1. Utilize your volunteers fully through better recordkeeping
With FundRaiser's Volunteer module (available in Select, standard in Professional), you can better track several aspects of your volunteer base, which will allow you to better utilize their talents.
My wife, Nanette, volunteers as a "site steward" for a local non-profit that visits archeological sites in the area and records new disturbances from pot hunters, among other things. She is quite passionate about her involvement, but, at first, after having taken some initial training, it seemed she was on her own to figure out what she should be doing, and where, and with whom, and when, and on and on. Later she discovered she was not alone, and that there were other volunteers who had languished with no direction provided by the organizers, and no real records of who was assigned to what regions. So she set out to correct some of that by organizing some of the information available. After all, volunteers do so because they want to help, not because they want to be called "volunteer".
2. Show appreciation through clear and frequent communication
Once you have a volunteer, make certain you develop that relationship in a positive way, by, first of all, thanking them for taking the time and effort to volunteer, and, secondly, to thank them every time they volunteer their time to your cause.
With FundRaiser's Volunteer module, you'll find these typical communications are semi-automated, to make it easier to stay current with the correspondence. Of course there will be other communications, too, including notices of upcoming events that require volunteer assistance, recognition events like dinners, etc., and even notices to those who fail to show up for tasks to which they've committed. You'll need to have a lot of information on hand about your volunteers in order not to waste their time (or yours) when asking for help with particular tasks, or sending other corresondence, and the Volunteer module is a good place to store that information in a way that will minimize the effort required to fully utilize it. For instance, when are they available for volunteer work? If you have a task that's date specific, you won't have to bother those folks who can't work on that particular day of the week. By only asking those volunteers who have the desire and can work on the day a task is to be done, you'll avoid alienating volunteers by not sending them requests they can't (or don't want to) fulfill. If a volunteer's experience is that your correspondence with them is always meaningful in some way, they won't be prone to ignore it.
3. Keep track of what they want to do, can do, and will do
There can be quite a difference between these three choices. I work on computers all week long, so one of the last things I want to do as a volunteer is to work on computers. But I CAN do it, and, if asked nicely, I WILL do it, even though I would rather NOT do it.
In the Volunteer module there are "Job Interests", which equate directly to tasks you need done that a volunteer is willing to do. You can have as many of these as needed, and can assign as many as needed to each individual volunteer. So, when you have a task come up, it's an easy matter to pull a list of those volunteers who are willing to do the task. There are also "Skills" which can be assigned, and are meant to highlight what a volunteer CAN do (like my computer experience), whether or not they've expressed interest in using those skills as a volunteer. But if you don't keep track of skills, you may be missing out on giving volunteers the opportunity to help in a way they hadn't truly considered.
You'll make a note when a volunteer goes the extra mile to help, of course, and give them proper recognition at the right time, but only if you've kept records.
4. Keep track of what they HAVE done for you
You'd think this would be obvious, but, unless you have the Volunteer module to assist you, it can be a difficult thing to accomplish.
With the module, you set up Projects, which consist of multiple Tasks, and you can assign volunteers to particular Tasks. You might have multiple Projects, even, such as Habitat for Humanity does because each of the homes they build is a project made up of many, many individual tasks. Or your organizaiton may be the project, with tasks for various volunteer positions, like "receptionist", or "groundskeeper", or what have you. No matter the complexity of projects and tasks, you need any easy way to keep track of WHEN a volunteer worked; WHAT they did; HOW LONG they worked; and HOW MUCH that means to your organization.
5. Let your volunteers know their value to you
If you keep track of what has been done, then you can figure out what that work represents in real dollars if you had to pay to have that task done by an outside source.
There are many sources on the internet (and elsewhere) to find out the average pay for work done, and FundRaiser's Volunteer module provides for plugging in those values by task, or by volunteer, or both. And you can set up how you want FundRaiser to figure out those values, too. Say, for instance, that you have a highly paid business executive that volunteers to dig flower beds. Of course you can't claim the executive's normal rate of pay as the value of that digging, but you can plug in the going rate for someone else to do it for you. If you have that same executive acting in a consulting capacity, it may be appropriate to show the value of that time at his normal rate of pay. You have that flexibility in the Volunteer module. But where this all comes in handy, to my mind, is when you want to show your volunteers what their efforts have SAVED you in dollars you would have had to spend to make the things they've done happen without their help. When, at that end-of-year recognition dinner, you show them how much money their work represents, you'll be giving them the credit they deserve in terms they can easily understand.
To learn more about how FundRaiser's volunteer management features can help your organization
Take a look at What Volunteer Management Can Do For You