Transforming Your Youth Volunteer Program: The Volunteer Management System for Organizations

One of the main challenges you will probably be facing as an organization is the best way to strike a balance between coordinating, optimizing, and ensuring that your volunteers enjoy and commit to being involved in your mission.

Your organization has a million and one things happening. Between general administration, offering programs and services to your clients and making an impact in your community – you have a lot on your plate!

In reality, there are only so many things we can get done in a day but imagine what can be done in your organization if you were to pinpoint what exactly you needed help with and matching volunteers directly with those tasks.   

Over the years, I’ve come across many organizations where that had many youth volunteers willing and able to help but often weren’t able to keep up with the demand even if they needed that help. On the flip side, I’ve seen organizations that needed volunteers but couldn’t connect with the right people who align with their mission and vision.

Youth are mentioning how they have a hard time finding volunteer opportunities and connecting with organizations that have similar values to their own. As you can see, there exists a gap between organizations and youth, especially in the volunteering space, because no one ever took the time to reach outside of their side and see what the problem was. 

One of the main solutions I offer to this problem is the Youth Outreach Strategy service. But what happens once you get youth signed up to be your volunteers? 

This is when I’d recommend building out a youth volunteer management system. The goal is to help you create a system that onboards, trains and assigns meaningful work to your volunteers. The outcome, in the long run, is that it saves you time, makes your volunteers more engaged in your organization and ensures that you have a solid base of support to continue accomplishing your goals.  

Ideally, the Youth Volunteer Management System is best suited for organizations looking to build or revamp their volunteer management system. But let’s dive into what that can look like. The number one thing to keep in mind is that this service is entirely customizable to what YOU need. 

What can be included in this service? 

• Volunteer Program Set Up: 

  • Volunteer position creation

  • Recruitment strategy and implementation

  • Assistance with volunteer interviews and liaising with candidates

  • Managing volunteers and tasks

  • Volunteer retention

• Volunteer Recruitment for Specific Initiatives or Projects

• Volunteer Retention Strategy

What is my role as the Youth Consultant?

Depending on the scope of your project you would like to include my role will vary. I will mainly work alongside your team to bridge the gap between your organization and youth. In a general sense, my role will involve actively seeking out youth that match your organization's values, helping you build the volunteer management system, and administering the youth volunteers. 

Why do you need a Youth Volunteer Management System?  

1. Develop and organize projects and initiatives with a meaningful set of tasks, that can be handed over to youth volunteers. The goal is to make youth feel like they are contributing meaningfully to advance their mission and that their objectives are being met.  

2. Build a system and process of youth volunteer management designed to meet your needs.

3. Establish a mutually beneficial relationship between youth and your organization to develop a solid and reliable base of youth volunteers that you can utilize.