In any organisation that we invest our time in, volunteers want to see growth and improvement as an outcome of their time invested. As part of training, have new volunteers pen down long-term goals that they want to achieve while volunteering. This can be three months, six months or even one year goals which can include an improvement in soft skills such as communication and empathy, or hard skills such as technical skills or new languages picked up while volunteering. This helps the organisation better understand what volunteers want, and lets volunteers envision themselves as a part of the organisation for a long time.

 

At the end of the timeline, these goals can be revisited and evaluated to see if the volunteers have achieved what they aimed for. Goals can be edited along the way as a form of progress recognition.