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Description
Many non-profit organizations do not sufficiently involve volunteers to help with their manual tasks. That results in slower development and inefficient use of their resources. Our goal is to increase the number of NGOs in the Czech Republic that efficiently cooperate with manual volunteers and can evaluate and communicate the impact of their help. Project activities will allow us to share our 8 years of know-how with NGOs and will enable us to create a method for measuring and rating the impact of manual volunteer help on the Czech non-profit sector development. It will also enable us to create the proper PR outputs to communicate the measured impact to the public.
We will analyze our current tools and processes in this field, then we will create new ones including guidance materials on how to use them. We will run focus groups in order to further investigate the NGOs needs in this topic, organize trainings for non-profit organizations in order to increase their competences in the field and support them with various materials for their independent work with volunteers and effective development. We will offer opportunities for sharing experiences and best practices through round table discussion talks. Last but not least we will work on creating a PR communication plan and organizing a PR campaign aiming to increase the communication of the manual volunteer help impact. Several video shorts and photo reports will be created with the participating NGOs to help them share their results with their community and supporters. Thanks to this project our organization will strengthen its prestige and position as a professional provider of educational activities in the field of manual volunteer help and increase the personnel capacities which will enable us to further our growth.
Summary of project results
Before the project we identified the following issues: Firstly, the Tamjdem organization did not work with such evaluation tools and processes that would correspond with its needs and goals of measuring the impact of manual volunteering on the development of the non-profit sector in the Czech Republic, and also it did not have a PR strategy that would effectively communicate this impact to the public.
Secondly other nonprofit organizations did not have sufficient competence to find, coordinate and maintain volunteers to help them with manual work, ideally from their local community or region, without the help of intermediaries like us and also, they lacked inspiration and space for sharing experiences in this area. Furthermore, the nonprofit organizations also did not know how to measure and communicate the impact of this type of volunteer work on their own development to their clients, community, volunteers, donors, etc.
The activities and outcomes of this project helped us address the need to effectively measure and better communicate the impact of manual volunteer help on the growth of non-profit organizations. We also focused on providing nonprofits with a complex set of competence and know-how on cooperation with volunteers from finding them to coordinating them as well as sharing feedback and strengthening relationships. The non-profit organizations that took part in our activities were equipped with theories, good practices tips, video spots, interviews with photo albums, as well as practical materials for their individual work with manual volunteers and on increasing awareness of their importance. On the other hand, two published documents were made public and will remain available for any non-profit organization in need even after the end of the project.
The Tamjdem organization also benefited from this project as it gained new evaluation strategies for its work and the impact of its volunteers, but also managed to raise prestige of the manual volunteer aid and its influence on the development of Czech non-profit organizations and motivate people to become volunteers.
The project started off with assessing our organization´s current evaluation methods and processes of measuring the impact of manual volunteer help on a growth of nonprofit organizations. This was followed by creating a manual for Tamjdem and another one for other nonprofit organizations with methods for measuring the manual volunteer help. Based on 2 focus groups researching the benefits and challenges of cooperating with manual volunteers we published a Research report and we organized 2 networking events as well as a complex training of 7 workshops with experts for nonprofit organizations with the aim to share their experience and good practices, but more importantly to improve their skills in various topics connected to effective cooperation with volunteers. We created a practical 3-part Handbook for nonprofits where we shared our know-how and practical tools. And last but not least throughout the whole project we ran a PR campaign showing the impact of manual volunteering. We selected 15 stories of various organizations that show the importance of manual volunteer help and published them in the form of videos and photo reports with interviews.
The project had a direct impact on the representatives of 43 non-profit organizations with various topics from all around Czechia. We equipped them with information, experience, know-how and competences to increase their effectiveness in working with manual volunteers; shared with them inspiring as well as practical documents for their individual work; we offered opportunities for networking and sharing good practices; and, with the aim of supporting the organizations in the area of communication of the volunteer aid impact, we provided selected non-profit organizations with PR material in the form of videos and photo reports with interviews.
We consider the increased awareness of this topic to be also a benefit of the project, namely among the target group of volunteers, supporters and the general public, which we achieved thanks to our intensive PR campaign. The impact of the project also includes newly established personal ties among the representatives of nonprofits of different focus, size, place of operation and type, but also between the organizations and experts from workshops and networking events. And finally we appreciate stronger connections between the non-profit organizations and volunteers themselves.