What does it mean to invest in data management?
Data management involves collecting, organizing, protecting, and storing data in one centralized location. As your nonprofit collects more data about volunteers, data management solutions become essential for making sense of it all. In addition, volunteer data can give you critical insights to improve your program and retain volunteers. If you have ever been data-rich but information poor, you know the importance of data management. And if you haven’t, count yourself lucky and get ahead of your data management before it’s too late.
So how can you manage volunteer data better? A volunteer management system (VMS) allows nonprofits to manage their volunteers in various ways. For example, through a VMS, you can build volunteer profiles for each of your volunteers. These profiles can track volunteer history, contact information, interests and skills, and other important information. A VMS is a software solution designed to help nonprofits manage their volunteer data. Unlike other nonprofit management systems that track donor relationships, a VMS is specifically designed to help with recruitment, management, engagement, and reporting for your volunteer program.
Investing in your nonprofit’s data management means finding the right tech for your work and building processes to utilize the features available. There are many benefits to this investment, outlined below.
6 Reasons Volunteer Data Management Will Improve Your Work
Understand your volunteers better by having access to their interests, availability, and involvement. Knowing this can help you personalize thank you's or reach out to specific volunteers for help with specialized needs that you may not want to open to the public. You could even collect volunteer workplace information to help identify employers who could become corporate partners or offer volunteer grants.
Streamline volunteer management by having all of your data in one place. With the right system, you can save time on shift signups and communication while automatically tracking hours, the number of repeat volunteers, and other valuable data. This will make your life way easier when writing annual reports or grants.
Protect your data by moving out of shared spreadsheets and safeguarding your volunteer’s personal information from corruption, theft, and unauthorized access.
Integrate your volunteer and donor data. VMS systems (like POINT) often integrate with donor databases, showing you which volunteers have also donated. So you can create personal asks for those who haven't, bringing your volunteers into your donor program. Plus, you can bring donors into your volunteer program! It's a win-win combo!
Save time with automation. Data management systems can be used to take manual data collection and reporting tasks off your plate. Now you can use resources (aka time) and your staff more efficiently.
Improve reporting with automatic data collection built into your volunteer program processes that keep your data updated with no extra work from your team.
Did you know POINT offers a free and Pro volunteer management system with built-in recruitment tools and automatic reporting? Check out our features, and if you like what you see, you can book a demo. Our team would love to talk to you about how POINT can help grow your impact!