You may be familiar with the Indiana Jones character portrayed by Harrison Ford. The film franchise would bring us on epic adventures on quests for treasures. In a way, volunteer managers, among the many other non-profit practitioners, are like the Indiana Jones of their organizations. After all, volunteer programmes, when running well, can bring about much impact and value. This has already been shown by studies such as the one by the Conference Board of Canada and many others. And in addition to helping the service users, building the capacity and capabilities of the non-profit agencies they are in and bolstering support for the non-profit and cause, volunteers also reap personal benefits, including better health as well as the acquisition of life and work-related competencies and skills.
With all that is being said, Volunteer Managers must thus be skilful in demonstrating the value of their organization’s volunteer programmes to the service users, volunteers, staff, organization, corporate partners and the community at large. The challenge remains that there is currently no simple tool or framework to help non-profits to begin to comprehend the impact of their volunteer programmes.
With this in mind, the team at Emmaus Strategies embarked on an ambitious Corporate Social Responsibility project to develop an impact assessment guide for local non-profits. We hope to be able to plug this gap and demonstrate the full impact potential of volunteer programmes.
In unveiling the preview of the Volunteer Partnerships Impact Assessment (VPIA), our team, with the kind support of the National Council of Social Service’s Volunteer Resource Optimisation team, conducted the “Uncovering the Impact Potential of Your Volunteer Programme” workshop on 4 Apr 2019. The workshop concluded successfully with participants taking away with them handles on how they may start to approach impact assessment for their volunteer programmes.
Keen to be informed about the VPIA guide when it is available? Join our mailing list.
Uncovering the Impact Potential of Your Volunteer Programme” Workshop (4 Apr 2019)
Photography by FuelGooder Ms Ngo Thuy Anh
Concise yet comprehensive coverage of essential techniques for a robust impact assessment. Especially commendable, given need to move training online within such a short timeframe! Was engaged throughout.
This is such an innovative way of holding workshops digitally and online! Kudos to James for coming up with such a great alternative and being adaptable in the face of uncertain condition that we have here right now in Singapore due to COVID-19. I find it very interactive, especially the (groupwork) portion where we can share our ideas using digital post-its. Great job, James!
The session gave me a different perspective for measuring the impact of volunteerism in an organisation. Instead of just looking at the outcome which usually relates to quantifying results, impact indicators such as quality results are equally important.
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James is the Lead Thrive-Synergist & Founder of Emmaus Strategies; a social enterprise that “fuels good”. It does this through Mental Well-Being programmes for individuals and organizations, as well as Strategic Volunteer Partnerships consultancy and training for non-profits.
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