B Corp Offers Grants To NFPs

As a volunteer treasurer, you are probably always on the lookout for sources of additional funding for your Not-for-Profit (NFP). If your NFP does work that involves the health and well being of children, then you will be happy to learn about a new grant program being offered to NFPs by Whole Kids.

Whole Kids is a certified B corporation and a small, family business that offers children's products that are healthy and organic. This company has started the Small Seeds Community Grant to help fund local community NFP projects that improve the lives of children and their families.

The grants start at $500 and can be up to $5,000 for a single project. Currently, the company has committed to providing at least 1% of gross sales to funding the grants each quarter, and the company hopes to fund up to six projects per quarterly round.

NFPs can only apply for one grant per project. Applications that can be fully funded with smaller amounts are given preference so that the company can fund as many projects as possible each round.

The company started accepting online applications for the grants on April 1^st, and will continue accepting applications for this first round of funding through June 30^th of this year. Your NFP will be notified the following month after the round closes if their project was selected to receive one of the grants.

Service areas for the grants focus on projects that help children in the following eight areas:

·         Efforts to build stronger communities for families and children.

·         Improve the health and nutrition of children and improve access to wholesome foods.

·         Improve children's access to learning opportunities and education.

·         Improve the environment to reduce hazards to children.

·         Secure the environment, wildlife and natural resources for children for generations.

·         Promote safe places where children can play and enjoy recreational opportunities.

·         Improve the health and well being of children, including their mental health.

·         Promote social justice for children and the community and protect children's human rights.

Securing funding for your NFP local projects not only helps strengthen your community directly, it can also increase the stability of your NFP to ensure that you can continue operations and serve the needs of your community for the long term. If your NFP has projects that focus on improving the lives of children, why not consider applying for one of the grants today?

We’ve provided a lot of information for you over the last few posts so we thought it was about time for some humour.

If you’re a volunteer treasurer, you know as well as we do that sometimes you’ve got to laugh or you’ll go crazy.

So here you go. This is for you. We hope it makes you laugh.

At the Zoo

A man was delivering penguins to the zoo when his van broke down on the highway. A fellow stopped to see if he could be of assistance. "Oh, I'm in some real trouble here" said the first man. "I've got to take these penguins to the zoo today, and now I'm not sure I'll get there."

The helpful fellow volunteered to put the penguins in the back of his car and take them to the zoo. 

The man with car trouble gratefully accepted this offer and promised to get to the zoo as soon as possible.

A little later, the man was on the road again and went immediately to the zoo. He looked everywhere but did not see the helpful fellow or any of the penguins. In a panic, he drove back into town. Just as he was wondering what in the world to do next, he saw the "volunteer" walking across the street with all the penguins waddling along behind him.

He ran up and said, "What are you doing here? I thought you were going to take the penguins to the zoo!" and the volunteer replied, "I did, and we had such a good time there, we decided to come into town for ice cream."

Moral: When working with volunteers, clear instructions and good training is always necessary.

Submitted by Sandy Leonard

New Diploma Of Fundraising

For everyone who dreams for a career in fundraising – we have some exciting news! The well-known Fundraising Management Diploma course offered by the Fundraising Institute Australia (FIA) is now being updated to include new features and provide a better, more comprehensive professional qualification for fundraisers. The new Diploma in Fundraising, which will be offered in the form of a distant learning program, will substitute the current Fundraising Management Diploma in the summer of 2015.

The Fundraising Institute Australia, founded back in 1968, is the organisation representing and supporting fundraising professionals across Australia and making sure professional development pathways are available for as many people as possible. Maintaining high standards and promoting measurable standards, FIA is the ultimate place to find help and support if you are planning to work in fundraising.

The new Diploma in Fundraising will be available to both Home and International students as a distance learning course and will enable the participants to develop the knowledge and skills they need in order to advance in the area of professional fundraising – either working for a NFP or starting their own charity. Taking the course offers many advantages, including:

Professional Fundraising Relevance – just like the current Fundraising Management Diploma, the new Diploma in Fundraising will be recognised by fundraising bodies and NFP organisations across Australia and will improve your career prospects in the sector.

Varied Learning Experience – the new updated distance learning course will make sure you are prepared for the world of fundraising by delivering the material in innovative and highly efficient ways.

