You have selected a new fundraiser and he/she has successfully joined the existing team. This is not enough to guarantee that the fundraising process runs successfully. The person you have employed will be in charge of monitoring calls, writing applications and dealing with donors but this person will not be able to work on his/her own.
On the one hand, there should be a system that allows the fundraiser to present his/her ideas to the rest of the organisation while discussing other members’ ideas and priorities. On the other hand, the fundraiser needs to count on a small team of people working on community fundraising events or door-to-door campaigns.
Relying on volunteers should not be the primary resource for an organisation and all volunteers should be given a reward for their job in the NGO. Yet, to create a system that allows the organisation to count on the extra help of volunteers is crucial. Here you will find some tips to find, manage, monitor and organise your volunteers successfully.
Who is the ideal volunteer: what you are looking for
To profile the ideal volunteer is not an easy task. Single individuals could have the most diverse reasons for dedicate part of their time to unpaid jobs with the aim of helping their community or a specific organisation.
Keep in mind that you are not in the position to turn down genuine offers from people who want to help the organisation. Rather, you should develop a strategy to recruit them according to their qualities and skills. For instance, you will not ask to an older lady to work as a waitress. You will ask her to help you organising a fundraising event targeting people of her age or those living in her neighbourhood. Now, let’s focus on the fundraising team. Ideally this is a large group, which includes individuals of different age groups, genders, social classes, educational backgrounds and religious affiliations. To be sure, members of this team will be asked to work intermittingly, but consistently. They will be asked to participate in the organisation’s activities when a new fundraising event is about to be planned and later when it happens. As such, members of this team do not have to ensure their presence in the organisation’s premises every week unless they wish to do so. Rather, what the organisation is expecting from them is to share their social networks and to be in charge of inviting their contacts to fundraising events in order to maximise the fundraising potential. They are also in charge of raising awareness about your organisation and work as ambassadors by convincing their friends and acquaintances to make donations for your planned projects.
Additionally, you should be able to attract young people of the community in which you operate. The candidates will not only be selected because of the contributions they could make in the planning of events or in expanding the social networks of the organisation, but also with the intent of training new generations and provide them with the tools to run the organisation independently. This should be taken as a sort of apprenticeship. Young people of the local community will be given the possibility to follow the life cycle of a project and to learn from the fundraiser and the other members of staff about strategies to secure funding through proposal-writing.
