Who's Calling the Shots? Balancing Donor Relations and Nonprofit Branding

Abstract

When a young employee of a children’s charity suggests rebranding to enhance volunteer recruitment and retention, he encounters problems with a key donor.

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“Eight? Are you kidding me?!” exclaimed Child Haven’s Volunteer Recruiter Miguel Santos.

“That’s almost half of the entire class!”

“I know, I know,” sighed Cynthia Cisneros, the trainer for new volunteers. “We lost six of them during the first week of training, and the others right before I was about to assign them to kids.”

“Did they say why they quit?”

“Seven of them just disappeared, but then Jenny—one who made it through training—told me she was going to do Kid Pals instead, that it was what she thought Child Haven was in the first place. I think her friend Louise, who was also in the training class, followed suit.”

Miguel rubbed his temples in an attempt to clear his mind. This can’t keep happening, he thought. If we keep losing volunteers at this rate, we won’t be able to serve half of the kids in our area … and I’m kicking butt at recruitment! Child Haven, a non-profit agency that trains volunteers to care for neglected and abused children, had typically lost one or two volunteers per training class, but the dropout rate seemed to keep rising despite Miguel’s successful recruiting.