Guidance and Support (including for preparation and assessment) – throughout a course, you will be able to use the help of specialists whenever you find it hard to deal with the material on your own or complete certain tasks.

Establishes a relationship between theoretical and practical knowledge – your fundraising experience so far will be utilised and related to the theory you need to absorb through the course.

Renown Tutors – the people teaching you are themselves professional fundraisers with vast experience in the sector, so you will be in good hands.

As you can see, the new Diploma in Fundraising appears to be an exciting opportunity and a must for everyone engaged with professional fundraising. If you would like to find out more about the course, you can e-mail FIA at training@fia.org.au or contact their Education Team on 1300 889 670. Registration for the course will be open in May, but if you want to express your interest, you can do so on the above e-mail.

Volunteering in an Emergency

Have you ever noticed how the worst and most miserable situations motivate people to instantly lend a helping hand? In cases of floods and fires, earthquakes and hurricanes, even in an emergency like this one, people forget about their differences, limited time and their own everyday problems and join together to form an astounding force driven by good and changing fates.

The recent Sampson Flat bushfire near Adelaide brought similar thoughts to Bev Langley, volunteer and operator of the Minton Farm Animal Rescue Centre. Seeing the hundreds of volunteers arriving to the area of the disaster from every corner of Australia, Bev commented, 'I think it has brought the best out in a lot of people.'

And here is an interesting question for every NFP organisation to think about – how can you use this particular knowledge to your advantage? Well, it is obvious that emergencies and urgent situations motivate people to volunteer. Of course, we don’t encourage you to set a school on fire and ask for help to save the children, but emergency may have many faces and forms. If you manage to convince people that your organisation needs urgent help in terms of volunteer force and donations, you will solve your problems for a long time to come.

One way to do this is, obviously, to have a very creative marketing campaign. Do not lie and do not distort the truth – just tell the facts in a really expressive, convincing and touching way. Remember why you started helping people, why you decided to help these particular people – and then tell the others why they should help. Do not show people that you will be fine without their help – instead 'We will be grateful for your help', say 'We need your help!' and instead 'As a volunteer you can make a difference' – 'You WILL make a difference!'. Using strong language will urge people to help and will make them think that you need them as soon as possible – and this is exactly the effect you want to achieve.

The most important thing you need to remember is that people need a reason to volunteer. You will get far weaker response if you tell them that you are recruiting just in case, or because it is good to volunteer in the first place. On the other hand, if you have an action that needs more people to organise, if the current levels of volunteering are really low and that may bring the end of your NFP, or if there is any other situation which requires urgent actions, you can be sure that people will respond.

To cut a long story short, you may need an emergency to recruit new volunteers and attract donors. The good news is that everything can be presented as an emergency. Actually, if you think about it, your organisation helps people, animals or the nature, and the fact that someone or something needs help is urgent enough to make people want to participate. You will just need to present it in the right way. Good luck!

Wishing You A Very Merry Christmas

Volunteer Treasurer would like to wish all their clients and supporters a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Enjoy your break and we will see you in 2015.

The Volunteer Quiz

All the specialists analysing the volunteering sector agree on one thing – the main problem why volunteers give up is that they don’t feel engaged in what they do. In other words, different people are apt to doing different volunteering and if you want to keep them with you for longer, you need to find out what may be the best tasks to give them. From outdoor events organisation to office and administration work, you can now easily determine where your volunteers will fit in with the help of the different quizzes suggested in this post.

Quibblo's Volunteering Quiz

This is a great quiz for someone who wants to quickly find out what the perfect volunteer job for them will be. Only 10 very straightforward and clear questions and the volunteer-to-be will know what they will enjoy doing. From there, you just need to place them in the right team and expect amazing results.

United Way's Quiz

This is another great quiz that will help you find more about the volunteering nature of your prospective volunteers. It will tell you if their volunteer style is Active/Hands-on, Social Helper, Artistic/Creative or Technical/Administrative. In addition to this, you will get some ideas about what exactly they can help with – e.g. IT, Coaching, Photography, etc. This quiz is not interactive, so you will have to count how many A, B, C or D answers they have and check out the results table.

