GiftWorks Nonprofit of the Month
Greater Cleveland Volunteers
Meet Greater Cleveland Volunteers, with its on-the-move mission of matching volunteers with agencies throughout their community. In 2008, they organized 400,000+ hours of service in the Cleveland area.

From its start in 1972 as the local host for the federally-sponsored R&SVP (Retired and Senior Volunteer Program), Greater Cleveland Volunteers (GCV) has become a broad-based volunteerism agency including several programs. In addition to R&SVP, which it still manages, it sponsors an Experience Corps tutoring and mentoring program, connects people to one-time volunteer events, and even has an amateur theater troupe that presents short plays for older adults. The agency's mission is "to improve lives and strengthen the Greater Cleveland community through volunteerism and service."

Development Director, Alan Goldman, joined Greater Cleveland Volunteers in 2006. Faced with data housed on numerous Excel spreadsheets, he launched a search for affordable fundraising software. Seeing an ad for GiftWorks in The Nonprofit Times, he contacted existing GiftWorks customers for their opinion of the program, and shortly afterwards became a GiftWorks user. What he especially likes about GiftWorks is the layout - "all the information you want to see is right there on one screen." He also appreciates the fact that it's easy to train a volunteer to use, even volunteers without much computer training.

Greater Cleveland Volunteers has 16 staff members, who support over 3,000 volunteers. In 2008, these volunteers provided over 400,000+ hours of service to more than 150 nonprofits, a contribution valued at over 8 million dollars.

GCV's nonprofit partners range in size from the area's two largest hospital systems to small social service agencies serving people with disabilities, providing senior housing, and rescuing animals. Often, these smaller agencies have no staff person who handles volunteers, so GCV provides the recruitment, placement, and support of volunteers.

The agency's funding sources includes federal grants, state and local government monies, grants from foundations, corporate and individual gifts, and special event fundraising. GiftWorks manages all these categories of donors. Alan adds, "I use GiftWorks not only to record gifts, but also to remind me when I need to contact funders and prospects. For that purpose, I find the Notes function really helpful."

"Now is an opportune time for volunteerism - with the economic crunch and the President's push for more volunteering," notes the agency's Executive Director, Joy Banish. "From my perspective, we need to show what great work volunteers do, and how they make it possible for our partner agencies to provide services to people."

Read Alan Goldman's clever poem about how GiftWorks helped Greater Cleveland Volunteers.

To learn more about GCV, visit their website at www.greaterclevelandvolunteers.org.

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GiftWorks Staffers Unite for United Way Day of Caring


GiftWorks employees plus spouses and kids participated in Lancaster's United Way Day of Caring one Saturday this month. Some of the agencies they served were: Lancaster County Library, United Way offices, Southeast Lancaster Health Services, Schreiber Pediatric Rehab Center, Clare House, and Lititz Recreation Center. Tasks performed included: sorting rubber ducks for a fundraiser, sorting books, stuffing envelopes, cleaning a storage area, and painting a playground. "We truly believe in the power of nonprofits and wanted to show our support with hands-on help," says Mary Pat Donnellon, GiftWorks CEO.

For the record, some of the agencies we helped are GiftWorks clients; some are not. We're equal opportunity volunteers!

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:: Consultant's Corner ::
Using Technology to Boost Volunteer Involvement and Satisfaction
Ellie LaCasse, retired development professional and retired GiftWorks staffer, offers some thoughts on how to boost your volunteer program.

Volunteers may be your organization's greatest resource. In fact, volunteers bring something invaluable to your organization, more than just their dollars, but their time, their interest, their loyalty and their ability to evangelize your mission to others in your community. Committed volunteers, helping with your work and representing you in the community, are priceless. Indeed, volunteers are likely to become your most consistent and, in time, major donors. But if you're not using technology to reach them and coordinate your volunteer efforts, you may be missing a large and growing segment of potential volunteers.

Today's volunteers are no longer content to sit and stuff envelopes on Thursday afternoons. They put a high-value on their time and abilities and want volunteer assignments that tap into those talents and reward them with the satisfaction of having provided meaningful work. To succeed, you must develop ways to find, fulfill, and satisfy your volunteers.

You may not be a sophisticated computer or web user, but you can be sure that the majority of your volunteer audience, both in your community and beyond, is using technology for their personal and business lives. Here are a few ways that you can use technology to improve volunteer efforts for your organization.

Collect specific data about your volunteers. It is critical to a not-for-profit's success to have systems in place for managing volunteer skills and abilities, as well as volunteer jobs and opportunities. At a minimum, you should invest in some type of a database, such as GiftWorks, for these areas. There is no other effective way to manage this important function. Some donor management and fundraising software for not-for-profits have the ability to help you manage your volunteer list and match your organizations needs with your volunteers' talents and interests for a win-win scenario.

