When it comes to volunteering and volunteer programs, “success” can be an elusive target.  What makes a project successful?  Is it the number of volunteers that show up?  Maybe it’s the hours of work contributed to a project.  What about the number of people impacted by the work?  How do you know if your project was a success?

Defining what makes a project successful depends on the goals of the project and the organization.  Success can relate directly to the outcome of the project, such as collecting a certain amount of food for a canned food drive, or it can have an indirect goal like ensuring the participants’ happiness and enjoyment of the project or helping students to learn while performing service.

After you have set your goal for a service project, you have to figure out a way to measure whether you’ve achieved that goal.  There are many different ways to this, from individual and group interviews to asking volunteers a set of questions before their service and asking them again after their service.  Each measurement tool can tell you different information about your volunteer project.

What’s the best tool to use?  That depends on what you’re trying to measure.

A one-on-one or group interview might not be the best tool to find out if your volunteers have learned something from participating in an event, but it’s a great way to find out what volunteers did and whether they enjoyed their service.

Once you’ve found out that your project was a success, it’s important to share that information.  Report back to the people you’ve worked with on what your goals for the project were, and how you met them.  Include information about the success of the project in the thank you notes that you write to the volunteers and the project’s supporters.

How did you know that your last volunteer project was successful?  Tell us about the project and how you measured its success in the comments below!

If you’re looking for some help defining and measuring your project’s success, check out the Assessment and Evaluation section of our Tools and Resources library!