes, resource requirements, and success metrics.

Build your influence skills. Read organisational reports to understand leadership priorities. Engage with senior colleagues about their challenges and identify volunteer engagement solutions. The better you understand organisational dynamics, the more effectively you can advocate.

Remember that influence is cumulative — each conversation and successful initiative builds credibility for bigger asks later. Stay patient but persistent.

Most importantly, believe in your influence. You understand volunteer engagement in ways that senior leadership doesn't. You see opportunities they're missing and solutions they haven't considered. Your role isn't just implementing decisions, it's helping them make better decisions by understanding the strategic potential of volunteering.

Yes, you can influence these conversations.

Yes, you can secure strategic support.

The question isn't whether you can — it's what you will advocate for first?