The place to start is with your own donor and volunteer database. You may think you can do this using a simple spreadsheet, but you'll soon find that database software like GiftWorks is much better suited for managing volunteer records and locating volunteers who match multiple criteria. Some database software is easy to use; some more complicated. In managing volunteers, you need a place to record specific information on volunteers and potential volunteers. Data you'll want to gather includes:

Name:	Sally Smith
Address:	100 Main Street, Anywhere, ST
Home Phone:	555-555-5555
Mobile Phone:	555-555-5555
Email:	name@emailaddress.com
Area(s) of interest:	working with children
Specific skills:	woodworking, event management, gardening
Availability/hours:	Thursdays, Saturday
Volunteer history:	Sally has worked with our organization for 7 years
Social network:	MySpace (www.myspace.com/myspaceaddress)

When Sally Smith tells you she also loves to garden and has organized garden shows in the past, you may note that in Sally's file, and when you are looking for someone to work with children for a gardening event three months later, you'll be able to locate Sally by searching under "working with children" or "gardening" or "event management." If you aren't organized to keep track of Sally's volunteer interests in this way, you can be sure another organization will get to those talents first.

Match volunteer talents with organizational needs and activities. Just as important as recruiting volunteers is retaining them. With your volunteer database, you'll need the ability to manage projects and volunteer jobs and match volunteers to jobs and projects. You'll also need to be able to record what jobs people have performed in the past, what skills they possess that you have and haven't used, and check that you've found a job for every volunteer you can. If you keep your database up to date, you'll even be able to brush up on John Jones' volunteer history before you meet him for lunch.

Schedule and track projects. Use your software to manage jobs and opportunities as well. You don't want to schedule five volunteers to help with an activity and then only have enough work for two of them. All five will feel that you and your organization are unorganized and perhaps their skills could be better used elsewhere, and be reluctant to sign up again. In the example above, Sally Smith may run the children's gardening event and require one volunteer per five children. If you're expecting 25 children, you'll need five volunteers to work with them, plus volunteers for refreshments. But 10 volunteers may be pushing things a bit!

Keep in touch with your volunteers. Likewise, you should use your software system to contact volunteers. While this is most easily done via e-mail, you might also consider a personalized, handwritten note to those people connected to an event, or even a regular volunteer newsletter. You can alert committee members of an approaching meeting, updates on an upcoming event, or let them know how many pledges have registered for your upcoming walk-a-thon, transmitting not only information, but motivation and a sense of community. You can even put out a call when there's a sudden unforeseen need for emergency food preparation or data entry or help with a move. Make sure to acknowledge the importance of volunteers to your organization and community with fresh success stories.

The web is a perfect place to identify like-minded people or organizations for potential collaboration, or to scan for new ideas and better ways of doing things. Following are a few ways that web technology can help your efforts.

Recruit volunteers continually. Recruiting new volunteers can start on your own website. Provide on-line job descriptions, sign-up/registration, volunteer outcomes on your site, and keep them up-to-date. Create a special volunteer section where you highlight and thank your volunteers. Publish a monthly report of volunteer hours. Make your newsletter available. Look for volunteers to help maintain and build capabilities for your website (hint: they may be some of your younger volunteers!).

The web also offers many ways to reach a wider audience. You can list your organization on volunteer-based websites such as VolunteerMatch.org or IdeaList.org. These sites are designed to match volunteers' interests and availabilities with the needs of not-for-profit organizations. If you're looking for teens, or if you don't need someone with specific talents in your geographic area, you can specify these particulars in your search. What better way to go beyond your existing audience and reach into new territory?

Personalize your volunteer requirements. Both on your site and on the Internet, you have the opportunity to put a real face and voice to your appeal. You can use photos, maps, even voices or music to bring your story to life. Unlike the limitations of a paper brochure, you can vary and change your image(s) daily in order to provide more depth and breadth to your message.

Link to social networking sites. Many not-for-profits are expanding their reach even more boldly with the use of interactive web tools like MySpace and Facebook, blogs, and discussion groups. Maybe you even have a volunteer who might like to tackle this kind of outreach. This is a great opportunity to build an online community, to engage more people in your cause, resulting not only in volunteers but donations and increased awareness. The power of these interactive sites is based on people reaching out to their friends with something important to them ("Say, Tom; check this out: the art museum is planning an architectural exhibit in the spring!").

By using the available technology, whether a database or more substantial donor management and fundraising software for not-for-profits, you can better direct your volunteer efforts, ultimately increasing the level of volunteer satisfaction with your organization.

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