Volunteer coordinators, club secretaries and administrators of non profit organizations around the world are doing their best with paper work that they are committed to. But their best is being compromised by the absence of a system. Yes, it’s as simple as that.
Each payment or donation collected manually can take away from a volunteer’s time. This could be time from the organization that the volunteer represents or time from the club or school that the volunteer represents. As a volunteer you joined up to help in some capacity. Manually collecting payments will take away from the work that you joined up to do in the first place.
Manual Collection – Draining Resources from Your Team
All hours spent processing payments manually are hours taken away from the work that the treasurer was recruited for in the first place. Hours spent processing payments manually are hours that are taking away from a volunteer’s time with their family and friends. Hours spent processing payments manually are hours spent not doing anything for the community or school that the treasurer is helping to serve. These are hours taken away from all of the good work that the treasurer and other volunteers are doing.
But don’t just take my word for it. A swim club treasurer I spoke to last year said she spent 4 hours a month trying to match up bank transfers with names. In each case she had used different references for the transactions – ‘ Josh swim’ , ‘ Joshua swimming fees March’ and my personal favorite – ‘ payment ‘. I’m glad she didn’t mind sharing this with me. It highlights the hours that volunteer treasurers and others on the committee of organizations spend each year doing things that could be set up in a few minutes to run automatically. I don’t mean to suggest that the hours spent are in itself a problem – but the hours spent doing things that could be done better is.
Administrative drag looks different to everyone. To me, this image captures the essence of how volunteers and staff spend inordinate amounts of time processing payments, tracking receipts, and manually entering data, often for hours at a time. And for what? So that you can spend less time on what really matters? No, because this is not an accident. This is not something that is outside of your control.
What a smarter system actually changes
For a start, the funds collected are better safeguarded than being left in a bag or scattered throughout various individual accounts. But more than that, once funds are collected through an online platform, a raft of subsequent benefits ensue almost instantly.
When payments are collected digitally through a purpose-built platform for collecting payments, a number of things happen very quickly.
- Automatic record-keeping replaces manual entry. Every transaction is logged the moment it happens.
- Reminders can go out without anyone having to draft individual messages or remember who still owes money.
- Funds collected for different purposes (a school trip, a raffle, a membership renewal) can be tracked separately without creating separate bank accounts or spreadsheets.
- Transparency improves, because anyone with authorised access can see the current state of collections at any time, not just after the treasurer runs a monthly report.
One other thing that smart systems have is the ability to track the flow of funds, so that all members of the committee and volunteers can have complete transparency into what money is being collected, for what purposes, and how that money is being used. This is particularly important for organizations that have to be extremely careful to ensure that no one on the committee is able to misuse funds. This could include people who are ‘on the books’ and manage the finances for the organization, and people who are more operational in nature, and focused on getting things done for the organization. A smart system will allow the operational folks to see that money is being collected for a particular purpose, and that it is being held until that purpose is met, which will greatly reduce the potential for friction within the organization. And, this will also help to increase trust within the organization, which is a critical component in volunteer led organizations.
A practical look at the time savings
“Save time” is a term that gets so much use these days it is almost meaningless. In reality, time is a valuable commodity and volunteers could make much better use of it than they currently are.
| Task | Manual process | With digital payment collection |
| Collecting event fees | Chase by text, collect cash, count and record | Share a link; payments arrive and log automatically |
| Tracking who has paid | Cross-reference lists manually | Dashboard shows paid and unpaid in real time |
| Sending reminders | Write and send individual messages | Automated follow-ups handle it |
| End-of-month reconciliation | Match transfers, fix errors, update spreadsheet | Export a report; data is already clean |
The hours saved by the simple process of registration (or payment) are in addition to hours saved in administration of the collection of money. They are additional hours that are now available to be deployed back to the volunteer’s full time employment, to their family and to their community work. The reasons for which they administered the finances in the first place.
On security and trust
With others’ money, one has big responsibility.
When you are handing other people’s money it’s of utmost importance that you use the right tools for the job. Here at Cheddar Up we offer a payment processing system for groups and organizations that includes secure card processing, clear receipts for payers, and we have full control over the funds so they aren’t sitting in someone’s personal account or being moved around without a paper trail. For nonprofits and school groups this is particularly important, as it ensures a clean audit, and avoid having to have an uncomfortable conversation in a church hall on a Wednesday night with a bunch of parents.
Volunteers do not need to manage finances in the worst kind of limbo – having financial responsibility but no financial management infrastructure to sustain a nonprofit or school organization. Intention to do good is not enough.
What to look for when choosing a platform
- Simple setup that doesn’t require technical expertise
- Clear fee structure with no hidden surprises mid-collection
- Reporting tools that are actually readable by a non-accountant
- Options for collecting forms or information alongside payments
Just because you have features doesn’t mean they’re useful if they’re hidden in a maze of menus that you have to spend hours and lots of coffee to find.
The point isn’t the technology
Volunteer administration will always be around. But you don’t have to let it rule your volunteer’s lives. There are technologies out there that can really help cut down the amount of work your administrators do at events, allowing them to focus on the aspects of the organization that brought them to volunteering in the first place. Let’s reduce the administrative drag on your volunteers.
Just because technology does not solve every problem in volunteer administration does not mean that it cannot solve many of them. Most importantly, technology can prevent the load of administration from becoming so much that it wears down someone’s commitment to volunteering.
The ziplock bag of cash had a good run. But it’s time to let it go.
