“The Circle of Safety”
Nonprofit Awareness Advisor
December 2015
News and Tips to Make Your Life Easier, Safer and Happier!
For Friends and Clients of Nonprofit Insurance Services
The Importance of a Volunteer Handbook
Brian Barrick Author,
CEO, President Nonprofit Insurance Services
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A volunteer handbook is a key foundational risk management strategy. It will help to protect your volunteers, clients, and agency by providing guidelines for conduct, procedures, and policies. The handbook serves three major purposes: relaying crucial organizational information, establishing clear expectations, and emphasizing the importance of volunteers. By providing this information with your volunteers upfront, you welcome them to your agency and ensure that they understand their role and responsibilities.
Begin your handbook with a welcome letter. This is an opportunity to create an open environment and explain the essential role that your volunteers fulfill. Keep the letter brief and avoid using technical terminology, acronyms, or jargon. It is best to have the letter written by the Executive Director or a board member to relay how very important the volunteers are to your organization.
Once you have welcomed your volunteers, create a section in your handbook to relay important organizational information. Utilize this segment to briefly explain the background and history of the organization and your plans for the future. Include your vision and mission statements so that your volunteers understand the core values of the agency. This will help your volunteers to take ownership of your mission and goals. It is also necessary to explain your expectations for your volunteers and what they can expect from their involvement with the organization. This is a great space to provide a list of the rights and responsibilities of a volunteer so that they are clear on what their involvement with your organization will entail.
No handbook would be complete without a section for policies and procedures. It can include everything from legal concerns to best practices. However, make certain that only those regulations and processes that have been approved and implemented by your organization are included. This area may contain different things for different agencies, but it is essential to utilize this section to explain things like eligibility requirements, background checks, confidentiality policy, codes of conduct, and any other policy that your organization has in place. Additional areas that you may want to cover in this section include safety and emergency procedures, media relation procedures, grievance or dispute procedures, attendance, dress code, conflicts of interest, photo release, and social media policies. A complete policy and procedures section allows your organization to lay out the expectations for your volunteers, as well as, manage your risk by having your volunteers sign an acknowledgment of receipt of these policies.
Volunteer handbooks relay all the information that your helpers will need to be successful. So if you have additional information such as a glossary of terms, commonly used acronyms, contact information, maps, calendar of events, and answers to frequently asked question consider adding these as well. Make the handbook your own by including whatever information is important to your organization and your volunteers. As long as you have covered the information that was mentioned above, you will have a functional guide for how to successfully volunteer in your organization.
6 Ways to Make A Holiday Campaign Successful
1. Educate Your Donors
Engage donors, with facts, figures, and testimonials from those who have benefited from your nonprofit. This demonstrates how their donation effects your mission.
2. Know Your Donors Understanding who your donors are, what their contributing habits are, and how they like to donate.
3. Make Your Donors Feel
Personally Fulfilled
Send out personalized letters hand signed to show how much you appreciate their support.
4. Build Trust In Donor
Relationships
Closely examine your campaign strategy making sure every sentence is honest, believable, and straightforward. Do not give donors any reason to feel as though they are being deceived by your nonprofit.
5. Don’t Forget About Social Media
Your donors may not be in the office, but they’re most certainly still on their smart phones checking social media. Make sure you queue up your social feeds with strategic messages, calls to action, and lots of engaging images to tell the story of your nonprofit.
6. Make Giving Fun
Everyone is looking for funding, especially during the holidays. Make sure to stand out with an interesting way of raising money and awareness for your cause.
Recovery From Identity Theft
Imagine the sense of outrage you'd feel if someone was pretending to be you – using your credit cards, taking out loans in your name and maybe even using your identity to get free medical treatment.
It's a horrifying type of theft that up to 13 million Americans experience every year
– one every two seconds. With those numbers, you'll be lucky to escape falling victim at some point in your life.
Fortunately, you're likely protected against the worst financial consequences of ID theft. Most credit card companies and banks reimburse victims for most of the losses. The real headache is what comes afterwards – the effect ID theft can have on your reputation, especially your financial worthiness recorded by the credit reporting agencies.
They don’t know the person who's running up bad debts in your name is not you and they start putting bad marks against your records as soon as they hear about it. Your task is to put it right – and that can seem like Mission Impossible, or at the very least take months or even years to put right.
But you won’t be alone in this battle. As the incidence of identity theft spreads like wildfire, professionals and experts are standing by to help. For example, for a monthly fee of a few dollars you can subscribe to a service that monitors credit records and provides a credit rescue program.
But you can also do a lot yourself, with the help of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has launched a new online resource, IdentityTheft.gov, which will help you identify the critical steps you need to take to put yourself on the road to recovery. For example:
• Calling firms where you know the fraud occurred
• Placing a fraud alert on your credit report and correcting it
• Reporting the ID theft to the FTC and police
• Closing accounts opened in your name and removing bogus charges in your name.
The site includes easy-to-print checklists and sample letters, and it connects victims to organizations that are critical to the recovery process – like the Social Security Administration, the IRS and local consumer protection offices.
More information is available on a sister site, ftc.gov/idtheft, where videos, tutorials and other resources are available.
Stay Connected!
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“Be brave. Take risk.
Nothing can
substitute experience”
- Paulo Coelho
Meet our Team!
Harmony Reina Account Manager
Harmony Reina has 7 years experience in the insurance industry and is a certified massage therapist. She enjoys spending her time away from work with her sons and family. Her favorite days growing up were spent at her neighbor's farm helping to feed and take care of the animals. Today she provides a home to two cats, a dog, and two fish. Harmony works in our Animal Welfare division and helps our Nonprofits of all types when Dawn Weyandt is out of the office.
How to Give Back to Your Community During the Holiday
As a non-profit you are in a unique position to really brighten the lives of your community members this holiday season. No matter your organization’s mission, you can spread the word of your efforts and deliver some cheer at the same time. Consider these options as a way to give this holiday season:
Coordinate a Christmas Dinner. A warm meal is always an important part of the holiday season. By enlisting your volunteers to act as chefs, you can provide this essential holiday element for those that may not have had one. Local businesses and churches may be able to assist with donating the food and supplies.
Play Santa! Nothing feels more like Christmas than the act of giving. Create an oppurtunity for your donors to fulfill the requests of children in your community. Consider placing lists of needed or desired gifts on your website or social media accounts for your donors to provide. Then you can hold an event for the children to meet with Santa and receive their presents.
Support the Troops! All too many of our soldiers will be away from their families during the holidays this year. Organize an effort to provide care packages or even just christmas cards to let them know your organization appreciates their sacrifice.
Canned Food Drive. You can really help a family that may not have been able to provide a holiday meal for themselves by collect canned foods at your events. Put together a food basket for local families with the donations, and maybe even include a gift card for that all important holiday bird.
Visit Nursing homes or Assisted Living facilities. Coordinate a trip to a local Assisted living, nursing home, or hospital with your volunteers and employees. Perhaps you can sing carols, provide a small gift, or just lend an ear to the residents or patients.
Blood Drive. The gift of life is the most precious. Consider having a Blood drive among your employees and volunteers to encourage donations to the Red Cross and help save a life.
Nonprofit Insurance Services PO Box 933
Hanover, PA 17331 Return Service Requested
Wishing You...
Happy Holidays
Fun Facts About December!
Fact 1- The birthstone for December is Turquoise.
Fact 2 -The birth flower for
December is the Narcissus.
Fact 3 -Poinsettia Day, National Chocolate Day, National Read a New Book Month, National Stress Free Family Month, and Universal Human Rights Month