February 19, 2019– Austin, Texas – Personify, Inc. (“Personify”), the market-leading provider of technology solutions for associations and nonprofit organizations, today announced that the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) is its first client to build its operations strategy with the full Personify Platform including Personify360, Personify Community, Personify Hub, a2z Events and Wild Apricot.

NASSP, the nation’s foremost organization of school leaders and home to the National Honor Society (NHS), has been a Personify client since January 2010. The organization engages more than 45,000 principals, assistant principals and other school leaders annually in membership and programs. Personify sits at the core of NASSP’s operations and staff depend on it daily to process thousands of transactions including membership, subscriptions as well as sales orders. In addition, NASSP leaders use Personify to make data-driven decisions to drive the organization forward.

“NASSP is truly committed to building an active and vibrant membership base to empower, educate and connect schools and student leaders,” said Sarah Schmall, Vice President of Client Success at Personify. “They continue to make technology investments that allow them to be at the forefront of the association market and provide tremendous value to members and constituents.”

To improve visibility across the organization, NASSP recently added Personify Hub to its technology stack. An integration platform as a service (iPaaS), the Hub will allow NASSP to streamline data flow and workstreams across multiple sources including Salesforce, Phone2Action, Personify Community and Core Achieve LMS.

While NASSP’s recent addition of the Hub is designed to improve internal operations, the organization has long trusted Personify to create a meaningful experience for its constituents. NASSP leverages a2z Events by Personify to manage its national conference exhibitions. The organization engages NHS advisers in its online community powered by Personify Community. A few NASSP local chapters use Wild Apricot which will strengthen the relationships between the national organization and its state affiliate organizations. All of NASSP’s stakeholder data, eBusiness and analytics are held within Personify360, which serves as the organization’s central CRM.

“Personify’s tools support NASSP’s activities in many different ways, which places them at the heart of our operations”, said Meta Tshilombo, Director of Information Services at NASSP. “We track membership and sales transactions, run our vibrant NHS Adviser Online Community, manage our National Principals Conference exhibitions and more through the Personify Platform.”

About Personify

Personify is the market-leading Constituent Management and Engagement (CME) platform that empowers organizations to better engage their constituents, maximize revenue and optimize operations. For over 20 years, Personify has served as the technology foundation for organizations of all sizes from the largest associations, charities, YMCAs and JCCs to emerging nonprofits. For more information, visit https://personifycorp.com/.

About NASSP

The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) is the leading organization of and voice for principals and other school leaders across the United States. NASSP seeks to transform education through school leadership, recognizing that the fulfillment of each student’s potential relies on great leaders in every school committed to the success of each student. Reflecting its long-standing commitment to student leadership development, NASSP administers the National Honor Society, National Junior Honor Society, National Elementary Honor Society and National Student Council. For more information, visit https://www.nassp.org/.

The post National Association of Secondary School Principals Becomes First Client to Leverage Full Personify Platform appeared first on Personify.

Personify, Inc. (“Personify”), the market-leading provider of technology solutions for associations and nonprofit organizations, today announced findings from its Young Members 2.0: Understanding and Benchmarking the Membership Preferences of Millennials and Generation Z. The study seeks to expand nonprofits’ understanding of younger members, revisiting Millennials (born 1981-1996) whom many organizations have recently focused efforts around and including, for the first time, Generation Z (born 1997-2012).

“Recent years have seen the publication of multiple studies on how different generations interact with organizations to which they belong,” said Amanda Myers, director of product growth for Personify and study author. “However, young members continue to evolve and grow into their careers. We continue to see areas of misalignment between the expressed preferences of young members and how associations seek to acquire, engage and retain them.”

Key Findings Include:

• Membership (still) matters: Despite unlimited access to digital information, learning opportunities and tools to grow their network online, more than half of young members surveyed (51%) reported being part of an association is becoming more important than it used to be.
• Organizations should not depend on digital alone: While young members are often characterized by their use of technology, authentic, in-person communication between young members and their association is critical. Young members surveyed rated one-on-one conversations as the most influential tactic in building awareness and making the decision to join. They also play an important role in young members remaining engaged.
• Community impact is meaningful: Almost all young members report an association’s commitment to their mission is important in their decision to join an organization, with over three quarters (76%) of African American young members surveyed citing this service to the greater good as very important.
• Organizations are missing a major opportunity to make the most of events: While an overwhelming majority of young members report attending an in-person event for their association over the last 24 months, almost a third fail to receive any sort of post-event follow-up.
• Demonstrating a strong ROI on membership has never been more critical. When asked, almost half of young members report no “strong return on investment” when it comes to participating in associations. A significant number of young members also report their experience is not worthy of the dues paid. While young members understand the importance of membership, this growing membership segment has yet to internalize the value – introducing a significant, long-term retention risk.

The full report can be downloaded here.

About the Study

Commissioned by Personify, Finn Research conducted an online survey of 1,000 Millennial and Generation Z association members who reported they’re currently a member of a membership organization or have been so within the last two years. Surveys were in the field in December of 2018.

