What I've experienced with my clients over the years is that too many associations are not very conscientious about tracking all of their volunteer engagement in a centralized manner. (Because I'm a volunteer myself, I find this particular issue rather grating.)

Take the tracking of authors (i.e., anyone who has written anything the association publishes, be it a print or online magazine, a blog post, or a newsletter article). In a well-run centralized system, any time an individual writes for the association, his or her record would reflect that.

But typically what I'll see is that the communications department will have a spreadsheet or a list of authors (past, current, or prospective) in a Word document. The document might say what they wrote and where and when it was published (often it does not).

The problem is this data isn't in the central data management system. So when another staff person looks at Jane Smith's record, the staff person can't see that Jane has been an author and written multiple articles for the association. That information is hidden away with the communications team. And being able to easily pull a list of all authors from, say, the past two years is also difficult, if not impossible.

Tracking writers is just one example. I see this with all types of other volunteer activities.

Volunteers are the engine that drives associations. Take a look at your own system. Are you tracking all the volunteer activity that each of your members is engaged in? If not, why not?