The Undervalued Phase of the Volunteer Life Cycle: A Strategic Plan for Building Nonprofit Capacity Through Volunteer Retention

This strategic research project was designed to provide a proposed solution to the issue of declining volunteer retention within a nonprofit organization. Nonprofit organizations are highly dependent on the unpaid labor of volunteers who devote their time and resources to advancing the mission of the organization of their choosing. In this instance, Free Arts for Abused Children of Arizona is an organization that provides trauma-informed art activities to children and families who have experienced trauma. With a core part of their programmatic framework being volunteer mentors, a decline in volunteer retention can be detrimental to operational efficiency. Therefore, this organization and others like it must identify and leverage volunteer motivation and satisfaction to maximize retention efforts. This organizational research begins with an explanation of the motivating factors impacting an individual’s intention to continue volunteering with an organization. A SWOT analysis was then used to assess the internal and external factors influencing the organization which revealed that a critical threat for the organization was the potential impact a decline in volunteer retention would have on capacity building and operational functioning. To address this concern, literature supported the selection of human resource practices as the most suitable option due to the flexibility and diverse and adaptable strategy options. Two volunteer management models were identified and subsequently evaluated using the Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM). The first model, Identification, Selection, Orientation, Training, Utilization, Recognition and Evaluation (ISOTURE) received the highest total attractiveness score (TAS) of 5.30 indicating that it is the most appealing strategy considering internal and external factors. Based on the phases identified in the model’s acronym, an action plan for implementation was developed. There is literary support for the use of human resource practices for volunteer management, and findings from this strategic research project also lends its support to implementing the ISOTURE model for volunteer retention. However, even with the support, this organizational research also provides insight into recommendations for future research. Specifically, there is an interest in further expanding the literature on varying instructional design techniques that promote knowledge transfer and encourage meaningfulness and connection to the training content to increase training satisfaction in specialized or social cause nonprofit organizations.