While winning the Powerball may seem like a dream come true, the real jackpot lies in ensuring that your organization continues to flourish long after you’ve moved on to new adventures. By prioritizing succession planning, you’re not just safeguarding the future of your volunteer program; you’re also leaving behind a legacy of empowerment, leadership, and community engagement.

Investing in a Volunteer Management System is a strategic decision that can significantly enhance your organization’s capacity to manage and engage volunteers. By planning ahead and securing the necessary budget, you can position your organization for greater success in the coming year.

Navigating the budgeting process for procuring Volunteer Management Software in government agencies requires careful planning, collaboration, and adherence to procurement regulations. By leveraging the right procurement methods, engaging relevant stakeholders, and making a compelling case for investment, government employees can successfully acquire and implement VMS to streamline volunteer management processes.

Recognition is a cornerstone of any volunteer program, and government agencies (or any organizations) often rely on the dedication of volunteers to achieve their missions effectively. While traditional forms of recognition such as awards, volunteer dinners, social media posts, gifts, or thank you notes can be meaningful, some organizations are thinking outside the box to show their appreciation.

Creating accessible volunteer opportunities and technology fosters inclusivity and enhances the volunteer experience, both for those with and without disabilities. Prioritizing accessibility in volunteering means organizations are advocating for inclusivity and keeping up with relevant legislation. Improving accessibility doesn’t happen in one day. Incremental changes make a big difference! Get started!

Investing in a Volunteer Management System (VMS) is a complete game changer. Volunteer coordinators are the first to recognize the need for a comprehensive system to streamline operations and enhance volunteer engagement. Making the case might involve giving a presentation or writing a comprehensive report. Here are seven compelling ideas to help demonstrate the value of a VMS.

More city leaders are adopting citywide volunteer engagement as a powerful strategy to strengthen their own communities. But knowing that citywide engagement is the city’s destination is not enough. Having a clear and strategic roadmap to reach that destination is crucial to ensuring that the journey is successful and that it utilizes resources efficiently.

Sharing the positive difference volunteers make is more important than ever. Volunteer managers must communicate the impact of volunteers to gain program resources, recruit volunteers, and, ultimately, build strong communities. Download this guide to go beyond counting hours alone and transform the way you measure and communicate volunteer impact. The Playbook will help you audit your current measurement practices, learn new ways to track impact, and develop a plan for success.

The first in a series of playbooks, "Developing New Volunteer Opportunities in Your City: The Playbook,” will help leaders take actionable steps toward identifying community needs, developing new volunteer roles to address those needs, and equipping staff to support volunteers.

It’s that time of year again. Volunteer program managers are hard at work summing up an entire year of impact to present in a volunteer program annual report. Fortunately, we've put together an article featuring everything you need to know to create an annual report that engages stakeholders, motivates volunteers, and inspires the community.

ROVI. It’s a buzzword in the field of volunteer management that is often thrown out at conferences and in webinars but seldom explained. While it may sound like a good nickname for a dog, it’s actually a fundamental way to measure the success of your volunteer program. What on earth is ROVI? And why do I need to know what it is?

Volunteer engagement is a powerful strategy to strengthen communities. That’s why we partnered with Beth Steinhorn, President of VQ Volunteer Strategies, to create a guide designed to help city staff, elected officials, and interested residents in building a case and support for citywide engagement strategies. Download the guide now.

After an extensive market research and bid process, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) has selected Offero as its new volunteer management software. The system, named CPW Connect, is expected to launch for all volunteers and the public on July 1, 2021.

Volunteers are some of the most dedicated people out there. They give of their time to better the world and expect nothing in return. It can quickly become a problem when the heart-warming feeling that volunteers get from serving flickers into exhaustion and stress. Fortunately, there are steps you can take as a manager of volunteers to keep their fire for your cause burning strong.

Volunteers are the hands and feet of your organization. It’s important to recognize these important individuals for their selfless endeavors to further your cause. When funds are limited, look to these ten easy and affordable ways to show appreciation to your volunteers.

According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, 24.9% of Americans volunteer (62.6 million), putting in a total of 7.8 billion hours annually. This percentage has been on the decline nationally over the past decade, but that doesn’t mean that your organization’s volunteer rate has to follow suit.

Research shows that there is a disconnect between what volunteers are seeking in terms of recognition and what organizations are providing. That’s why it’s important to rethink volunteer recognition and consider how your organization can align recognition efforts more closely with what actually motivates volunteers.

Fort Collins Natural Areas struggled to run their robust volunteer program and public events while short on staff and resources. They utilized several different methods to track hours, registrations, and logs. From an antiquated volunteer management system to Excel to the old-school pen-and-paper method, current efforts were inefficient and ineffective.

The National Association for Interpretation (NAI) has selected Offero as the official volunteer management system of the 2019 NAI National Conference. Volunteers helping in a range of roles—from checking-in attendees to assisting in the silent auction—will use Offero to sign-up for positions, view details, keep track of their hours, and more. The NAI expects to fill 250 volunteer assignments for the week-long event.

National Volunteer Month is a big deal to us at Offero. To celebrate, we created a selection of graphics for you to share on social media to show volunteers how much you appreciate them. Simply right-click your favorite image and download to your computer. From there, you can upload the image to your social media page.

Not sure how to make sense of your volunteer program data? No need to worry! We created a handy template to help your organization turn its volunteer program data into useful analytics for reporting. Best of all, it’s free!

The City of Longmont’s Parks, Open Space and Trails Division (POST) has selected Fort Collins-based Offero as its volunteer management system. POST, which resides under the Department of Public Works and Natural Resources, will go live with Offero in early March.

Your volunteers tell a compelling story. It’s time to share it. If you’ve been reading the Twenty Hats blog lately, you might think you’ve switched to the ‘Volunteer Impact Channel.’ I’ve focused heavily on this question because strategic volunteer outcomes do the heavy lifting when it comes to volunteer program credibility.

We are excited to announce the launch of our new volunteer program measurement tool, Volunteer Benchmark. Created by Offero, Volunteer Benchmark is the first resource of its kind that allows you to see how your volunteer program stacks up against similar organizations.

The City of Boulder’s nation-wide search for a volunteer management software ended close to home with the selection of Fort Collins-based Offero. Developed in 2012 by Squarei Technologies, Offero is the premier system for government agencies desiring to manage city-wide volunteer programs and community participation in one place.

Should I measure one-time volunteers or only ongoing? Active volunteers or contributing? The number of volunteer hours or the number of volunteers? If you’ve ever asked these questions you’ll want to check out the recording of our webinar, “Making Metrics Matter: Best Practices in Volunteer Program Benchmarking.”

Ah, volunteers. Your M.V.R. (most valuable resource), saving your organization an average of $24.14 per hour1. With the percentage of volunteers in America on the decline the last two decades, it’s important to look beyond traditional methods and demographics for volunteer recruitment.

At Points of Light’s 2018 annual conference, Service Unites, we hosted around 200 volunteer management professionals from across the country and sat down to answer the difficult questions.

It can be difficult to evaluate the success of your volunteer program, and even harder to actually report on these metrics. If you plan to attend Points of Light’s annual conference, Service Unites 2018, make sure to attend our session on benchmarking with NAVPLG. We’ll be discussing and voting on the most important metrics to use as benchmarks industry-wide. You’ll also hear from a Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award-winning organization on how they measure volunteer engagement.

Thanks for stopping by. We want to take a moment to introduce ourselves. We’re Offero—a state-of-the-art volunteer management solution offering volunteer coordination, education, scheduling, and reporting done right.