One of the things I value in our newest publication, Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: A Balanced and Strategic Approach, is its insistence that the work volunteers do must be aligned with the mission of the organization. The authors make a strong case for demonstrating the impact of volunteer involvement by proving that all those donated hours and talents are focused on the current priorities of the organization and the people it serves.

They explain:

In chapter 2, they show how the leader of volunteers can put the idea of alignment into practice (the following is excerpted from the book, pp. 8-9).

Begin by intentionally familiarizing yourself with the organization's mission statement and written strategic plan, and understanding what the short- and long-term goals and objectives are for each program or service. This will ensure that volunteers are integrated with those efforts, not working at cross-purposes - part of the solution, not the problem.

Once you understand the priorities and goals of the rest of the organization, you can assess if volunteers are truly doing the most important things. You can apply a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of volunteer engagement to the directives of the organization.

What are the areas of:

Strength: Where is volunteer engagement already aligned with and supporting an organizational goal?

Weakness: Where is volunteer engagement not aligned, redundant, or even working at cross-purposes with organizational goals?

Opportunity: Are there any emerging possibilities where a volunteer role could be introduced?

Threat: Are there any emerging changes or shifts that will have a negative impact on the effectiveness of a particular volunteer role?

From your answers, you should be able to identify the volunteer positions and projects that you would like to improve, replicate, discontinue, develop, create, or redirect.

You also need to identify current gaps in programming/service. Often the best ideas for improvement come from the end-users of a product or service. For volunteer engagement, this includes staff, clients, families of clients, and other stakeholders. Of course, active volunteers will play an important role in contributing to the process, as they will often see gaps and needs that are not being met. Take time to talk with stakeholders to see what concerns them the most about their experience with your organization or if some service is missing. From this input, identify ways the right volunteer or volunteer initiatives might help.

Here are a few questions you could use to start your discussions:

From this beginning, the authors explain how to create a "Volunteer Resources Balanced Scorecard" as a strategic planning tool, and later as an evaluation tool. Most important, of course, if volunteer accomplishments are directly aligned with what everyone else in the organization is working towards, it becomes easy to report to all stakeholders how critical volunteers are to total success.

See more about Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: A Balanced and Strategic Approach by Christine Burych, Alison Caird, Joanne Fine Schwebel, Michael Fliess, and Heather Hardie, © 2016, Energize, Inc. in the column to the left.