Altru Policies and Procedures Best Practice

Anah McRae
Anah McRae
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Participant Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Altru® General Discussions
Recently I was thinking back to my time before Blackbaud and I remember how excited I was to start my first day as a Volunteer Coordinator at the county level. For me, it was my first job out of college, but I was taking over for someone that had been in the position for more than 15 years. As I went through orientation and learned all about the county rules and procedures everything seemed clear. However, when I was instructed to review the process for tracking volunteers things quickly got off course. Not only had my predecessor retired, she had taken with her every bit of knowledge on how she was tracking volunteers and information and using the data to match volunteers with opportunities in the county. I was lost at sea and it took me weeks to figure it all out. Valuable time was lost.

According to the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance, for jobs paying less than $50k annually it costs about 20% of a positions annual salary to fill a vacancy. Imagine someone telling you that each time an employee leaves you will need at least $10k to simply fill a position.

At your organization you have a vision and a mission. Every activity – even the smallest – supports this. A policies and procedures guide provides a map to guide your existing employees and new hires down the path of correct activity to support and uphold our mission. Without it, your employees may be as lost on day 1 as I was. However, by providing a manual and keeping it updated you provide instruction and guidance to new employees that can take them through their first days and weeks. And save you that $10k.

Policies and Procedures manuals don’t just help with turnover. As new and exciting trends pop up for nonprofits it is important to establish new and exciting policies and procedures. We’ve all seen the social media fails out there. And I think we can all agree we don’t want to be known for one of those! Also, we see more and more policies being written to protect donor data, require transparency and heavy reporting from nonprofits and more. With a policies and procedures guide that is updated as new needs arise you head off any issues before they happen.

We’ve created the Policies and Procedures Best Practice Jump Start Session to provide best practice for creating your own Policies and Procedures guides. In an ever-changing landscape having a great navigation system can keep you and your employees on the path to success!




 

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