In case you missed it, we hosted a live webinar with the University of Notre Dame’s Ellen Roof last week all about Notre Dame’s journey into volunteer fundraising. Ellen shared some advice from her experiences starting ND Loyal just three years ago and everything she’s learned along the way.
If you haven’t watched it yet, be sure to read the recap, watch the full webinar, or check out our Volunteer Fundraising Playbook.
By developing ND Loyal as an interest-driven volunteer program, Ellen and the University of Notre Dame demonstrate an exciting way to use our Volunteer Management product. But that’s not all you can use it for.
Here are some other innovative ways current EverTrue customers are using Volunteer Management:
A New Strategy for Giving Day
Our friends at the College of Charleston used volunteers to power the call center during their first ever CofC Day in January. The team took advantage of the easy-to-use Volunteer Management platform by recruiting faculty, staff, and student volunteers with little to no prior experience to raise almost $7,000 through the call center alone.
Staff used pools to assign each volunteer their own list of alumni to reach out to. Throughout the day, volunteers made calls wishing alumni a “Happy CofC Day” and soliciting gifts. Whether volunteers sent Thankview videos, shot off an email, or made a phone call, the personal touch is so important to give donors an experience that doesn’t just feel personal — it is personal.
Updating Your Alumni Database
Some customers use Volunteer Management to update their alumni database with up-to-date information. Receiving calls from fellow alumni looking to update records is an infinitely more personal donor experience than receiving the vague mailers from third party vendors that we’ve all seen.
As an added bonus at one institution, this program has had the unexpected benefit of building excitement among volunteers around the school’s Day of Caring, resulting in a class competition!
Powering Student Caller Programs
Ohio University and Kenyon College are using Volunteer Management to power student calling programs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Parker Subia, Alumni Philanthropy Fellow at Kenyon, was looking for a way to engage work-study students and keep them employed during the crisis.
He realized he could keep alumni engagement high without any intense fundraising activities by equipping these work-study students with Volunteer Management and tasking them with relationship building activities.
Students now make calls from home to update alumni about how the college is handling the crisis, share resources and virtual alumni events, and prompted alumni to update their contact information. And when alumni ask how they can help, the student callers can make asks to support the emergency fund. So far, 19 student callers have sent 5,300+ emails and made 4,600+ phone calls.
Managing Deans and Trustees
Volunteer by EverTrue lets you share as much — or as little — biographical and past giving with users. It’s super-customizable, so several organizations have built pools for Deans and Trustees to use to manage outreach to their donors. That way, they can see a list of prospects without having access to donors’ confidential giving history or contact reports.
Have any questions about Volunteer by EverTrue? Let’s chat.
And while you’re here, check out our Volunteer Fundraising Playbook.