Why the CVA Credential Matters
- Nonprofit Learning Lab
- Feb 7
- 3 min read
This is a guest blog by Faiza Venzant CVA Executive Director, Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration
I love a dinner party. Meeting new people, yummy food, good music. I especially love the question that everyone (but me) asks over and over again. “What do you do?” I will passionately share my experiences about my work in volunteer engagement with anyone who will listen but the response I often get, accompanied by a look which is one part concern, one part puzzlement and one part curiosity is, “So you’re a volunteer, how can you live on that?”
I’ve been working in the field of volunteer engagement for over 25 years. Not much has changed for me at dinner parties except that I tend to opt for stretchy pants and flats more often than a cute dress and heels. Once, halfway through dessert at a dinner party, someone said to me, “So is it like HR for volunteers?” This is where I start to feel tired.
Our profession is vital and vibrant. Like our partners at Nonprofit Learning Lab, we are invested in community growth, health and access. We’re pretty amazing in our ability to inform strategy, inspire action, and galvanize individuals and groups to invest their non-renewable resource of time. And we get them to do it repeatedly while making them jump through screening hoops! We connect, we create, we educate, we motivate, we coach, we mentor, we plan and we prioritize. We wear many hats/hijabs/kippahs in our day to day work. We’re outstanding! We are! But we still go to dinner parties and…Can we all agree that it’s time to change the perception of volunteer engagement?
One incredible way I’ve been able to do that is through credentialing. In 2016, I obtained my CVA (Certifed in Volunteer Administration) designation from the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration. Here are three ways obtaining the CVA has already been a no brainer for me. Gosh! I only wish I had done it sooner.
1. Credibility
The CVA is the only international professional credential for volunteer engagement professionals. Obtaining the CVA has increased my credibility as a speaker, writer, professional, and mentor on a global scale. A happy coincidence of that is that my network has exploded and I have an international community of over 1100 CVAs that I can look to for help and resources.
2. Confidence
Since obtaining my CVA, I feel a renewed confidence in my ability, career prospects and options for growth and development in our field. The task of preparing, studying and sitting for the certification exam was an affirmation that I am doing work that is valuable and requires great skill. It also reinforced that this is a profession that requires constant learning, building new connections and daily work in better understanding people through a personal commitment to diversity and inclusion work.
3. Contribution
We spend our days asking people to contribute. Obtaining my CVA has allowed me to do the same for our profession. I began serving as a Board Member for CCVA and have now moved into the Executive Director role. Being able to contribute on behalf of people whose work I admire is a privilege. (And by people I mean you!) As a CVA, take your knowledge and contribute what you can, when you can.
Bringing credibility and confidence to your work and making a contribution to the profession through obtaining your CVA is one way to elevate the profession of volunteer engagement and attract the recognition we seek. I invite you to learn more at a free upcoming information session www.cvacert.org/info and let your fellow dinner party guests know about the exam that you are studying for and the credential you are pursuing.
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Faiza Venzant CVA is the Executive Director of the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration and is also a Principal Investigator with the Assessing Diversity and Equity in Volunteer Inclusion project which is funded by AmeriCorps.
With 25 years of leadership experience in volunteer engagement, she continues this work with a goal of centering community amongst the profession, improving equity and access to volunteerism and increasing diversity amongst professional leaders of volunteers. In 2018, Faiza published her first children’s book entitled, My Mamma Wants to Eat Me Up! As a mother of two young boys, she has not actually eaten any of her children.
Learn more about the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration at