Rethinking the Role of Volunteers and Volunteering in Your Business’s Growth July 1, 2020My BusinessOff

Most people have a passing understanding of what volunteers do; they use their time, effort, and skills to help out wherever they can. What many of us do not know is that volunteers can be an incredible resource if they are leveraged to provide growth opportunities for businesses. There are many ways volunteers can provide this value and most of us are already providing value to businesses without thinking about it.

Providing Data

Every business needs data to keep growing. This data can be used by businesses to learn more about their target clientele, predict trends, and so much more. Businesses can use volunteers to gather this data. In doing this, the first thing they can do is find volunteers who are in their target demographic. These volunteers should ideally fit the image of a typical customer.

The businesses can then use questionnaires and other data collection methods to get an insight into how these volunteers view their business and its goods or services. This data can then be used in areas such as targeted marketing, product development, and brand positioning.

Charity Events

Businesses that want to grow within their communities can take up projects that can endear them to these communities. This may be through hosting events that bring the community together, holding a sale, or even helping promote other businesses. The skills, expertise, and knowledge of the volunteers contracted for such events can be a useful resource in letting people know about your business even during these events.

When hiring volunteers for these events, it is important to ensure they are upright people. To do this, you can use the same company background check services bigger businesses use. Doing this ensures there is no chance of fraud, theft, or violence during the events you host. The background check services provided by companies like One Source can come in handy here. One Source provides lots of different background check services on their website at https://onesourcebackground.com/ so you can make informed choices and decisions. The good news is that you can use their services for much more than screening volunteers. These services also help you screen employees, contractors and many other groups of people.

Help with Getting Your Business Known

If you treat your volunteers right, they are likely to talk positively about your business when someone asks what they did when they were volunteering. This provides your business with a free advertisement, and as most business owners know, word of mouth has a lot more power than traditional advertising methods.

For this to work in your favor, therefore, you should give your volunteer opportunities to grow, opportunities to get in touch with other companies, and a chance to get an internship when they need it. All this will endear you to them, which makes it easier for them to talk positively about your business to other people.

Your Business Can Also Be a Volunteer

If you have not heard of the term business volunteering, it is simply where a business allows its employees to volunteer their time and expertise to benefit communities, charities, and other groups. Ideally, employees should volunteer during work hours and should be supported by the businesses they are part of. When a business becomes a volunteer, it can create better relationships with its customers, other businesses, suppliers and everyone else it is associated with.

Other benefits include helping you to stand out among similar businesses, increasing customer retention, and creating positive press, media and publicity opportunities. All these combined can have a huge impact on business success and growth.

Your business can also volunteer to help charities with the running of their organizations. Here, you can help them find ways to cut costs, show them how to help their employees gain new skills, improve their services and use your hiring methods and strategies to get more volunteers as well as help these organizations forge relationships with local or regional businesses.

Help with Networking

When your business and its employees volunteer, it increases the chances of getting new networking opportunities. When you volunteer, you give something to someone else. By doing this, you increase the chances of your business getting noticed which can endear you to other businesses. This makes introducing your business to other businesses and potential partners easier.

Help with Hiring the Best Talent

Sometimes, the person you need to unlock a new tier of growth might be right in front of you. When you hire volunteers and engage with them, you might encounter volunteers who have the potential to become the perfect employees you have been looking for.

Although many businesses think of getting volunteers as a one-time thing, it should not be. There are so many potential benefits to hiring volunteers and being a volunteer yourself. Perhaps the most important of these benefits is helping with your business’s growth by helping its name become known.

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