Volunteer 101: Turning Time Donors into Mission Multipliers

As nonprofit leaders, we instinctively know what to do when someone offers to write us a check. We have detailed workflows in place for our financial donors. We steward them, thank them, report to them, and build systems around keeping them engaged. But when it comes to volunteers (the people giving hours of their lives instead of dollars), most of us treat them as informal help rather than strategic assets.

In this session, Rob Blevins reframes volunteers as Time Donors and presents a practical system for recruiting, engaging, and retaining our volunteers at a level that accelerates mission outcomes instead of just filling the gaps.

Participants will learn how to:

• Apply donor-level thinking to volunteer engagement
• Reposition volunteers as high-value contributors, not free labor
• Build systems that increase commitment, ownership, and performance
• Align volunteer roles with mission-critical outcomes
• Create pathways for volunteers to become advocates, donors, and leaders
• Avoid common structural mistakes that limit volunteer impact

This session is designed for nonprofit leaders who want to scale impact without scaling cost and who are ready to treat people’s time with the same respect and strategic importance as people’s money.

This is an in-person workshop in Springfield.

About the Presenter

Rob Blevins is the Director of Innovation at the Discovery Center of Springfield and a nonprofit leader known for building high-impact programs, scaling volunteer engagement, and aligning organizations around measurable outcomes. He previously served as Executive Director, leading the organization through significant growth, national recognition, and the launch of the Discovery School, which earned the $1 million Yass Prize for Education Innovation.

Prior to that, Rob served as Vice President of Community Engagement at Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks, where he led volunteer recruitment, marketing, and community partnerships, helping drive the organization to national recognition for growth, quality, and engagement. He later served as COO of the Yass Prize, managing a $40M+ philanthropic portfolio and evaluating high-performing education organizations across the country. 

Rob’s work has earned multiple local, national, and international honors, including the Yass Prize Grand Prize ($1 million), international recognition from the Association of Science and Technology Centers, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America awards for growth and marketing, Springfield Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 and Men of the Year, Biz 417’s 10 for the Next 10 and Biz 100, and the Nonprofit Excellence Award for Emerging Leader of the Year.