As a nonprofit skilled, you already know that each greenback will get you nearer to reaching your objectives. You’ll be able to enhance funding and entice extra volunteers on your nonprofit with a devoted volunteer grant technique.
We’ve put collectively this information to stroll by means of the whole lot it’s essential to learn about volunteer grants. We’ll cowl the next:
If you happen to’re not accustomed to volunteer grants or aren’t positive the best way to maximize income from this channel, look no additional! Let’s dive proper in by answering incessantly requested questions on volunteer grants.
company giving program by which employers present financial grants to organizations the place their workers volunteer repeatedly. These packages are also referred to as {Dollars} for Doers, Greenback for Hour, Matching Time, and Grants for Time packages.
For instance, in case your nonprofit has a devoted volunteer who devotes 5 hours per week to your group and their firm has a volunteer grant program, the corporate pays you for these hours.
The precise period of time a supporter must volunteer to earn a grant on your nonprofit will depend on their employer’s particular program necessities. Work together with your volunteers to assist them uncover their eligibility and take the steps essential to safe a volunteer grant.
What are the advantages of volunteer grants?
The principle draw of volunteer grants is further funding on your group without charge to supporters. Past that, volunteer grants have advantages for everybody concerned within the course of:
- Particular person volunteers could make a fair greater affect with the hours they offer to your nonprofit. Volunteers already care about your mission and goal; now they can provide you twice the assist by means of the work they’re already doing.
- Corporations that provide volunteer grants profit from sustaining a constructive public picture. This constructive fame additionally means their shoppers and workers might be happier to work with them.
- Nonprofits profit by constructing stronger relationships with each corporations and volunteers. Volunteer grants give supporters one other solution to assist your nonprofit, growing their funding in your group. And in case you have a number of volunteers who all work for a similar employer, it’s possible you’ll safe a company relationship that would flip right into a sponsorship!
Some corporations even provide workforce volunteer grants, the place teams of workers from the identical firm can volunteer collectively and safe a bigger grant on your trigger.
Why do companies provide volunteer grants?
To safe company assist, nonprofit organizations often depend on corporations to have already got company social duty (CSR) packages like volunteer grants or volunteer day off in place. Nonetheless, by understanding why companies provide volunteer grant packages and researching the employers your supporters work for, you or your donors might be able to persuade sure corporations to begin new CSR initiatives.
Reviews present that workers who work at corporations with volunteer packages are 5 instances extra engaged than those that don’t. When pitching a volunteer grant program to companies, emphasize statistics like this and the way they’ll result in improved enterprise outcomes, comparable to elevated worker productiveness and retention.
Moreover, stay open to different kinds of company volunteerism. For instance, some companies organize organized company volunteer teams, which function team-building actions for his or her workers whereas additionally offering your nonprofit with further assist on your ongoing packages.
Are volunteer grants widespread?
Sure, volunteer grants are a standard enterprise apply! We’ve pulled collectively some key statistics from Double the Donation that reveal how widespread and impactful these packages are:
- 40% of Fortune 500 corporations provide volunteer grant packages. Loads of different companies and firms even have some type of volunteer grant program.
- 80% of corporations with volunteer grant packages give between $8-$15 per volunteer hour. These {dollars} add up! If in case you have a devoted group of volunteers, these collected hours may end up in a pleasant annual sum.
- The typical company volunteer participation price is 33%. A few third of eligible workers at present reap the benefits of company volunteer alternatives. Nonetheless, in the case of volunteer grants, that price drops to only 3%, indicating that volunteers don’t learn about this chance. Nonprofits are working to extend these numbers by advertising and marketing their volunteer packages.
From these statistics, it’s nonprofit will get a test!