About Personify

Personify is the market-leading Constituent Management and Engagement (CME) platform that empowers organizations to better engage their constituents, maximize revenue and optimize operations. For over 20 years, Personify has served as the technology foundation for organizations of all sizes from the largest associations, charities, YMCAs and JCCs to emerging nonprofits. For more information, visit https://personifycorp.com/.

The post Personify Young Members 2.0 Study Uncovers Disconnects Between Millennials, Generation Z and Associations appeared first on Personify.

• Will anyone log in, let alone participate?
• Will our staff need to prompt every discussion?
• Will our members, of their own volition, really connect with each other?

In an interview for CMXHub, sociologist and strategist Danny Spitzberg says those fears can be assuaged with trust:

“What I think businesses can eventually get their head around is that people will participate. There will be user-generated content. There will be all these things that might match up with some of your metrics or business objectives generally. You have to suspend your disbelief that those things won’t happen and just trust people radically.”

You heard it: Building a community is a radical act.

Having an organizational culture of trusting your members is important for community. But community also requires building trust between members. Being part of a community, after all, means sacrificing a sliver of one’s own individuality in favor of a shared identity. Your members need to trust each other enough to know the sacrifice will be worth it.

How do you go about building trust? Modeling authenticity is key. Community managers can build trust by listening, sharing and responding in their own voice, by admitting mistakes, and by asking for help. But in addition to those very important ways of being, there’s another age-old way to build trust on a more massive scale: by facilitating ritual experiences.

Here’s the thing: studies have shown that groups of people who participated together in a completely bogus ritual trusted each other more than those in control groups did. For example, in one study, participants in an invented ritual were more likely to share their own money with other ritual participants than with non-participants.

A different study showed that participating in rituals seems to enhance the quality of an experience. Brands like Oreo and Guinness, writes social psychologist Heidi Grant, have smartly built ritual into their marketing campaigns, “created added value right out of thin air” or, out of the twist of a cookie or the careful pour of a beer.

Think about rituals that you engage in as part of a community – physical, online or both. Does your organization take every new hire out to lunch, or induct them with a common project? What are the shared experiences that bind members of your association together at the annual conference? What do members of your advocacy group do together to celebrate gains (or acknowledge losses)?

New online community members should have these kinds of experiences, too. We need to invent new rituals where they may not exist, leaning on organizational culture, community mission and vision and member personas to make them on-tone, delightful and organic. We need to listen for and gently acknowledge and elevate any member ritual practices that arise organically. (If your member base has already created their own common rituals, great job!)

Joining a community – really joining it, on an identity level – is no small transition for members. How does your community celebrate every crossing of that threshold? How do you mark the passages and milestones that take place beyond it? Helping shape and illuminate the unique rituals in your community can bring delight to members and add another layer of meaning to membership, building trust for the group as a whole.

The post Radical Acts: Rituals and Building Trust in Community appeared first on Personify.

Source: CNN.com

Recent days have seen Sears in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. While the company has been in financial straits for some time, the pressure has been mounting and today comes reports that the company may avoid bankruptcy thanks to a last-minute bid from CEO Eddie Lampert’s investment company. Certain Sears creditors are expected to object to the deal whether it’s the best outcome of the company’s recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

It’s a complicated situation and one that brings up mixed emotions. As a consumer of a certain age, I remember dog-earing the pages in the Sears Wishbook for Santa, visiting the store for back to school clothes, working with my grandfather’s Craftsman Tools and spending my hard-earned babysitting money on a small, 13” black and white TV from the Sears electronics department.

But there’s another dimension complicating my feelings around Sears and their recent challenges: I used to work there.

I joined Sears Holdings Company, parent company to Sears, Kmart and (at the time) Land’s End, as a product manager. During my time there, I managed payment and post-order. My role covered essentially everything from the time a shopper entered their credit card and coupon details through shipping and delivery of items.

I can’t speak for everyone I worked with, but most of those on the team were energized by the vision of transforming Sears for the 21st century. But even back then there were challenges, many of which have been widely reported. Here are three of the lessons I learned from the experience.

1. Consistency Matters

With a huge number of stores and a robust operations center, Sears was an early pioneer in the omnichannel experience. The ability to order online and pick up from your car in designated parking spots, which is now widely advertised by several big-box discount retailers? I worked on that product for Sears – in 2010.

While a great idea in concept, and even an idea that was (arguably) ahead of its time, the buy-online-pick up-in-store idea kind of flopped. Why? The devil was in the details. For example, take coupons. Often the user saw a promotion online that they hadn’t applied towards their purchase because they didn’t know they could. The result? Disappointment.

In today’s hyperconnected world having an experience that’s streamlined, clearly communicated, familiar and complementary across the board is even more important. If you are coordinating experiences between various channels, whether in-person events, chapter communication, international outlets, social media or your website and online community, regularly do a quick review and ensure your messaging is consistent across the board. It can save you time and customer service headaches down the road.

2. Know Your Audience

Shortly before leaving Sears, I spent time with the customer service call center team. As the company focused on building out a massive online marketplace, many of the shoppers I spoke with found already found online shopping a challenging experience. They were calling to complain and taking their business elsewhere. And those were just the shoppers I spoke with.

