Find and Onboard the Right Volunteer
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Detail how to interview a candidate.
- Outline expectations for your volunteer.
- Clarify your commitment to the project.
Identify Where to Recruit Volunteers
With a project scope and clarity about the type of volunteer you need, now you're ready to recruit a volunteer! But where do you go to find qualified candidates? Funny you should ask…
We mentioned before that we offer support through the Impact Exchange, our home for pro bono volunteering at Salesforce. To participate, get started by visiting the Impact Exchange site linked in the Resources section. You’ll start by logging in using your Salesforce credentials and completing your profile. From there, in a few clicks you can publish your project to start recruiting volunteers in no time!
Once live, the project will be made available to Salesforce employees as a volunteer opportunity. When an employee applies for your project, you’ll receive an automated email notification and you can review their profile and their percent match to your project requirements (the higher the percent match, the better the fit for your project!).
After reviewing your applications, you can proceed with your preferred volunteer. Once matched, both you and the volunteer will receive each other’s contact information to kick things off. When the project is complete, you can view the hours logged by the volunteer as well as close out the project to indicate it is no longer active. This can be done by going to the project page and updating the status button in the banner at the top of the page.
When closing the project, you’ll select the appropriate reason you are closing the project. If the project was completed successfully, both you and the volunteer will receive a survey to share your experience and help us continue to improve the Impact Exchange.
If you’re not able to find a volunteer through the Impact Exchange or if your project is not met by our current platform capabilities, you can submit your project to alternative pro bono intermediary platforms, such as Taproot Plus or Catchafire. These organizations specialize in finding professionals to volunteer their time and expertise. Check out Additional Pro Bono Resources in the Resources section for a list of intermediaries by region.
Fortunately, many Salesforce professionals are interested in giving to causes they believe in (3,000+ nonprofits and schools served to date!) and the Impact Exchange is a great way for you to connect with a volunteer. Now let’s check out how to prepare to meet a potential candidate.
Decide Who to Interview
Your time is valuable! Don’t feel obligated to meet with someone simply because they expressed interest in your project. It’s okay to graciously decline someone’s offer to help if they’re not a good fit for your project. So, how do you decide which candidates to take the time to interview? Here are a few aspects about a volunteer’s experience and qualifications that you should verify before scheduling an interview. Clicking a question will show why it’s important to ask it.
Get Set to Interview
Hooray! You have a shortlist of people willing to volunteer their time and expertise to a project like yours. An important next step is to ensure the volunteer who joins you has the skills needed for your individual project. Just like in any hiring process, an interview is pivotal to finding the right person and then communicating clearly the expectations of your organization and the project. You want this person to be a good fit with both your team and the project scope.
Make clear, consistent, and authentic communication your foundations for the interview—remember that this person will have access to your systems and will affect your organization in a consequential way. Once you are clear on your own level of commitment—of time and resources—and your expectations for the volunteer and project, you will be ready to screen volunteer candidates.
Some baseline questions to ask a potential volunteer include:
- Why do you want to take on this volunteer project?
- What relevant skills can you bring to a project of this kind? Why are these skills especially important for this specific project?
- What is your level of expertise with nonprofit (or educational) organizations and the Salesforce platform?
- What is your availability and how much schedule flexibility do you have? (This is to ascertain whether their schedule works well with yours and your team’s.)
During the interview, you should also gauge if the person is a good fit for you and your team. Do you think the candidate is an effective communicator? Will they work well with your team?
Once you’ve interviewed candidates, and feel you have the right person for the project, then you can begin to set the stage for a productive working relationship.
Set Expectations
As you go into this working relationship, you and the volunteer should agree on expectations and align on project scope, so that there are no surprises to anyone involved after the project has begun.
You should provide information to help the volunteer feel secure in knowing what support they will receive from your team and what their volunteer experience will be like. Be sure to cover basics such as:
- Will it be virtual or on-site?
- What kind of interactions will they have with you and the rest of your primary stakeholders?
You should promise to stay engaged, create an inclusive workplace culture, and provide timely feedback. When the volunteer knows you are committed to learning from them, that you will be professional, and most importantly, that you will be consistently communicative with them, it will establish a secure working relationship between you.
The volunteer should agree to give their skills and expertise to complete a project, to the best of their ability. They will know to treat your organization as they do their own workplace, and maintain standards of excellence and security that you need to know your project will succeed. And, just as you have, they commit themselves to open, authentic communication as a necessary foundation to working together.
A great way to ensure everyone is on the same page is to create a Volunteer Agreement. A document like this is not a legally binding contract, but it does outline the commitment of the engagement so that there are no surprises to anyone involved after the project has begun.
Here you learned about how to find the right person for the project and set the stage for a positive working relationship. In the next unit, we’ll take a closer look at what makes that relationship a true success.