Record more than hours
Time is useful, but responsibilities, skills, projects, outcomes and milestones provide a much richer record of experience.
Recognize
Turn contribution into recognized experience.
Volunteer work can demonstrate real skills, responsibility and impact, but that value is often poorly documented. VXP is being built around a simple idea: organizations should recognize contribution in specific, credible ways so volunteers can carry useful evidence of their experience forward.
Volunteer program
What to consider.
Make recognition specific
A generic thank-you is different from being able to explain what someone did well and what they accomplished.
Make experience portable
Where appropriate, volunteers should be able to translate their contribution into useful evidence for a resume, LinkedIn profile, reference, portfolio, school application, future employment or another volunteer opportunity.
Celebrate the contribution
Personal thanks, milestones, certificates, events, references, rewards and public recognition can all play a role when they fit the person and program.
How VXP can help
Improve the whole experience.
This is the centre of the VXP idea: make each contribution specific, credible and useful to the organization, the volunteer and whatever comes next.
- Develop credible records of volunteer time, responsibilities, skills, projects, outcomes and milestones.
- Connect recognition with resumes, LinkedIn, references, portfolios and future opportunities.
- Design appreciation, milestone, reward and recognition approaches around what volunteers value.
Useful answers
Common questions.
Does volunteer experience count as work experience?+
Volunteer experience can demonstrate relevant skills, responsibilities and accomplishments even when it was unpaid. How it should be presented depends on the role and context, but organizations can help by documenting the contribution clearly and specifically.
Talk to VXP
Building a better volunteer program?
Tell us how contribution is recorded today and what a more useful, credible form of recognition could give both volunteers and the organization.
Recognize your volunteers