Struggling to recruit volunteers for your project, service club, or nonprofit? Here are 5 tips to give your volunteer recruitment strategy a boost! #volunteer #nonprofits #nonprofit
People want to volunteer and make a difference for your cause, but sometimes we can do a better job communicating our needs and the impact they’ll make. In this video I’ll share some key volunteer recruitment and management best practices and give you some of the top tips I’ve developed learned from managing volunteers through my nonprofit organization.
Whether you run a nonprofit in need of volunteers, or are seeking church volunteers, or volunteers for a Kiwanis or Key Club, Rotary Club, Civitans, other service club, or just a one time service project, try out these strategies and let me know how they make a difference for you!
// WHAT TO WATCH NEXT
How Successful Nonprofits Fundraise when Starting and Growing
https://youtu.be/-HeFuJRb1N4
7 Mistakes I Made Starting a Non Profit | #Entrepreneurship
https://youtu.be/75rPHdXU5P0
Time Management Tips from a Nonprofit Executive Director #Girlboss
https://youtu.be/-Tu7ywezfnM
// MORE ABOUT ME
Hi! I’m Amber, a nonprofit founder, Executive Director, and public speaker on social impact, changemaking, nonprofits, leadership, and more.
My Nonprofit Founder to Full-Time Academy -- with online trainings to guide you through the steps to start a nonprofit (in the USA) and more -- is now LIVE! http://foundertofulltime.com/
On Facebook? Talk to me and other change makers about social change, nonprofits, social enterprise, leadership and more in my Facebook group, Change the World or Bust: https://www.facebook.com/groups/changetheworldorbust/
Join my newsletter! https://ambermsmith.com/blog/newsletter/
I'm also on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ambermelsmith
Pics of me and my cute dog on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ambermelsmith/
Having troubled recruiting volunteers
for your nonprofit or service project? This video is for you! Welcome back! If
you haven't been here before, my name is Amber Melanie Smith, and I am a nonprofit founder, executive director, and speaker on leadership, service, and nonprofits. I have been working in the nonprofit field for years, and my specialty is
actually volunteer recruitment and management, because the nonprofit that I
founded many years ago and currently run today - our whole mission is
recruiting and connecting volunteers to hundreds of
causes in my local community. So I have heard it all! I have heard reasons people don't want to volunteer. I've heard reasons people
do want to volunteer! I've seen really amazing volunteer postings; I've seen
some questionable volunteer postings. I am regularly asked, "how can I get more
people involved? How can I inspire more people to sign up for my service project
with my organization, with my club?" So I would like to offer my top tips an
d
strategies for how you can encourage people to sign up for your volunteer
opportunities. I'm gonna talk through five strategies you can do to strengthen
your volunteer recruiting strategy. So let's get right into it! The first thing
you want to do is make sure that your volunteer opportunities are very aligned
with your goals and your mission and your outcomes as an organization. People really want to be immersed in the mission and the cause that you are
advocating for, so you want to make sur
e that the tasks that you are having
volunteers do can really demonstrate how their actions are related to the end
goals of your organization. And a lot of this takes place in the planning period,
when you're doing your strategic planning or your planning for the
organization for the year or a couple year period. You want to take a look at
your overall organizational goals for your organization for that period of
time - let's say, increase the number of people you serve from 100 to 200 in the
ne
xt year - So that is your goal for this year - you want to walk that
backwards and think to yourself, "What are the volunteer tasks
that I can design and recruit for that are going to align with that goal and
help us meet that goal?" Doing this is really important to keep your
organization focused in general, but in terms of recruiting volunteers, it's
important because - as I was saying before - volunteers want to feel like they are
helping you push your mission forward in terms of the tasks th
ey are doing. They
know or can sense how something you might have them do could be busy work or feel
unnecessary or somehow doesn't relate to your mission - so you either need to make
sure it's really, really aligned, or if it's something that's less clearly
aligned, you need to be really over communicating the impact of their
activity on your overall mission. The second thing you want to do is really
assess whether the volunteer activity you would like to recruit for can be
made into a shorter
commitment. In today's world, people are looking for
those shorter term volunteer commitments, yet nonprofits tend to need those longer
ongoing opportunities, because it's easier to train someone once who can be
a long-standing volunteer with you than to constantly be training and
recruiting people for shorter term opportunities. So there's always this
conflict between accommodating volunteers who have a really busy
schedule and need a shorter term commitment with your organization's
genuine nee
d for those longer term commitments. I'm not saying rule out
your ongoing opportunities because sometimes those are really needed, and
oftentimes you can find volunteers who want to stick it out and make that
long-term commitment to your organization. But if you are talking
about recruiting new volunteers or just trying to widen your base of volunteers,
if you can break down a task into smaller chunks of a couple hours at a
time, you will have an easier time recruiting those volunteers. And if t
hey
had a great experience with you then you'll be a lot more likely to be able
to recruit those people for those longer term commitments because
they are starting to get to know you, they have experienced making an impact
with your cause, and so they're going to find time in their schedule to devote to
you because now you have that relationship. The third thing you can do
to strengthen your volunteer recruiting strategy - and I see this so often - is
you've got to have a clear volunteer descrip
tion - on your website, on a volunteer recruitment website, out in the news - wherever you are promoting your volunteer needs, it has to be clear. So what does a clear volunteer opportunity
description look like? A clear volunteer opportunity description covers all the
basics - so your When, your Where, your What - and you want to be really
clear about that What - as clear as you can be. If volunteers are going to be
expected to be doing a lot of moving or heavy lifting, you've got to put that i
n
the description so that people will know that that is what is going to be
expected of them. If volunteers need to wear certain clothes in order to be
effective at the task you're going to assign them. You need to be sharing where to go. If it is a difficult to find location, you need to be sharing how to
find the location. You need to be sharing how and where to park, where to find
people to check in with when they arrive, who they can expect to meet on site, and
most importantly - you want to
share the impacts of the volunteer tasks that they
will be doing in the written description as well as on-site when you are
volunteering with those folks. The fourth thing you want to do to improve your
recruitment strategy for volunteers is communication. In my organization we have developed a sort of "3 email rule". When someone first signs up to volunteer
they get an email within 48 hours of that sign up it's kind of like when
you're at a restaurant and you're waiting for the waiter to come
by and
you're just waiting and waiting and nobody's coming by to ask you what you
want to drink and you're just wondering what the heck is going on did they see
me it's like that when someone signs up to volunteer they are excited they're
enthusiastic they want to help you so if you take a long time to respond even a
quick knowledge meant saying I see you I got
your sign up just give me a little bit more time to give you a more thorough
response even just something quick like that will help them
feel seen and help
them know that they can expect future communication from you if you don't do
this first step they are likely to not show up to their volunteer assignment
even if they get another email later down the line because by then they've
assumed you didn't care you didn't want to reach out to them you didn't see
their sign up and they've moved on moved on and made other plans so we do that
first email right away within 48 hours then depending on how far away the
volunteer opportunity
is from the date they signed up we might do a second
email maybe one or two weeks before just letting them know that they are going to
get final details that final email a couple days right before their
opportunity and that's the third email that we send is that final reminder with
any last-minute details information about what to do if the weather is bad
everything like that about 48 hours before the date of the opportunity
starting and the fifth strategy that will strengthen your volunteer
rec
ruitment game is as I was saying before you really want to highlight your
impacts some of the organizations in my community do this really well for
example I know that if I go volunteer at the food bank then in one hour I as an
individual I'm going to pack the equivalent of a hundred and forty meals
helping serve people in my community knowing that metric is really inspiring
and encouraging me to come back it can be a little hard to measure the power of
a smile or how you've made someone else's
day better but if you can find
ways to equate the actions of the volunteers that are serving with your
cause to direct measurable impacts you are going to help inspire them to
continue their service and understand why what they did is important for you
and one final thought volunteers are generous they're giving their time which
is an extremely limited resource in today's busy world it's something we
never get back so you want to make sure that you're giving people the experience
that they expec
ted when they signed up an
experience that matches the description you put out there and you're cheerful
brand and making it feel like a good time and that they did the right thing
by choosing to spend their limited time with you and another great reason you
want to make sure that volunteers have a great experience is volunteers often
become donors you would think that if someone is already giving their time
they might not be inclined to also give their money but the data shows the
opposite when
someone forms a relationship with your cause by giving
you their limited time they are getting to know you they are getting to like and
love your cause this makes them want to donate money as well working with
volunteers can be a transformative experience and really help you push your
cause forward if you recruit them the right way
I hope this videos helped you out thank you guys so much please don't forget to
hit that subscribe button that red button down below give this video a
thumbs up and
share with your friends if you are on Facebook don't forget to come
out and check out my group change the world or bust where I'm talking with
other change makers about all things social impact how we can help others how
we can move the needle on important issues and more so come on by check it
out thank you so much
Comments
My Nonprofit Founder to Full-Time Academy -- with online trainings to guide you through the steps to start a nonprofit (in the USA) and more -- is now LIVE! http://foundertofulltime.com/
you have no idea how much I love your videos, you're such a good person!
Keep it up!
This video was gold! Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a lot!
Thanks so much for the information!!!
Thank love ! Love the advise !
Awesome clear and concise tips! I think that was one of your tips! It's a good sign when the person giving the advice embodies it as well.
Thank you so much for this video!!
Thanks for all your help.
Your an excellent speaker
Thanks Amber!!!!
I will launch a Crowdfunding campaign in FundRazr on the 5 th of June 2022. Ecological Gardens project 🌎 Greetings from Colombia. Thanks Amber 🇻🇪
Great subject Amber.
Wow, I have to step up my game.
Thanks Amber 🌎 Thanks.
Nice video 🌎 Thanks
Hello! Thanks for the video. I wonder what do you mean with short time commitment? A year? Six months? a month? Something that you do ones a month but just a for an hour?
Can you make volunteers program out of a business or is that basically a non profit. I want to help different organizations without being tied down to just one cause. I also don’t want to deal with the hustle and bustle of the admin side of starting a non profit. Your feedback will be helpful???
Also, there is actually 2 words that work well. "Free pizza." It's cheap and has the magic ability to draw people.
Is there a volunteer management software program that you would recommend for a small, new nonprofit?