Volunteer Management SWOT analysis

The first (and possibly only) meeting of the Volunteer Management working group that was held at the June 2007 DASCorps Pre-Service Orientation went through a basic SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis using collective experience for organizing and implementing a Volunteer Program. The following is the SWOT list generated from that meeting.

Strengths:
Organization
- Leadership
- Understanding People (Emotional Intelligence)
- Solid Communication
- Protocols
- Assessments

Weaknesses:
- too much idealism/unreasonable expectations
- Poor communication
- Unclear Chain of Command
- Lack of volunteer recognition
- Lack of ground rules

Opportunities:
- Previous volunteers/Alumni
- Networking
- College volunteer centers/student service organizations
- Senior organizations
- Community Centers
- Online volunteer sites (craigslist.com, volunteermatch.com, etc.)

Threats:
- Absence of Shared Vision/People not understanding volunteerism
Size of organizations (both a large and well-known organization where people assume a large contingent of volunteers where they may actually be few or a small organization that is not well-known enough to gain volunteers' interest/trust)
- Recruiting qualified volunteers
- Lack of interest
- Bad timing of recruitment (i.e. volunteer recruitment at college level mid-way through semester)
- Transportation availability/affordability for volunteers to travel to work site
- Excuses, people saying "I already gave too much"
- Public knowledge of how to get involved with volunteering

The Volunteer Management working group aims to address all these issues and more in its final output. Keep posted for more information and resources as they are added.

A sample Volunteer Management plan/handbook is attached below. It was developed for HOME, Inc. in January 2007.

In addition, take a look at another Volunteer Management handbook, also listed below, created by our own VISTA!