We were building the business from the top down, but maybe it should have been from the bottom up. Take the time to talk to the constituents engaging with your organization. Understand their preferences and behaviors, acknowledge their concerns and use what you’ve heard to build an organization that meets their needs and exceeds their expectations. Your retention rate will thank you for it.

3. Stay Focused on What Matters

Sears sought to evolve their business by building a large online marketplace to rival Amazon. They partnered with small businesses and amassed a huge catalog of products. But in doing so, they lost sight of what made them successful. Popular, and profitable, brands like Craftsman and Kenmore got lost in the mix.

If you’re planning to expand your organization in 2019, look at the programs your constituents know and love. Do the new benefits that you want to introduce make sense? Will they build on your success or distract constituents from understanding and internalizing the value you provide?

Wrapping Up

With some time away from the ecommerce space, and from the outside looking in, I recognize what’s happening with Sears as an important example of how vulnerable an organization can become — no matter the size, brand or history. The nonprofit sector, with its lean resources and commitment to the invaluable work of social good, can’t risk exposure to the same risk. Learning from the past to secure the future can be a good place to start.

The post 3 Lessons for Nonprofits from the Fall of a Retail Giant: Seeing the Softer Side of Sears appeared first on Personify.

And why not? The dawn of a new year presents a great opportunity for a fresh start. As organizations put together budgets to present to their executive leadership and boards, the need to understand and document these resolutions may hit your inbox soon. This is especially true for big changes, like a rebrand.

Not long ago, “investment” felt like a dirty word for nonprofits – after all, money spent on branding takes away from funds available for new programs or activities that can move an organization’s mission forward. But a strong brand can play an important, strategic role for an organization, driving long-term awareness, strengthening identity and creating cohesion among internal staff, volunteers and other constituents.

What is a Brand

Advertising executive David Ogilvy defined a brand as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes,” while AIGA, the Professional Association for Design, defines a brand as “a person’s perception of a product, service, experience or organization.”

For commercial products, proving the brand’s value can be relatively straightforward. A consumer purchases a product and the product either delivers on the brand promise or it doesn’t. M&M’s for example, “melt in your mouth, not in your hand.” Take the time to apply L’Oreal mascara, “because you’re worth it.” Spill something? Grab a Bounty paper towel as it’s the “quicker picker upper.”

These relatable consumer experiences have become a growing part of talking about branding across nonprofits of all sizes. Many nonprofit executives define brand using for-profit language, in part because they’re often discussing brand with board members and donors whose own roots are in the for-profit world.

Yet for nonprofits, their brand effectiveness can be more subjective, relying on the audience to visualize a world that’s better for them having been part of the organization’s mission. The strength of the brand is determined by the trust, loyalty and enthusiasm it elicits. A nonprofit’s brand reaches beyond the organization and its mission, appealing to what’s most meaningful to their audience. Whether a donor-focused charity or a member-driven association, the nonprofit brand must show that the organization delivers on its promises for the individual and the broader collective.

Living the Brand

That’s a lot to live up to. Although the ambitions of nonprofit marketers are growing, the strategic frameworks and management tools available to them haven’t kept pace, with lots of the language and strategy borrowed from the for-profit sector brand playbook designed to boost name recognition and drive brand reputation. But optimizing your brand doesn’t have to be hard or take a back seat to other activities in your organization. Integrating the brand conversation alongside other planning discussions can ensure your brand is:

• Closely aligned with your organizational strategy
• Deeply ingrained with your nonprofit’s culture, ideas and values
• Part of each action, with staff recognizing interactions with members, donors, supporters and other constituents as unique opportunities to reinforce your brand’s value
• Reflected in what you say and how you say it
• Fully supported by your visual identity and technology tools, creating opportunities for consistent quality across all communications and interactions.

Taking Your Brand to the Next Level

Branding delivers tremendous value for nonprofits, driving the awareness that leads to acquisition, the enthusiasm that drives engagement and the loyalty necessary for strong differentiation in a crowded marketplace. While branding should be part of everyday conversations around organizational strategy, culture, messaging and tools, there are several steps nonprofits interested in improving their brand in the new year can take to get started:

1. Know Your Target Audience: Without a clear vision of who your organization engages with, building a brand to drive their support is next to impossible (or at the very least inefficient)! Personas can provide a helpful framework for identifying who’s who. Learn more about defining your target audience and personas to get the ball rolling.
2. Differentiate Yourself: Why you? Showing what makes your organization unique is paramount in helping you stand apart from other nonprofits serving a similar need and trying to reach the same audience. Does your organization have a specific goal that others aren’t working towards? Do you serve a niche audience or geography? Are your programs unique? Donors and members have a growing number of choices when it comes to which organization to support – give them a reason to choose yours.
3. Be Approachable: The ability to be relatable is essential to forming a connection and creating deep, long-lasting relationships. Articulate, as part of your brand, how donors, members and other supporters can become involved in your brand’s promise and organization’s mission.

