Registrations are due November 28.
Up to 8 nonprofits will be chosen to participate.

By Bonnie Andrews, Volunteer Milwaukee Manager

The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee is a part of the Service Enterprise Initiative (SEI), a national program to help nonprofits increase their mission-based services, expand community outreach and achieve objectives by effectively engaging volunteers. Administered by Volunteer Milwaukee, a service of the Nonprofit Center, this process will prepare organizations to become certified as a Service Enterprise.

A Service Enterprise is an organization that fundamentally leverages volunteers and their skills across all levels of the organization to successfully deliver on their social mission.

The model is based on research demonstrating that SE nonprofits outperform peer organizations on all measures of organizational capacity, allowing them to more effectively address community needs and operate at almost half the median budget. 

The research shows:

• Nonprofits that engaged 50+ volunteers per year AND have strong volunteer management practices outperformed peer organizations in every measure of organizational capacity.
• These organizations are better led and managed, more adaptable, sustainable and better resourced.
• Organizations with 10-50 volunteers are statistically equally as effective as their counterparts without volunteers on all measures of organizational effectiveness, yet their average annual budgets are almost half of those organizations without volunteers. 
• Service Enterprise organizations achieved a $4-6 return for every dollar invested in volunteer capacity.

Despite the benefits of effective volunteer engagement, less than 15% of nonprofits at the time of a study by the TCC Group were operating as Service Enterprises. The SEI can help you achieve these results!

We will lead the process, which includes:

• A research-based diagnostic assessment of existing practices (December).
• Sixteen hours of training based on change management to reimagine and plan a new culture and structure for volunteer engagement (February and March).
• Individualized coaching to address unique organizational opportunities and challenges.
• A process to seek national certification signifying proficiency in Service Enterprise characteristics.

Milwaukee was part of the national pilot in 2013-14, with seven nonprofits successfully completing the process and experiencing increased impact through volunteer engagement. We are now enlisting up to eight nonprofits to participate in the 2014-15 Initiative. These organizations will follow the same comprehensive organizational change model empowering them to more efficiently engage volunteers and address community needs.

For more information, please contact me: 
Bonnie Andrews, Volunteer Milwaukee Manager, Nonprofit Center 
414-273-7887 or [email protected]