Donor Base

It’s no secret that non-profit organizations are founded and maintained by the hard work of its founding individuals and the community it serves.  We tend to forget another chamber to the heart of non-profit organizations: volunteers.  Without volunteers’ donation of their time, many non-profits would not be able to survive.  The American National Red Cross, one of the largest non-profits in the U.S., has a work force that is 96% volunteers.  Whether the services performed by volunteers are answering phones or serving on a board or building homes or cleaning and maintenance or distributing information, the volunteers allow the services the organization has to offer possible.  According to the Almanac of Public Charities, in 2006 volunteers donated 12.9 billion hours with a full-time equivalent of 7.6 million full-time employees.

During the recession, many jobs that were lost were filled by volunteers.  Non-profits that cultivate an active volunteer program, have been able to cope with the diminishing support for program services as well as general day-to-day operations.  The actual effect of these volunteer services is starting to be converted in to hard numbers, to give the organization a view into the performance of the whole organization: by staff and volunteers.  The Non-profit Institutions Handbook has set out to map the scale of volunteering and non-profits’ economic impact under the System of National Accounts.  This applies data from non-profit and volunteer performance to an already reliable and recognized system to more accurately track the economic impact on a global and national level.

A healthy volunteer program not only benefits the organization, and it’s ability to survive.  It also raises interest and awareness to its services, promotes the experience of hands-on solutions, and provides a personal sense of “good doing” for the community served.