What Is The Major Gift Potential of Your Volunteers?

There are a lot of myths when it comes to fundraising with volunteers:

Myth #1: “Volunteers are already giving us their time so we shouldn’t also ask them for money.”

Wrong! 85% of volunteers donate to the nonprofits they volunteer for.

Myth #2: “If they wanted to give, they would have done so already. Clearly they prefer to just volunteer.”

Wrong! Volunteers are 66% more likely to donate financially to the organization they support than those who don’t volunteer their time. Bottom line: the only way people can know you need support is to ask them!

Myth #3: “Volunteers are not generous with their dollars, just their time.”

Wrong! Volunteers are more generous with their giving than people who don’t volunteer! They give almost twice as much to charity as non-volunteer supporters.

So, what’s the key lesson here? If you aren’t asking your volunteers to give, you’re leaving money on the table and depriving people who love your cause of feeling the joy of helping it thrive. That’s right—you’re depriving them of joy because giving is the neurological equivalent of winning the lottery! When we give, our bodies release feel-good neurochemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin and reduce cortisol, the stress hormone.

Most Volunteer Directors I hear about do everything they can to suppress their volunteers from receiving any appeals. Meanwhile, frustrated Development Directors tire of trying to convince them otherwise and give up.

There’s a better way. The greatest diplomat in all this is one thing: data.

With a more complete view of your volunteer’s generosity, you could get everyone on board to embrace inviting volunteers to give.

How to use data to find the major gift potential of your volunteers

Imagine being able to click a volunteer’s name in your database and see not just how many hours they’ve given to your cause, but also even more information about their giving.

How nice would it be to know more details about their generosity and giving potential?

Even better, Bloomerang customers can use DonorSearch to identify volunteers with high potential to be major donors—without upsetting the Volunteer Director.

Volunteer ideas to reveal major gifts potential among volunteers

Even if you don’t have the benefit of Bloomerang all-in-one volunteer management and DonorSearch wealth screening tools (or even if you do!), there are lots of great opportunities to create volunteer opportunities for volunteers that reveal major gift potential.

For example, one Boys and Girls Club brought together a group of volunteers they believed to have high net worth to sit on a “scholarship review committee” reading summer camp scholarship applications. The volunteers found saying ‘no’ to so many deserving kids was simply too hard. So, each person on the committee made a major gift to fund summer camp scholarships.

Think about opportunities at your nonprofit to engage potentially high net-worth volunteers in opportunities like these—where they see both the need and the financial lift it takes to meet it. Their generosity might surprise you!