Almost every volunteer I have talked to has said something to me like:
"I'm really behind on logging my hours. I always forget to do it."
Logging your hours is so so so so important for any volunteer program you serve in! So let me answer the most common question I receive:
"Why do I need to log my hours? Nothing ever happens with them anyway."
While this seemingly simple task may not have an apparent immediate effect to you, the long-run the impact of accurately recording the hours you serve is exponential for HRA. We can break the impact into 3 different categories: individual, programmatic, and organizational.
Organizational Impacts
Every volunteer hour you serve and record gets reported monthly, quarterly, and annually to staff and volunteers at all levels and roles at HRA, including Board of Directors, Executive Leadership, Development, Operations, IT, Finance, and all of our front-line staff. Here's how others in the organization use that information:
- Grant Funding/Donor Reporting: Funders, specifically grant funding organizations, often want to know that an organization has the support of their community before they will invest in any plans for growth. One of the best ways to demonstrate our connection with our community is to report the total number of active volunteers and the hours they give us each year. When these numbers are low, we run the risk of losing out on funding to other organizations with a better demonstrated connection to their community and support for their programs.
- Overall Program Impact: The Volunteer Program at HRA is a huge program. With over 700 volunteers coming through our doors every year giving close to 20,000 (reported) hours of their time to further our mission, we can't wait to tell that story. But what if the story was really 30,000 hours? Or 40,000 hours? The value of that time is significant, especially in DC, and being able to tell that story as accurately as possible is HUGE in attracting adopters, supporters, advocates, and even just interested neighbors.
Programmatic Impacts
Data is super important. It drives decisions in almost every aspect of our lives and our volunteer program is no different. Accurately recording your hours (ie recording the time for the things you actually did) is vital to ensuring we can adequately support you and our programs.
- Program Resources: In the volunteer program, our staff team recruit you to fill specific roles within the organization. We provide generalized training and support you and the organization's other staff in creating roles that are meaningful to you and simultaneously helpful to the organization. When we want to increase our support staff, purchase T-shirts, provide awards, or plan special events, we sometimes use the amount of hours our team serves to support the expenditures. We take the value of the time you give and use it to ask for things that make our programs and your experience better.
- Department/Team Resources: We attempt to answer common questions like: Which programs are the most interesting to volunteers? Which programs need additional support or guidance? Which teams are doing well? Which teams are struggling? When we ask these questions, the first place we look is the number of hours logged in that role and how many volunteers are participating.
- Schedule Building: We use the data you provide to explain how many volunteer hours it takes to complete a task and build schedules, shifts, and opportunities accordingly. We recruit volunteers to match this model we create based off the real-life data we have from you. If you only logged two hours for a task that takes you four hours, we underestimate the time and another volunteer won't complete the task in the two hour time window. In animal sheltering and community service, that sometimes means that an animal or client does not end up getting the service they needed.
- Targeted Recruitment: When you sign-up for shifts and log your hours, we can see where the gaps in our needs are and recruit volunteers specifically to fill those needs. Is someone signing up for a lot of high-demand shifts but not showing up? We can reach out to them and help make adjustments so that all of our needs are met.
Individual Impacts
When we talk about individual impacts, we are not only talking about how logging your hours affects you, but also the impact you logging your hours has on your individual peers and team mates.
- Recognition and Awards: We want to recognize you for the contributions you give to HRA! Let us know your true impact and your favorite areas to volunteer by keeping your hours accurately logged!
- Keep Your Account Active: When you don't log your hours, we may think you aren't volunteering and will inactivate your volunteer account.
- Reduce Emails and Prevent Awkward Conversations: Forget to log your hours? Chances are you'll get a couple email reminders about it. You may even get stopped in the hallway with a reminder from a staff member to log your hours. Avoid the awkwardness and make it part of your regular volunteer routine.
- Prevent Double-Work: Accurately recording your hours tells us that you completed the task you signed-up to do. If you don't log your hours, we may think you didn't "show-up" and will work to find someone else to fill the gap. Then the new volunteer comes in and sees the there is nothing to do - they feel upset because they probably rearranged their schedule to help and we spent time finding them when we could have been filling another role or offering training or something else equally important.
So...How do I log my hours?
Recording hours is super easy! The first step is responding to (ie. signing-up for) the volunteer opportunity BEFORE you volunteer. Then do the following:
- Click ADD HOURS in the menu across the top of your screen.
- When asked if the hours are for an opportunity you responded to, click YES.
- In the drop-down menu, select the Opportunity Title.
- Then in the next drop-down menu, select the Date you are logging hours for.
- If needed, update the amount of time you served and add a User Group. (If you don't have one that matches, select N/A.)
- Click SUBMIT HOUR ENTRY.
That's it! It's super easy! And when you sign-up for shifts ahead of time, it makes it super fast, too!
Questions? Email me at volunteer@humanerescuealliance.org.
