Bringing Out the Indiana Jones in Volunteer Managers


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.
The Value of Volunteer Wheel
Source: Volunteer Canada
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

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.