An investment in Strategic Volunteer Engagement helps strengthen and build organizational capacity, enabling funders to transform their goals into action. This study suggests that funders and nonprofits could benefit from a better understanding of what grant-making organizations value—strengthening relationships within their communities and the need by nonprofit organizations to fund capacity building.

When talking about strategic volunteer engagement, there are both tremendous opportunities and daunting barriers. The Initiative for Strategic Volunteer Engagement believes that the learnings and findings in this study will help you understand how to unlock the impact of volunteers as a vital asset of any organization looking to advance its mission and accomplish its goals.

Download the Report

Highlights from Findings:

• Grant-makers (funders) noted the lack of capacity, organizational maturity, and infrastructure to engage volunteers as the main barrier to funding. At the same time, nonprofits emphasized the lack of adequate funds and time as barriers to building the capacity to engage volunteers.
• Funders worry about volunteer effectiveness, feasibility, and sustainability when awarding grants and prefer giving to programs rather than operations.
• A lack of agreement regarding strategic volunteer engagement—what it is, and how one measures success—makes it difficult to show ROI clearly.