Corporations’ volunteer grant necessities differ, however there’s typically a minimal variety of hours that should be volunteered to qualify for a grant. As soon as the volunteer hours threshold has been met, the corporate will both pay by the hour or a set quantity. For instance, one firm may pay $15 per volunteer hour, whereas one other pays a flat $500 after 40 hours have been contributed. Sadly, most volunteers don’t even knowadvertising and marketing plan that promotes these alternatives to your supporters. As you develop your plan, take into account these methods:
When you’ve created fundamental volunteer grant advertising and marketing supplies on your web site, you possibly can develop your attain by leveraging the Google Advert Grant. The Google Advert Grants program supplies eligible nonprofits with $10,000 a month in credit to spend on Google search advertisements.
Via the Google Advert Grant program, your group can create advertisements that present up on the high of Google search outcomes pages for related phrases, like “volunteer alternatives close to me” or “animal shelter volunteering.” Spotlight volunteer grants in these advertisements, and also you’ll promote the chance to an entire new viewers of potential volunteers!
2. Provide a wide range of volunteer alternatives
Guarantee you may have volunteer actions that supporters discover fascinating to encourage continued assist. Think about creating varied methods to become involved that match varied talent units, time slots, and bodily necessities.
For instance, you might need a bodily intensive volunteer alternative for supporters to work in a group backyard the place they’ll study plant care on the job. In distinction, you may also provide a distant volunteer alternative for knowledge entry.
Moreover, have actions that teams of volunteers can take part in. This may accommodate company volunteer groups to safe extra company volunteers, enhance the grant cash you obtain, and assist your nonprofit construct a long-term relationship with the corporate they got here from.
3. Use company giving software program
Whether or not you’re trying to safe volunteer grants, matching items, or some other type of company assist, streamlining the applying course of is a surefire solution to maximize donations. And you are able to do simply that with a volunteer grant database.
Our favourite volunteer grant database is 360MatchPro by Double the Donation. 360MatchPro presents nonprofits assist for each matching items and volunteer grants. Right here’s how the volunteer grant part of this platform works:
- The volunteer searches for his or her employer. Volunteers can enter their firm’s title into 360MatchPro’s employer search software. This software may be embedded on any web page of your web site. That approach, you possibly can put it wherever you suppose volunteers are probably to test, like your volunteer info web page.
- The search software identifies the employer. If the employer is in 360MatchPro’s database, it is going to autofill to streamline the search course of. 360MatchPro’s database at present covers 99.68% of match-eligible donors, that means your volunteers will doubtless be capable of discover their employers.
- Volunteer grant info is offered. 360MatchPro supplies detailed volunteer grant info for each employer. This consists of which workers are eligible, what number of hours should be volunteered, how a lot the grant might be, and if the corporate presents different company volunteer alternatives like workforce volunteer grants and volunteer day off.
From there, the software program will direct volunteers to the subsequent steps they should take to request a volunteer grant. This may often be to finish a type for his or her employer that paperwork their volunteer hours and particulars about your nonprofit like your mission assertion and get in touch with info.
Some corporations might attain out to your nonprofit for affirmation, whereas others may take into account the method finished after reviewing an worker utility.Verizon presents a Volunteer Incentive Program (VIP), which awards $750 to a company after an worker volunteers 50 hours with that group. Even higher, Verizon workers can request as much as two of those grants per yr.
Microsoft’s Volunteer Grant Program
Microsoft has a beneficiant volunteer grant program with no minimal hours required. Microsoft workers can earn $25 per hour they decide to a nonprofit. Final yr, nearly 30,000 workers took benefit of this program and volunteered over 1 million hours in whole.
ExxonMobil’s Volunteer Grant Program
ExxonMobil has a number of volunteer grant packages: a person volunteer grant program by means of which workers can safe a $500 grant after volunteering 20 hours with a company and workforce volunteer grant alternatives for teams of 5 or extra.
Extra Volunteer Grant Sources
Tapping into volunteer grants doesn’t must be daunting. The extra data your workforce has about these alternatives, the extra profitable you’ll be at finding and securing these invaluable contributions.
We hope this information has helped your group notice all of the untapped volunteer grant alternatives you possibly can profit from! If you wish to proceed your analysis, we’ve picked some nice assets to get you began:
