Assessing Skill Gaps: How Nonprofits Can Identify Crucial Volunteer Skills

Guest Contributor: Indiana Lee

The success of many nonprofits hinges on the time and dedication of its volunteers. Their skills, particularly, are directly connected to how effectively your projects and day-to-day operations run.

Among the most important things your nonprofit must do regularly is perform skills assessments. Doing so empowers you to make strategic decisions that enable you to fill gaps in abilities and maintain a positive impact on your community. We’re going to examine how to identify and fill crucial volunteer skills.

The Importance of Skills Gap Analysis

It’s vital to recognize that there are significant consequences to unaddressed skills gaps. Firstly, volunteers without the most relevant skills can impact the productivity and efficiency of your organization, which may mean you’re using more resources than you can afford. Additionally, gaps may also mean you’re relying on volunteers to perform tasks they have no interest or knowledge of, which may put undue pressure on them, resulting in potentially higher turnover.

This is why structured analysis is so critical. Even with a good range of volunteers, strategic workforce planning processes are the most efficient way to get a sense of your nonprofit's goals and how your talent pool’s capabilities align with this. You’ll get data-driven insights into not just specific skills issues, but also what abilities can be built on to influence other areas of the organization. You can then make informed training and recruitment decisions accordingly.

Effective Analysis Techniques

The first step of your analysis should be understanding the skills that can make a difference to your nonprofit. Focus on the core day-to-day running skills groups, the strategic management abilities, and the types of qualifications that may be needed for specific projects. This will give you solid information to assess your current skills base. 

Some of the common skill sets that can be useful for nonprofits might include:

• Project management: Having people on board who can manage your projects is essential for achieving your goals productively and efficiently. Some project management skills are effective communication with stakeholders, problem-solving when challenges arise, and a commitment to good collaboration. Negotiation experience can also be useful when seeking out resources on low budgets.

• Marketing: Your nonprofit is unlikely to be successful if people don’t know it exists or what it does. Having volunteers on hand who understand a range of in-person and online marketing tactics can raise your profile and attract donors.

With a list of the skills needed in your organization, you can then assess your current needs. The most direct approach to this is reviewing your volunteer base. Sending out surveys that ask volunteers to outline their skills, qualifications, and experiences can be an effective route. Interviewing every volunteer can be a little more time-consuming, but it involves conversations that can also uncover skills and traits volunteers might not have included in a rigidly designed survey.

Whatever approach you take, formalize the skills data you gather. This can be in the form of a spreadsheet or HR management software that keeps track of your nonprofit’s skills inventory. Make certain that each skill is listed with details of the volunteer who possesses it. 

From here, you can assess your inventory against the needed skills for your organization. On a simple level, this may highlight areas where you are currently missing people. However, it can also clarify where volunteers are not being used to their greatest potential. You can then discuss with them how to play a different role in the organization that aligns with their skills.

Addressing Your Needs

Once you’ve assessed your skills gaps and gained data, how you use it is key to effectively addressing your nonprofit’s needs. The aforementioned shuffling of volunteers to roles that better fit their skill sets is a good start. Aside from this, there are some measures to take, including the following.

Creating role descriptions

Perform a little outreach to seek volunteers for specific skills and roles. There’s no harm in treating this in a similar way to a recruitment drive, even though the position is unpaid. Develop clear volunteer opportunity listings that highlight the skills you’re prioritizing and how they’ll be using these to contribute to the positive outcomes of your projects. It can also be wise to contact professional networks to encourage people to donate some of their time to skills-based volunteering. Indeed, more companies today provide workers with paid time off to participate in such programs.

Establishing training programs

A direct way to handle some skill gaps is to provide your volunteers with additional training. This may be in the form of shadowing more experienced volunteers or staff in specific aspects, to build the abilities the organization needs. If there are roles that need to be created or filled, arranging for external training courses — including online e-learning — can be an effective approach to providing knowledge. Not only does this address your skills needs, but it can also enrich your volunteers by developing their careers and giving them something to put on their resumes.

Conclusion

Performing skills gap assessments enables your nonprofit to make targeted efforts to fill these areas. It’s vital to be data-led here and prioritize your efforts on the areas of need that are most urgent. At the same time, take the time to ask your volunteers what skills they’d like to contribute or learn. This can open your organization to diverse and unexpected talents and boost volunteer retention.

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Author Bio: Indiana Lee is a freelance journalist specializing in business operations, leadership, and marketing. Passionate about service and impact, her writing extends beyond the corporate world to inspire personal and organizational growth in the nonprofit sector. Connect with her on LinkedIn.