8 Quick Quizzes For Volunteers    

              

About 4 years ago, Wild Apricot published a post discussing 8 quizzes for volunteers that were divided into four categories: Learn Your Volunteer Profile, Eco-Volunteers, Career-Oriented Volunteers and Young Volunteers. Bearing in mind that the Internet is constantly changing, you will probably find that some of the quizzes are no longer there, but it is worth checking the post out and seeing what is still available.

Create Your Own Quiz

After you’ve checked out a few volunteer quizzes on the web, you will start seeing a pattern and determine how to estimate the results. Then, you will be able to create your own volunteer quiz and give it to your prospective volunteers showing interest in your organisation. The good thing about creating your own quiz is that you will be able to include questions that are relevant to your organisation and will better exhibit the preferences and abilities of your future volunteers.

Other Quizzes

If you want to see even more ready-made volunteer quizzes, the web is full of them! Just open your favourite search engine and type ‘volunteer quiz’ or ‘quiz for volunteers’ and you will be offered hundreds of quizzes to choose from.

All in all, knowing about all those great volunteer quizzes will hopefully help you with the hard tasks of retaining volunteers within your organisation. So next time you find a new person who wants to try volunteering, ask them to spend a couple of minutes on the quiz you think best matches your and their aims. The results will show you exactly how you can place the volunteer and how to keep them happy and satisfied with their work. Isn't that exactly what your organisation needs?

Volunteering – Getting More Than You Give

“Volunteerism – the policy or practice of volunteering one’s time or talents for charitable, educational, or other worthwhile activities, especially in one’s community” – that’s what volunteerism is all about according to the dictionary. What happens, however, when we take the ‘worthwhile’ out of ‘worthwhile activities’? The Ph.D. student in sociology and volunteer Ian Breckenridge-Jackson asked the same question in his presentation ‘Getting More Than We Give – Realities of Volunteerism’.

Back in 2006, Ian became one of the many tourist volunteers who went to New Orleans with the plan to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. However, it turned out that volunteering turned out quite different than what he expected. Instead of helping the victims settle back in their homes in the historical neighbourhood Lower Ninth Ward, Ian and the other volunteers had the task to demolish what’s left of their houses, leaving people to wait for the government to rebuild it and give them some financial help.

This experience changed Ian’s life. Expecting to go and give his time and efforts to the people, he ended up getting a free trip to New Orleans, an award, a valuable entry in his CV, recognition and the feeling that he did something good. This volunteering experience completely changed Ian’s life. The simple calculations he made helped him see that volunteer tourists, although driven by good will, are mostly a waste of time and money.

Ian found out that if the funds used to get volunteers to New Orleans was used to build new houses instead, it would have been enough to rebuild a neighbourhood twice the size of Lower Ninth Ward (for reference, so far only about 1/5 of the houses in the neighbourhood have been rebuilt). So Ian decided to contribute to the victims in a different way. Firstly, he partnered with another volunteer – Caroline Heldman – and together they co-founded the Lower Ninth Ward Museum where everyone can go for free and learn the story of the neighbourhood’s inhabitants. Secondly, he focussed his Ph.D. dissertation on the impact of volunteers who flocked to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

And while we are waiting for the results of Ian’s dissertation, we can’t help ask ourselves some of the questions bothering him. When is volunteerism turning into a pointless and even a detrimental activity? Before taking part in a volunteer project, you need to find out if your efforts will actually help someone. Volunteerism exists to help people in need, but it often takes an unfortunate turn which helps no-one. There is nothing bad in getting something back from volunteer work – experience, new friends, new connections, knowledge etc., however, for it to be worthwhile, you need to give more than you get.

Ian is not the first one to doubt the usefulness of volunteer tourists. Many specialists are of the opinion that a worthy cause could do better to invest the money for volunteer tourists in local specialists and companies (depending on the situation), who will be able to do much more for the people in need than those coming from all over the world. Some people even think that volunteer tourism is becoming a whimsy, a sort of amusement for some people.

We know it is the volunteers, not the tourists, devoting their time and efforts with good intentions. However, before you choose a cause to volunteer for, ask yourself what you will be doing, why you will be doing it and who you are really helping. If the answers to these three questions are satisfactory – go for it! If not, maybe you should consider another cause or project.

Good luck!