Online SignUp Blog by SignUp.com

Improve Your Fundraising - Step-By-Step

The biggest challenge many of us face in volunteering is raising money for our groups. It might be that we got talked into taking over the fundraising chair for our environmental group, or a special group to raise funds for a playground, but when it happens, it always great to have the benefit of experience to guide us away from the pitfalls and toward greatest success.

Here at VolunteerSpot, we were glad to recently make the acquaintance of the online equivalent of a fundraising coach, Step By Step Fundraising. Run by Sandra Sims, the depth of information here is truly astonishing. Take the example of the lucky person who gets handed chair duties for the upcoming charity auction - a visit to the web site would find a whole page dedicated to auctions, including stories from the trenches and guidance on how to maximize results.

The wealth of information here gave me a number of new insights, and now that it's bookmarked the next time I need practical assistance with fundraising, this will be my first stop. Check it out!!

More Great Uses for VolunteerSpot's Free Online Volunteer Scheduling Software

Here are a few of our favorite eBooks.  Take a look to see how we work and get great volunteering ideas for the whole family. To see a booklet full-screen, click on the icon in the lower right corner that looks like a little projector screen (it's just to the right of the page numbers). When you're done, pres ESC to come back to this post.

| Get your Presentation Pack














Start Scheduling Now

Thanks to our Home Team!

Special thanks for Philanthropy Columnist Andrea Ball of the Austin American Statesman.  She wrote about VolunteerSpot last Sunday and helped us spread the word about our free online volunteer scheduling software to our home-town community and local nonprofits.  You can read about it here. 

In a week, we had many new organizations and volunteer leaders try us out and launch signups covering more than 1,000 new volunteers in our 512.  Here are some of the volunteer spots that were organized this week:

•     Lego Robotics Team
•     Handicapped Riding Program Volunteers
•     Swim Teams
•     PTA Book Fair Volunteers
•     Local Film Society
•     Library Friends Literacy Programs
•     Special Olympics
•     Community Immunization Clinic
•     Boy Scout Campout Coordinators
•     Parent-Teacher Conferences
•     School Cafeteria Volunteers
•     Charity Resale Thrift Shop Cashiers
•     Math Pentathlon Volunteers
•     Teacher's Workroom Helpers
•     Little League Concessions Stand Volunteers

              and more...

Schedule, Signup, Remind...Volunteering made easy with VolunteerSpot!

Keep People Happy!

As a busy volunteer organizer, there's no better feeling than having all your shifts staffed up and everything running smoothly. If you were clever enough to use VolunteerSpot, scheduling and coordinating your volunteers almost runs itself, the volunteers can easily be contacted, automatically reminded, automatically thanked, the whole deal is nearly automated, you are blissful, relaxing... hang on, just a minute, now you're getting cocky, like me, so read on, and save yourself from a huge potential problem!

In addition to writing and spreading the joys of VolunteerSpot, I also round out my life as co-chair of a one committee of 40 or so parents who each work one shift a month. After the frenzy of recruiting early in the school year, my co-chair and I got everyone into the groove of their monthly shifts, and then started to relax as all ran smoothly.

Quite by accident, I stopped in on the committee's work this morning, and noticed some disturbing signs: no one was really talking with each other, supplies were half what they should have been and there'd been a lot of resentment building between team members which us co-chairs weren't aware of since we'd been "relaxing." Diving in to help, it was easy to see where the breakdowns were occurring -- there was a minor training issue and one shift change needed would address and fix the issues that had been plaguing this awesome, hard-working, reliable group of people and in my opinion turned what should have been a bubbly, happy, monthly gabfest into a source of gently seething frustration that might have sent most of these great people off toward other jobs next year (instead of the one I need them for).

The lesson is obvious: don't take people for granted! You've done the hard part -- recruiting the volunteers -- now keep your job easy by checking in regularly with your teams in person. The experienced eye can spot problems quicker than newbies and can also make them understand that problems are not their fault. Experienced eyes can fix the problems, keep the volunteers happy, and prevent unnecessary burnout.

So, if your volunteer life is running smoother than you could have ever imagined, take a moment and make sure you haven't let your guard down like I did -- keeping your volunteers happy keeps everyone happy (especially committee co-chairs!).

Flex your Fundraising Muscle - Getting More Volunteers to Help - Online & Free!!

Getting volunteers to fundraise for your nonprofit can be challenging, to say the least.  It's typically the 'hot potato' committee - a few bold souls are great at it, and if you're lucky, your league, nonprofit, school, or congregation has a handful (or more) of these talented folks.  If your group is like most of the ones I'm involved with - you have one or two people who reluctantly step into the fundraising role, but would rather have a volunteer spot on another committee.

We know fundraising is both an ongoing challenge and a critical component of any nonprofit's mission, especially in today's economy.  At VolunteerSpot, we've learned, through our volunteer sign up tool,  that people are usually happy to help if you ask them to do small bite-sized things, and make it SUPER EASY for them to participate. We believe the same holds true for fundraising.  That's why we've partnered with two terrific online organizations that make it easy for ANY nonprofit community group to raise money online.

First Giving lets you create an online fundraising page with your nonprofit’s name and logo, and invite your supporters to email it to everyone they know. Their friends, family and colleagues can donate securely by credit card and first giving will send you donations and give you all the reports you need.  Now your group, school, congregation or small nonprofit can have the same kind of fundrasing muscle as larger organizations.  And it's free to get started (they charge a small processing fee.)

GivingPal lets you create a shopping link for your charity.  Whenever your members want to shop online, if they do so through your link, your group gets up to 25% of sales! They have just about any online store of interest to your members including Amazon, Netflix, Office Depot, Lands End, Zappos and more.  Nonprofits that register now could win a $25 gift card and a $25 donation.

We hope First Giving and GivingPal  will make it easier for your group to meet it's fundraising goals.  Check out our VolunteerSpot Resources page to view our other partners.  Please let us know what you think and if you want us to help you find more resources like these in the future.

Hockey Tournament Volunteers - Scheduling Simplified!

With winter tournaments in full swing it's a great time to be a hockey player, hockey fan or hockey team parent. But if you are the hockey volunteer coordinator, you may be thinking it's time to start drinking more coffee with the late nights ahead to get all the shot clock times, score keepers and clock operators needed from every team to let the games run smoothly.

"Usually we'll just grab one of the parents in attendance to do a volunteer job, but a lot parents get pulled game after game -- it'd be nice to have an easy way to let all the parents participate, take the burden off the volunteer coordinator -- and in the case of tournaments, have the whole schedule planned before the first puck hits the ice," hockey parent Irene P. explained.

Staffing the ice has just gotten a lot easier with teams turning to VolunteerSpot's simple volunteer scheduling tool. Even for schedules as complex as multi-day tournaments, VolunteerSpot's web-based application is so easy to use that even a huge 80 team schedule over 3 days with hundreds of volunteer jobs can be set up easily by any volunteer with a computer in less than 20 minutes. Then, simply copy in the email addresses of the team parents, hit send, and let them each claim a volunteer spot that fits their family schedule.

And just like Santa Claus, you'll know who's being good and signed up to help, and well, you know about the naughty list. Coordinators can pull up a list of all those who've failed to sign up, send them and only them a followup email to push them into action -- without bothering the rest of the team with a big ole' reply all email. Volunteer schedules can always be printed directly from VolunteerSpot to keep a hard copy on hand at the rink.

And with the volunteer coordination and scheduling made so simple for hockey season and tournaments, we can all relax and just enjoy the action.