Nonprofits who ignore their brand – or deny they have a brand – do so at their peril. People’s perception of your nonprofit can impact your acquisition, engagement and retention efforts. Strong brand cohesion, and the high levels of trust a great brand can inspire, contribute to greater organizational capacity and social impact. Bring your brand to life to influence the way your nonprofit is perceived across channels, whether in person or online, your communities and constituents in 2019 and beyond.

Want to know more about elevating your brand’s reputation across channels? Discover the must-have martech tools you need in 2019 to effectively leverage your marketing technology stack.

The post New Year…New You? 3 Steps to your Nonprofit’s Brand Makeover appeared first on Personify.

“Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.”

Whatever your feelings on her pink Cadillac, the above quote from pioneering businesswoman Mary Kay Ash perfectly encapsulates the struggle of the “great idea.” Thousands of amazing ideas are born every day, but they fail to go anywhere.

Why?

They lack the support of champions passionate enough to make these ideas a reality. After all, unless you win support for your idea, from people at all levels of your organization, it may fail to deliver on its promise. Recent research shared in the Harvard Business Review showed that 70% of all organizational change efforts fail, and one reason for this is executives simply don’t get enough buy-in, from enough people, for their initiatives and ideas.

Securing buy-in from others can prove intimidating under even the friendliest circumstances but it’s something that happens throughout an organization. Technology teams have to get buy-in from their leadership. Senior leaders across an organization have to get buy-in from C-level executives. Nonprofits then often have the additional step of selling their ideas to their board for final approvals.

How can you get the ball rolling? The Harvard Business Review article “Get the Boss to Buy In” provides a series of useful tips, each of which translates directly to the nonprofit world. Whether you’re a front-line staff member who has identified an opportunity through daily interactions with your membership or a C-suite executive steeped in the annual planning process, these seven techniques can help you build support and gain traction

1. Tailor Your Pitch

Who are you talking to? Understand your audience including their goals, values and their frame of reference to shape the presentation of your idea and ensure it resonates. Use clear, concise, easily understood language that’s relevant and timely. Understand the key performance metrics that will matter most and back up your idea with data and research including details from your constituent management and engagement platform, CRM or AMS.

2. Position Your Idea in Context

Where your idea ends up on a list of priorities depends largely on how it’s positioned with your target audience of decision makers. How does your idea contribute to the vision, values and strategic goals of your organization? Will it help existing programs or create value for existing efforts around constituent acquisition, engagement and retention efforts?

Once your leadership team sees how idea contributes to the big picture, they’ll be more willing to devote resources to it. Consider:

• Creating a sense of urgency, with the idea presented as an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.
• Highlighting a threat—a consequence of not adopting your idea—to create pressure to act.
• Bundling your ideas with related ones.

Also, take the time to position your idea in terms of how it supports not only your organization but the experience of your members or donors. This helps you articulate how executing on your ideas will support your organization’s biggest asset: its constituents.

3. Manage Emotions

Passion, if appropriately expressed, improves your chance of capturing attention and triggering action. However, beware of coming across as angry. Your idea may have come from frustration with the status quo but decision makers who detect negative emotions from subordinates offering even constructive criticism tend to perceive those employees as complainers.

4. Get the Timing Right

Timing really is everything. Be mindful of organizational priorities and broader market trends.  Too, recognize deadlines. If, as Harvard notes, “an idea relates directly to an imminent product launch or software release, by all means speak up—now is the time to be heard. But as recent research shows, when a deadline is far away and decision makers are still in exploration mode, an open-ended inquiry can be more effective than proposing a specific solution.”

5. Involve Others

There is power in numbers. When it comes to selling ideas, one person may have access to important data, for example, and another may have a personal relationship with one of the top managers you’re trying to persuade. Experts in relevant areas add to your credibility. Be open to including others in the presentation of your idea and leverage their strengths.

6. Adhere to Norms

Understand and respect the process of how decisions are made. Provide the information that decision makers want in the manner they prefer it, be it through a formal or informal approach. While casual conversations may feel more comfortable, a formal approach can convey seriousness and apply helpful pressure on decision makers to take action, even if the ideas are innovative in nature.

7. Be Prepared with Solutions

Respect their time and yours. If you’re prepared to introduce an idea or raise an issue, be prepared to suggest thoughtful fixes. Introducing a solution signals that you’ve put considerable thought into the issue and shows a level of due diligence to those being presented to. If you aren’t yet prepared to recommend a solution, propose a path identifying one, with a cross-functional group that brings diverse knowledge, experience and expertise to the table.

Wrapping Up

Even with relentless preparation, presentation of your ideas takes guts. No amount of skill can completely remove the risks and potential disappointment associated with hearing the word, “No.” But using some, or all, of the tactics outlined above can help give you greater confidence and boost your chance for success.

The post 7 Steps for Getting Buy-In appeared first on Personify.

For the unfamiliar, Caboodles were the must-have accessory for teen girls coming of age in the late 1980s. A molded plastic cosmetic case based on the functional design of a tackle box, Caboodles included all the compartments necessary for your blue eyeliner and frosted lipstick, a mirror and came in all the pastels you could imagine.

And, although it had been years since Caboodles had been on store shelves, their magic was in full effect with the display surrounded by wide-eyed young girls eager to take one home.

Then I went to the mall and saw, on a hanger in a trendy chain store, a black and blue checkered sweater I’m fairly sure I owned in 1991, a black and blue checkered number I was going to wear to the MTV VJ audition I was convinced would happen at any moment.

Retailers routinely turn to what’s been tried and tested to boost their odds for success. Television networks and movie studios do the same, introducing reboots, because these characters and the stories they tell are familiar, beloved parts of our lives.

When it comes to programming, there’s no reason nonprofits and associations can’t do the same. Constituents have a relationship with your organization and trust the content you produce. While delivering fresh information and perspectives is important, you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. It’s also OK to open up the archives and find new inspiration in existing material. There are many benefits to finding fresh ways to bring new life to old favorites including:

• Sharing with New Audiences: Maybe you published important research but your members hadn’t yet joined your organization. Or maybe they’re already a member but didn’t have the time to read a white paper or attend a webinar? Share existing content in a new format or channels such as rich media syndicated through new threads or discussion topics in your community, social properties and content forums.
• Elevating Old Favorites: Have a timeless classic on your shelf – the piece, guide, tip or campaign that was a huge hit with your constituents the first time around? Consider bringing it back for an encore performance or update the information with new data for a refresh that extends the outreach to new and old audiences alike.
• Get the Biggest Bang for Your Buck: Developing and delivering quality content is hard work – there’s a lot of effort that goes on behind the scenes. Take information that you and your team spent time curating and writing, and give it more runway. Consider updating with a slant towards your SEO keywords and common search terms. Elevate its reach across platforms for an integrated outreach of your programs.

But not all content deserves a new lease on life. Times change, technology continues to evolve and trends today may be different than they were last year or the year before. When looking for content to repurpose, ensure the topic is still timely and relevant. Determine how much updating needs to be done—a guide talking about Netscape as an internet browser or resurrecting a blog post on MySpace strategy may not convey the message you’re looking for.

In addition to details, understand if it’s a topic or broader area of interest for your members by digging into your website analytics, e-commerce data in your CRM or event details to understand if it is something people are eager to hear about.

Already have some pieces in mind? Here are four that are top of mind as we head into 2019:

1. Send Your Blog Posts on the Road as Podcasts

Those of us in Austin, like many of your members throughout the world and country, spend a lot of time commuting to and from work, darting through airports or running errands around the city. Podcasts have exploded as a way to make the most of this time, with a wide variety of available topics and lengths that go from snackable, bite-sized tidbits to multi-episode, deep dives into a very narrow topic. Want to get started with podcasts but don’t think you have content? Look back in your blog archives and pull a couple of favorites to record.

2. Reinvent Blog Posts as Guides

Have you blogged a lot about a particular topic, trend or new regulation? Maybe specific to your industry, the history of your organization or how to do something that’s of unique interest to your audience?

Packaging multiple blog posts together as a single guide not only ensures your audience understands everything you have to say about a topic but creates tremendous convenience as well. You can even spin the guide into an email campaign, social media posts, a webinar…the list goes on!

3. From PowerPoint to View Point – Infographics Made Easy

Those who know me well know that I love nothing more than a good slide deck. And before presenting a Personify webinar or live event, I spend a lot of time on my deck. Sure, a lot of it is formatting – making sure everything is aligned, the colors are right, the charts aren’t fuzzy – but more of it is focused on the narrative.

• What story does the presentation tell the audience?
• What do I want them to know?
• What should they take away?

This focus on storytelling and plot also serves as the foundation for great infographics. Infographics are taking a star turn right now – they’re informative, easy on the eyes – but they can be a lot of work, requiring huge amounts of research and design support. But with the right presentation you’re off to a running start – your story is already laid out, facts assembled and even some of your graphics are in place and ready for their close-up.

4. Highlight your Members Stories for Impact

Do you have a number of success stories showing the impact that your organization has had on members and donors? Real people and real stories have a real impact on your mission. Whether short quotes, self-directed video shorts, guest blogs or a Q&A in the community—flip the script from your team creating all the content and give your members a platform to co-create with you.

Your constituents are looking for a place to learn, share and grow their passion with your organization– whether it’s in your community, on your website or at live events. Repurposing content and supporting co-creation of content can be an easy way to make the most of resources already stretched thin, allowing you to quickly fill gaps quickly with relevant outreach efforts because the heavy lifting has already been done. Take a look at what is in your content Caboodle and consider bringing it back for a makeover – it’s not as hard as you think.

The post What’s Old is New Again: 4 Ways to Make the Most of Your Existing Content appeared first on Personify.

Marjorie Illig (right) in 1938

Marjorie G. Illig is one of my heroes. In 1936, 20 odd years after the American Cancer Society started as a tiny group of volunteers, she amassed a volunteer army of female volunteers to knock on doors across the country and start a conversation at kitchen tables. By 1945, the American Cancer Society, funded by Mary Lasker, a volunteer, and others, had raised $4 million dollars.

Very little of its first 30 years were driven by staff. They accomplished all of that from tiny rooms, the back of cars and living rooms.

In fact, in the heyday of the 80s and 90s, nonprofits rode the rising tide of wealth in our nation. We shifted from volunteer-led organizations to staff-run and created organizational structures.

In 2008, the markets crashed. Money got tight. People lost their homes. People lost their jobs. As a direct result, nonprofits lost a substantial part of their funding. In that moment, we all understood the value of the volunteer.

2008 forced many of us back to our roots, and our roots weren’t a bad place to be. The value of the volunteer wasn’t just free labor, it was and still is the vital energy, direction and capital for organizations doing good work.

Retaining Volunteers is Tricky

It is hard to retain volunteers. We ask them to give their time, their talent, and often, their treasure. When we do it incorrectly, we lose big and our missions suffer. According to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, ineffective volunteer management can result in more than one-third of those who volunteer one year to not donate their time the next year, which is an estimated $38 billion in lost labor.

Traditional volunteering relies on volunteers to do the grunt work. It’s like going to a job. You clock in, you clock out. You follow policies and procedures to deliver some kind of service. Think about Illig’s army. They went door to door with talking points and leaflets.

This type of volunteering appeals to a certain group of people. There are lots of volunteers who like to work at hospitals, museums, animal shelters, etc. It doesn’t appeal to everyone, especially volunteers still in the workforce. Our challenge is to meet the diverse volunteer needs within our organization.

Beyond Candy Stripers

When we get it right though, our organizations shine. What do we know about volunteers? They need meaningful engaging work that meets their skillset and helps them grow as a person and, often, as a professional. Finding the exact right fit for volunteers lets them give back and keeps them coming back year to year to move your mission forward.

Volunteers can fill roles across our organizations that staff are currently filling. This means we need to look very closely at what our staff are doing and ask, “how can a volunteer partner with them?” This means using volunteers in different ways and understanding that each role needs a different type of volunteer. When we do so, we bust the doors wide open to long term volunteer engagement.

The Value of Volunteers as Leaders

Someone emails you. You can tell they have a clear vision and are accountable, responsible, used to making decisions that have a deep impact, a planner, an organizer, and an innovator. You look at your list of open opportunities and say, “well, you can walk a dog.” They do it for a couple of months and leave. You didn’t meet their skills and capabilities head on.

Governance roles are perfect for your independent volunteers. It lets them be who they are, and it uses their brain in a way that motivates them. It gives them a challenge to master. This is the volunteer you want on your board or committee, as a chairperson or as a volunteer manager.

The Value of Volunteers as Drivers of Social Change

A person walks into your library on a Saturday. They are passionate about equal access to education and thrive on having conversations with people about the structural changes to enable reading development and early childhood education. All volunteers do at your library is shelve and dust books. The volunteer says, “sure,” and never follows up.

Social Action Volunteers allows you to harness that person’s passion and drive change that moves your mission forward. This type of volunteer is the person who will attend protests, send letters/postcards to legislators or go in person to lobby. Once a match is made, they will move mountains to get in front of the people who need to listen to them.

The Value of Volunteers as a Skills-Based Volunteer Force

Traditionally, skills-based volunteers donate their skills on an ongoing basis over long periods of time. Think pro-bono lawyers, doctors, nurses, accountants and grant writers who help organizations they care about year to year. They typically find us and know which organizations they can and want to volunteer with.

They are vital to delivering front-end service. We can tap into their need to give back and supercharge our service output, as long as the role is clear.

The Changing Shape of Skills-Based Volunteering

Young volunteers want to work on projects and make their contribution matter to an organization. They may not know where they will be living next year or what their life will look like, but they know you need the skills they have to offer. These volunteers don’t even get in your door right now, unless you have project-based volunteer opportunities listed. You didn’t even get to talk to them.

Today, when every job you try to get, you need three to five years of experience, a masters and be willing to accept an entry-level salary, young workers are looking for ways to gain skills and feed their need to give back. Projects that are time-limited give them just that.

When we have projects that allow them to commit to a short period of time and drive their personal growth and development, they will come back again and again to help. If we give them projects that allow them to give back in the short term, but don’t lead to personal growth, we aren’t tapping both motivations.

Volunteers are Valuable, so What?

2008 was a watershed moment for all nonprofits. It forced all of us to reckon with who we as organizations had become, and it reminded us that we all started as a group of volunteers in some poorly lit room drinking bad coffee planning to change the world. I know I did, and the organizations I love all did.

American Cancer Society took Relay For Life back to its roots. In its first year, the organization saw 200 DIY Relay events that helped raise over $2 million in unbudgeted revenue. Illig, with her volunteer field army, would be proud.

People are ready to be valued volunteers. The real question is, are you ready for them?

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A recent survey of nonprofit professionals suggests 45 percent of organizations don’t measure the impact of volunteers with 34 percent attributing the failure to a lack of resources and tools, 29 percent reporting a lack of skills or knowledge prevented measurement and 25 percent citing a lack of time. Many organizations looking to understand their impact and value focus instead almost exclusively on the dollars and cents coming into their organization. But, why?

If the contributions of those giving their time, talent and effort to a need or cause are (truly) mission-critical for an organization, then why isn’t the value of a volunteer treated with the same diligence and care given to donations, event performance, membership dues and other assets necessary to a nonprofit’s success?

Whereas the volunteers of yesteryear may have chosen service to a nonprofit in lieu of professional work, today’s volunteers are more apt to do so as an alternative to other leisure activities or hobbies. Nonprofits must understand, document, articulate and recognize their value, cultivating relationships with each individual and engaging volunteers as respected partners in their organization’s mission – not as unpaid employees.

Today’s Volunteer

A survey released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2016, the most recent year available, shows that approximately one-quarter of Americans take the time to volunteer. And, at the highest level, survey data from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) suggests volunteers tend to be married Caucasian women. The largest age group for volunteers was 35-44, the CNCS survey said, and volunteers were most likely to be parents with children under 18. The survey also volunteers tend to be highly educated, with the gap between those a bachelor’s degree or higher and those with only a high school diploma of more than 23 percentage points.

Most volunteers report working with either one or two organizations for a median of 52 volunteer hours per year.

Different Generations Provide Different Value

Considering the generational differences sociologists have studied, for everything from purchase behavior to entertainment and food preferences, it’s not surprising to see those differences extend to volunteerism as well. While CNCS survey data suggests those aged 35-44 were most likely to serve (28.9), unique attributes and stage-of-life milestones present unique opportunities for nonprofits looking to better understand and engage their volunteers.

When it comes to prospective volunteers, Baby Boomers, the generation of 77 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, represent a huge opportunity for nonprofits. Per U.S. Census data, the numbers of volunteers age 65 and older will swell to more than 13 million in 2020. What’s more, that number will continue to rise for many years to come, as the youngest Baby Boomers will not reach age 65 until 2029. Volunteering also offers significant health benefits for these Baby Boomers navigating the complex transition from full-time career and family building to retirement. According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP):

• Almost two-thirds of Senior Corps volunteers reported a decrease in feelings of isolation, and 67 percent of those who first reported they “often” lack companionship stated that they had improved social connections.
• Seventy percent of volunteers who initially reported five or more symptoms of depression reported fewer symptoms at the end of the first year.
• Sixty-three percent of volunteers who initially indicated three or four symptoms of depression reported fewer symptoms after one year.

In addition to the sheer opportunity presented by their generation’s size, Baby Boomer volunteers provide value through their experience, with a broad range of skills, talents and experience. Access to this maturity and competence will prove invaluable in solving and resourcing solutions for a wide range of social problems in the years ahead.

The Value of a Volunteer: Baby Boomers

To attract Boomers to volunteering, nonprofit groups should “re-imagine” roles for older American volunteers, making available opportunities that embrace their expertise and background. This approach is essential in driving value not only in the acquisition of Boomer volunteers but also in their retention.

Current data suggests three out of every ten Boomer volunteers choose not to volunteer in the following year. The CNCS reports volunteer retention rates are highest for Baby Boomers whose volunteer activities are professional and managerial, engaging in music or some other type of performance, tutoring, mentoring, and coaching (74.8 percent, 70.9 percent, and 70.3 percent respectively). Volunteer retention is lowest for volunteers who engage in general labor (55.6 percent).

The Value of a Volunteer: Millennials and Gen Z

What they lack in the experience shown by Boomers, younger volunteers make up for in enthusiasm. Even in the face of complex social issues including climate change, terrorism, and income inequality, polls, statistics, and anecdotal data suggest Millennials and Gen Z bring to volunteer opportunities a strong social conscience.

Millennials, born between 1981 and 1991, have transcended early labels as “Slacktivists” and now include both those on the cusp of middle age busy balancing work and family and younger adults early in their careers. With experience to contribute, Millennial volunteers can provide tremendous value as members of committees or advisory boards. Millennials with significant work experience can also provide support to nonprofits via pro bono skills and via Young Professional groups. In fact, 77 percent of Millennials are more likely to volunteer if they can use their skill set and if they see examples of the impact of their time or donations.

Meanwhile, born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z continues to come of age with the youngest in the cohort just 6 years old and the oldest 22. However, 67 percent of Gen Z report volunteering in the last 12 months and 26 percent of 16 to 19-year-olds report that they volunteer on a regular basis. Gen Z continues to be primarily interested in episodic volunteering with 70 percent contributing below 100 hours a year.

Realizing the Value of Younger Volunteers

Building relationships with young volunteers can build a strong foundation for lifelong support. Video offers a powerful recruitment tool, with the ability to show the impact of an organization’s cause and a young volunteer’s service. Showcase what’s been made possible with their support and share stories of people who benefit from their contribution. Organizations looking to attract Gen Z volunteers should articulate the value of a volunteer role as a means to gain valuable work and life experience.

The Value of a Volunteer

Welcoming the volunteers who are raising their hand to support your organization, recognizing and capitalizing on their unique attributes and ensuring they have meaningful opportunities to contribute are effective first steps but are only a piece of the puzzle. In order to ensure a high ROI on volunteer programs, an organization must also have a culture which acknowledges, cultivates and celebrates their contribution.

The soft benefits of volunteer involvement across a nonprofit are widely accepted, with industry averages suggesting volunteers are 66 percent more likely to donate financially to the organization they support than those who do not volunteer their time.

Yet formal documentation of the cost savings delivered through volunteer involvement remains a powerful tool in helping organizations understand, track and maximize volunteer programs. The most recent data from Independent Sector suggests the value of a volunteer hour grew to $24.69 in 2017, a 2.3-percent increase from 2016.

Built using the approximate hourly earnings of all production and nonsupervisory workers with an additional 12 percent to include a buffer for fringe benefits, the hourly average provides a benchmark helpful in articulating the value of a volunteer across a variety of roles within an organization. Nonprofits can get additional clarity by adjusting the figure to accommodate:

• Pro-bono services from professionals including lawyers, doctors, technologists and others whose wages may reflect an hourly rate higher than the national average
• Wage rates specific to a particular geography, especially urban areas

Quantifying the Impact of Volunteers

As noted above, per ASAE’s Achieving Mutually Beneficial Volunteer Relationships report, associations report that an average of 30 percent of their members are serving or have served in a volunteer role in the past while the other 70 percent have never volunteered. Improving volunteer participation can have a significant impact on an organization’s financial health, introducing cost-savings which can then be redirected to supporting other programs.

Additionally, many organizations have high participation in short-term, project-based volunteer opportunities but may benefit further from improving engagement and driving an increase in the number of hours volunteers are willing to commit to an organization. For many organizations, driving even modest growth from an existing volunteer base already familiar with, and passionate about, can yield significant results.

Based on the total U.S. contribution of 7.8 billion volunteer hours, the most recent CNCS data available, the 2017 value of volunteerism in the U.S. would have exceeded $192 billion. Understanding the monetary value of volunteers to your organization brings focus to the big picture.

What could those additional cost savings do for the nonprofit sector? More importantly, what would even a fraction of that savings mean for you?

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Looking forward to the New Year ahead can be an exciting, refreshing process. Sure, you might take the time to review what has worked -and what hasn’t – year-to-date, but for many organizations January 1 represents a fresh start where you can put into practice all of the new tips and tricks you’ve learned.

And one of the topics I’ve been hearing a lot about? Workflows.

What’s a workflow? Is it a process?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a workflow represents “the sequence of steps involved in moving from the beginning to the end of a working process.” It’s similar to a process in that it’s a set of sequential activities and tasks that, once complete, accomplishes an organizational goal. Confused? It’s understandable as both terms do really sound the same, with the end goal being a major difference:

• A workflow implies finishing a certain task
• A process involves accomplishing an organizational goal

For example, securing a hotel for an annual conference is a task – you have to research options, visit sites, negotiate the contract and have members of the leadership team sign the contract. An organizational goal is often higher (macro) level, e.g. growing an annual conference attendance by 50 percent.

Considering this, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the terms are used interchangeably. In a lot of cases, a process will be exactly the same as a workflow.

Starting Small: Incremental Process Improvements with Workflows

Workflows are familiar to all of us, for example, a morning routine you rely on to get out the door or help a child fall asleep at night. Workflows allow for the systematic completion of tasks, while the collection of workflows within a process allow your organization to accomplish goals in a repeatable (scalable) way through the consistent investment of resources and a sequence of events.

There’s no shortage of books, workshops, documents and blogs to help commercial sector businesses bring workflows and process to their companies but nonprofits, are different. They have potentially specific and niche challenges that other organizations may not face. Nonprofits may:

• Lack time to properly develop and design the process
• Lack internal resources to facilitate the process or external consultants to develop the process on their behalf
• Lack buy-in from leadership to endorse the process

Workflows and Process in Practice

Don’t get overwhelmed. Start small. Connect workflows to those activities with the most opportunity to produce the biggest impact. Think about the current systems you have in place and how well they support improvements to your staff’s productivity and the experience of your constituents be they members or donors.

Analyzing your existing systems and workflows is the first step towards identifying opportunities for an improved process. Look to a workflow when multiple tasks are needed to complete something important on a recurring basis.

Let’s take a common example – a membership renewal. Renewals are vital to your organization’s success (they’re important). Typically, a renewal includes multiple steps, from a reminder email to a final thank you for renewing. And renewals happen on a recurring basis – either after a specific period of time or on a calendar date.

But, in addition to considering the individual events in the sequence, committing to support member renewals via a process provide additional opportunities on how an organization can revisit the entire renewal experience. The workflow may address alerting a member to the renewal, the transaction and a simple confirmation. However, for an association, a renewal process review may include:

• The overall value the organization provides to renewing members
• How value has been delivered to members over the course of a year
• How the organization communicates the value delivered and makes the renewing member internalize the value
• And more…

It’s a larger conversation, but one worth exploring to ensure you’re identifying all opportunities for improvement. Write down the process as you understand it, taking the time to document each step. Or, even better, take time to experience the existing process first hand before introducing improvements – if you can, reach out to your constituents to understand their point of view or what changes they might make.

With an outline of the existing process, you can start implementing change. Don’t hesitate to start small, changing a handful of steps at a time to ensure you’re able to measure the effectiveness of the processes you’ve introduced.

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