Volunteer Management on Salesforce: Empowering and Engaging Your Volunteers on the World’s #1 CRM

Volunteer management is just as important as customer management. It happens too often that the former is overlooked. However, there is a surefire way to enhance it. This is what we discussed in our latest Zoom webinar about volunteer management on Salesforce on June 27. 

Rebekah Hunter (VP of Alliances at Advanced Communities) was joined by Kevin Zeigler (Specialist Solution Engineer at Salesforce) to talk about how the synergy of Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and AC MemberSmart can empower an organization to cater to the needs of volunteers, donors, members, and others, all within the Salesforce ecosystem. 

Read this quick webinar recap to know all the details or watch the video format if you prefer it better! 

Why Volunteer Management on Salesforce is the Best Solution?

When customers decide to purchase something branded and expensive, they usually do so not just for the sake of BUYING but to obtain a BETTER VERSION of themselves. That is, they chase a greater experience of dealing with a particular business. As a result, their emotions drive them to put a premium on whatever they want to purchase. This is how human logic works. 

How does this show up in the world of volunteering?  

Easy. The gist is cultivating meaningful relationships with volunteers, ensuring that they are delighted and engaged at every stage of their journey. If done smartly, this will drive loyalty and bring you closer to your mission. To dive deeper, there are the 4 C’s of volunteer engagement one should oversee when planning volunteer management:

• Cultivation  
• Clarity 
• Culture
• Connection 

Moreover, Kevin has shared his interpretation of the volunteer journey and the questions you might ask yourself along the way. What for? To use that information afterward and create a personalized end-to-end experience for volunteers. 

1. Acquisition – this stage is about recruiting and acquiring new volunteers with targeted messaging. The questions you might ask yourselves are “How am I acquiring new volunteers?”, “How am I measuring the acquisition strategies?”, and “How do I decide who to target?”. 
2. Signup – this is a simple account registration and super easy job sign-up. The questions to ask are “How much information do I need to ask from my volunteers and at what point in time?”.
3. Onboarding – this is templated and automated onboarding for each volunteer role. Ask yourself a question “Do I need to provide my volunteers with a background check?” to know everything about their preferences and behavior. 
4. Mobilization + Accountability – timely feedback from volunteers that’s quick and easy to complete. 
5. Retention and Recognition – everybody loves to be thanked. This is when badging and gamification incentivize and inform segmentation. How can you gamify your volunteer experience? 
6. Impact Analysis – a programs/data first approach to volunteering for actionable insights. 

Advanced Communities & Bookmark Success Story 

Salesforce is truly the anchor of everything we do here at Advanced Communities. Being Salesforce and Experience Cloud pros, we are also a consultant and an app provider which makes approaching any Salesforce project professionally for us. All of our solutions are built natively to Salesforce, no third parties are involved. 

Justifying these words, Rebekah has showcased our client – Bookmark – a nonprofit organization that is a leading reading charity for children in the UK. The Advanced Communities team created a Salesforce Experience Cloud online portal for the organization from scratch. 

The team faced several objectives along the way:

• Establish a collaborative space where volunteers or school leadership could log in and manage children seeking assistance with their reading;
• Build a centralized hub for program and opportunity creation as well as volunteer registration;
• Schedule and managing reading sessions;
• Track the reading progress of the child.

We focused on the UI and UX aspects of the project. Besides, the AC team implemented automation to reduce manual processes: instant notifications, automated status updates of a volunteer, seamless synchronization with Salesforce, and others.  

AC MemberSmart Overview and Live Demo 

AC MemberSmart is a comprehensive package for volunteer management and engagement. This is a 100% native-to-Salesforce solution specifically designed for professional and trade associations, membership organizations, and nonprofits. Features included are:

• General and timed admission
• Event management 
• Volunteer Board 
• Volunteer Directory 
• Fundraising…

…And many others!

Thank You for Your Interest! 

Advanced Communities appreciates your sincere interest in everything we do. This keeps us moving forward! Hopefully, you enjoyed reading this webinar recap and watching the video version. Meanwhile, we are off to plan the next upcoming webinar, so stay tuned! 

In case you have any further questions about volunteer management on Salesforce, do not hesitate to fill in the Contact Sales form and grab some post-webinar resources.