Becoming a Volunteer Magnet

Client Testimonial from Crossroads Foundation

This is Why We Do What We Do

Client’s Challenge

How can Crossroads provide a great experience for volunteers, so they not only want to continue volunteering, but they also become more engaged with all of the services Crossroads provides? How can they do it within the budgetary constraints of a non-profit organization, where quick wins without a large financial investment are vital.

As to be expected at a non-profit, Crossroads is heavily staffed by volunteers, which means turnover is ongoing. And there is a wide array of volunteers, from school groups and companies that volunteer for a “day of service”; to summer interns, gap year students and short-term volunteers that commit to serve for several months then oftentimes recommit for several years. What ultimately happens is the longer-term volunteers become the hosts and experience providers/makers/caretakers for future volunteers. At Crossroads, creating a smooth and inspiring experience is central to keeping these volunteer hosts motivated.

(In essence the longer-term volunteers are both experience caretakers (providers) and experience consumers, much like employees are experience caretakers (providers) and customers are experience consumers.)

Our Solution

The Magnetic Experiences Coaching-Consulting Model™ ensures clients are developing the internal skills and expertise to operationalize Customer Experience within their organization in a customized form that is tailored to their needs. Here is a look at what we did for Crossroads.

Weekly coaching calls were spent on a broad set of activities. We interviewed employees and volunteers, developed personas and journey maps, reviewed processes, data, social media strategies, engagement, and feedback. We also identified “moments of truth” (those critical interaction points) for a customer during their journey, or in this case, volunteers.

As we identified challenges, opportunities, and pain points, we took extra care to pinpoint those issues that had a significant impact on team productivity. We gave these issues special attention once we began prioritizing, remembering that we want our longer-term volunteers to appreciate the impact they are having on the organization. Since our MX model prioritizes demonstrating value early, and often, for our clients as well as their key stakeholders, we began with ‘low hanging fruit’ initiatives; projects that provide maximum impact while requiring minimum resources. This approach was both economically appropriate for an NGO (non profit) and also provided the opportunity to develop broad team buy-in and confidence through a series of quick wins.

One issue we identified was related to the capturing of important data from groups that were onsite for a day of service. Information of note, such as if a key stakeholder were on-site with the group, was not being captured and relayed by the longer-term volunteer hosts to Crossroads leadership. This created a missed opportunity to be able to follow-up, get feedback, and explore future volunteer opportunities with that group’s organization. As we explored why the longer-term volunteer hosts weren’t inputting this information into the designated system (CRM), it became clear that 1) they weren’t confident what information they should capture and 2) they oftentimes wouldn’t remember those details to be able to put them into the system after the group had departed.

We explored the possibility of a simple smartphone form/app volunteers could use during a group’s visit. Our MX advisor understood the tools and systems Crossroads already relied on, as well as that the IT teams’ plate was full of higher priority projects and proposed using a low-code tool the organization owned but just hadn’t used­—Microsoft Power Apps. One short YouTube video later, Crossroads’ Engagement Strategist had built a quick (Power Apps) solution and was ready to pilot it with a couple of the volunteer hosts. With this solution in place, hosts can easily capture the visiting group’s data on-the-go and are prompted by the questions/fields in the App as to what information to gather. Now Crossroads leaders are made aware of stakeholder attendees and able to proactively engage in follow-up. And when those follow-ups yield additional volunteers, donations, etc. from a company, it’s exciting to share and celebrate with the volunteer hosts the positive impact their effort has made.

Other elements of the MX solution to improve the Crossroads Volunteer Experience have, so far, included aspects of process improvement, experience design, training and empowerment, pulse surveys, social media strategy, and volunteer onboarding improvements. Plus, more strategic initiatives have been woven into longer term annual planning as a result of their growing confidence.

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