Volunteers are the backbone of our society. They proved themselves repeatedly, with the pandemic being clear evidence of the value volunteers add.
From our experience in dealing with volunteers and their expenses, the most frustrating aspect for them is the delay in getting reimbursed. Any delay in paying volunteers’ expenses leaves the volunteer feeling unappreciated and at times demotivated to continue their support.
We thought we write three reasons why charities should revisit their processes and ensure they pay volunteers’ expenses in a timely manner.
1. Volunteers Commitment
You are gaining loyalty by paying your volunteers’ expenses quickly, with no manual obstacles. Given the cost-of-living crises we are facing, the best way to ensure volunteers continued support is to take away their worry about expenses incurred. Especially as they incurred those costs whilst supporting your organisation.
2. Better Volunteer Engagement
The more complex and manual your volunteer expenses payment process is, the more you disengage your volunteers. Simple things like paying volunteers’ expenses swiftly can go a long way with volunteers engagement as the volunteers feel appreciated and empathised with.
3. Become Inclusive
When organisations tell us their volunteers don’t need to claim expenses, we ask one question, what are the demographics of your volunteers?
Sure enough the answer is always; white, middle class and affluent. If you want to be an inclusive organisation and have a representative group of volunteers supporting your organisation, you must think about people from less affluent backgrounds who can’t wait ten days for their expenses to be paid.
If you are struggling to pay your volunteers’ expenses swiftly, please get in touch with our team at hello@vhelp.co.uk for a quick demo. We’ll be happy to show you how vHelp can support you with all the benefits above in addition to saving your internal team time and money.
Photo by Morgan Housel on Unsplash