As a nonprofit skilled, you already know that each greenback will get you nearer to reaching your targets. You’ll be able to increase funding and appeal to extra volunteers to your nonprofit with a devoted volunteer grant technique.
We’ve put collectively this information to stroll via the whole lot you’ll want to find out about volunteer grants. We’ll cowl the next:
Should you’re not aware of volunteer grants or aren’t certain easy methods to maximize income from this channel, look no additional! Let’s dive proper in by answering continuously requested questions on volunteer grants.
Volunteer Grant FAQs
What are volunteer grants?
Volunteer grants are a kind of company giving program during which employers present financial grants to organizations the place their workers volunteer recurrently. These packages are often known 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 can pay you for these hours.
The precise period of time a supporter must volunteer to earn a grant to your nonprofit depends upon their employer’s particular program necessities. Work along 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 primary draw of volunteer grants is further funding to your group for free of charge to supporters. Past that, volunteer grants have advantages for everybody concerned within the course of:
- Particular person volunteers could make a fair larger affect with the hours they provide to your nonprofit. Volunteers already care about your mission and objective; now they may give you twice the help via the work they’re already doing.
- Corporations that provide volunteer grants profit from sustaining a constructive public picture. This constructive status additionally means their shoppers and workers will probably be happier to work with them.
- Nonprofits profit by constructing stronger relationships with each firms and volunteers. Volunteer grants give supporters one other technique to help your nonprofit, rising their funding in your group. And if in case you have plenty of volunteers who all work for a similar employer, you could safe a company relationship that would flip right into a sponsorship!
Some firms even supply staff volunteer grants, the place teams of workers from the identical firm can volunteer collectively and safe a bigger grant to your trigger.
Why do companies supply volunteer grants?
To safe company help, nonprofit organizations normally depend on firms to have already got company social accountability (CSR) packages like volunteer grants or volunteer day without work in place. Nevertheless, by understanding why companies supply volunteer grant packages and researching the employers your supporters work for, you or your donors might be able to persuade sure firms to start out new CSR initiatives.
Reviews present that workers who work at firms 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 will result in improved enterprise outcomes, equivalent to elevated worker productiveness and retention.
Moreover, stay open to different forms 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 to your ongoing packages.
Are volunteer grants frequent?
Sure, volunteer grants are a typical enterprise observe! We’ve pulled collectively some key statistics from Double the Donation that display how frequent and impactful these packages are:
- 40% of Fortune 500 firms supply volunteer grant packages. Loads of different companies and firms even have some type of volunteer grant program.
- 80% of firms with volunteer grant packages give between $8-$15 per volunteer hour. These {dollars} add up! When you have a devoted group of volunteers, these gathered hours may end up in a pleasant annual sum.
- The common company volunteer participation fee is 33%. A couple of third of eligible workers at the moment reap the benefits of company volunteer alternatives. Nevertheless, in terms of volunteer grants, that fee drops to only 3%, indicating that volunteers don’t find out about this chance. Nonprofits are working to extend these numbers by advertising their volunteer packages.
From these statistics, it’s clear that there are many volunteer grant alternatives that your group and its supporters can reap the benefits of.
Learn how to Get Volunteer Grants for Your Nonprofit
To safe volunteer grants, you first want to know how the method works. Out of your nonprofit’s perspective, it occurs in 4 steps:
- A person volunteers along with your nonprofit. This could embody serving to along with your packages, volunteering just about, or taking part in another roles your group affords.
- That particular person appears up their volunteer grant eligibility. In the event that they qualify, they’ll submit a request to their firm for the grant.
- The employer appears over the appliance and confirms eligibility.
- As soon as the corporate has verified the hours along with your nonprofit, your nonprofit will get a test!
Corporations’ volunteer grant necessities range, however there’s typically a minimal variety of hours that have to 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 would possibly pay $15 per volunteer hour, whereas one other pays a flat $500 after 40 hours have been contributed.
Sadly, most volunteers don’t even know whether or not they’re eligible for a grant or easy methods to test their eligibility. Which means it’s as much as your nonprofit to assist volunteers earn the grants they rightfully deserve.
Finest Practices for Securing Volunteer Grants
How do you get the phrase out about this mutually helpful alternative? Simply comply with these three greatest practices:
1. Market volunteer grants to your supporters
You’ll be able to’t safe volunteer grants in case your supporters don’t know what they’re or easy methods to request them. That’s why it’s essential to create a advertising plan that promotes these alternatives to your supporters.
As you develop your plan, think about these methods:
- Create a web page in your web site that explains the volunteer grant course of and easy methods to submit a request. This may be added to your volunteer sign-up web page, “Methods to Give” web page, or a brand new web page. Moreover, it is a great spot in your web site so as to add a volunteer grants search device, which we’ll talk about quickly.
- Launch a social media marketing campaign that educates donors on volunteer grant fundamentals and encourages them to test their eligibility. Strive sharing statistics about volunteer grant participation and affect, in addition to tales from beneficiaries about their constructive experiences along with your volunteers.
- Spotlight volunteers and corporations who contribute volunteer grants in your month-to-month e-newsletter. This creates social proof and may encourage supporters to test their very own eligibility.
When you’ve created fundamental volunteer grant advertising supplies to your web site, you possibly can broaden your attain by leveraging the Google Advert Grant. The Google Advert Grants program offers eligible nonprofits with $10,000 a month in credit to spend on Google search adverts.
By means of the Google Advert Grant program, your group can create adverts that present up on the prime of Google search outcomes pages for related phrases, like “volunteer alternatives close to me” or “animal shelter volunteering.” Spotlight volunteer grants in these adverts, and also you’ll promote the chance to a complete new viewers of potential volunteers!
2. Supply quite a lot of volunteer alternatives
Guarantee you could have volunteer actions that supporters discover fascinating to encourage continued help. Take into account 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 will study plant care on the job. In distinction, you may also supply a distant volunteer alternative for information entry.
Moreover, have actions that teams of volunteers can take part in. It will accommodate company volunteer groups to safe extra company volunteers, improve 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 seeking to safe volunteer grants, matching items, or another type of company help, streamlining the appliance course of is a surefire technique 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 affords nonprofits help for each matching items and volunteer grants. Right here’s how the volunteer grant element of this platform works:
- The volunteer searches for his or her employer. Volunteers can enter their firm’s identify into 360MatchPro’s employer search device. This device will be embedded on any web page of your web site. That means, you possibly can put it wherever you suppose volunteers are almost certainly to test, like your volunteer info web page.
- The search device identifies the employer. If the employer is in 360MatchPro’s database, it should autofill to streamline the search course of. 360MatchPro’s database at the moment covers 99.68% of match-eligible donors, which means your volunteers will possible have the ability to discover their employers.
- Volunteer grant info is offered. 360MatchPro offers detailed volunteer grant info for each employer. This consists of which workers are eligible, what number of hours have to be volunteered, how a lot the grant will probably be, and if the corporate affords different company volunteer alternatives like staff volunteer grants and volunteer day without work.
From there, the software program will direct volunteers to the following steps they should take to request a volunteer grant. It will normally 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 phone info.
Some firms could attain out to your nonprofit for affirmation, whereas others would possibly think about the method completed after reviewing an worker software. Both means, be able to work along with your volunteers to reply their questions and help them via the volunteer grant course of.
Examples of High Corporations with Volunteer Grant Applications
Check out a few of the prime firms with volunteer grant packages to get an thought of how a lot companies put money into company philanthropy.
Verizon’s Volunteer Grant Program
Verizon affords 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, virtually 30,000 workers took benefit of this program and volunteered over 1 million hours in complete.
ExxonMobil’s Volunteer Grant Program
ExxonMobil has a number of volunteer grant packages: a person volunteer grant program via which workers can safe a $500 grant after volunteering 20 hours with a company and staff volunteer grant alternatives for teams of 5 or extra.
Extra Volunteer Grant Sources
Tapping into volunteer grants doesn’t should be daunting. The extra information your staff has about these alternatives, the extra profitable you’ll be at finding and securing these helpful 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:
