Owning Your Profile: Using Data to Enable Your Volunteering Journey

Every volunteer is a special snowflake – and that's a good thing! Individual perspectives help us find more human solutions to outstanding needs, and knowing the unique powers of each volunteer would ideally enable us to be the best versions of our programs.

In the past, we tried to get to know volunteers with surveys and applications, but these methods have inherent flaws: less-than-perfect framing of questions, inaccurate responses, version changes and delays in using the information gathered. In this Ahead of the Curve, author Sam Fankuchen explores how and why the Volunteer Engagement sector can now tap into something better by using personal data for enablement, rather than manipulation. He explains that when we digitize the volunteer intake process and allow volunteers to update their own profiles as their lives continue to change, Volunteer Engagement Leaders achieve more trust, intimacy, efficiency and efficacy in return. And this win-win process, Fankuchen writes, allows a volunteer’s “truest qualities to come into focus.”