Nonprofits and community service organizations often rely on volunteers’ hard work and generosity to get their important work done. In fact, volunteers make up the majority of many nonprofits' workforce and are absolutely critical to their daily operation and goals. With such a critical role, it is important to find committed and motivated volunteers who will be able to help an organization meet its goals.

Effective volunteer management starts with a well thought out volunteer recruitment strategy. This article will offer five actionable tips to help your organization recruit volunteers that are passionate about helping you meet your goals. We’ll cover the following best practices:

1. Incentivize peer-to-peer recruitment.
2. Promote volunteer opportunities online.
3. Streamline the volunteer registration process.
4. Offer unique incentives for volunteers.
5. Explore corporate volunteerism.

Ready to learn more about leveling up your volunteer recruitment strategies? Let’s dive in.

1. Incentivize peer-to-peer recruitment.

Your existing team of volunteers are one of the best recruitment resources you have at your disposal. Those volunteers are already passionate about the work your organization does, making them the perfect volunteer recruiters.

Consider creating a peer-to-peer volunteer recruitment program where your existing volunteers ask their networks of friends and family to come join them in their volunteer work. Imagine if every volunteer was able to bring in three new volunteers for your organization—that could really make an impact!

Simply ask your volunteers to ask around and share new volunteer opportunities on their social media. This can cast a wide net to raise awareness for your organization and bring in volunteers. Consider motivating your volunteers to do even more by offering a prize or reward to whichever volunteer recruits the most people. This small cost could deliver a lot of value to your organization in the long run.

2. Promote volunteer opportunities online.

Your website is the first place where most interested people will go to learn more about any volunteer opportunities you have. Gone are the days of a simple sign-up sheet on a bulletin board.

Creating and sharing volunteer opportunities online and offering a simple online sign-up experience is more important than ever before. Once your volunteer sign-up page is created, be sure to share the link through your favorite online channels. This might include:

• Your website
• Social media accounts
• Email blasts

The more channels you use to promote your volunteer opportunities, the more volunteers you will recruit to your cause.

3. Streamline the volunteer registration process.

There’s nothing worse than attracting new volunteers through a great recruitment plan only to lose them at the registration or sign-up process. That's why it's so important to invest in a convenient online volunteer registration process.

The last thing you want to do is scare potential volunteers away with a convoluted and labor-intensive process. Consider investing in volunteer management software that allows you to completely customize your volunteer registration process. This way, you can collect all the information you need to run your volunteer programs while delivering an easy and convenient registration process for volunteers. 

To make things even more streamlined, consider a solution that allows volunteers to sign up directly for shifts they are qualified to work. This empowers them to pick the role and shift that interest them the most and work with their schedule. The faster your new volunteers can sign up and get scheduled to work, the better for your organization.

4. Offer unique incentives for volunteers.

People often volunteer their time because they are passionate about the work a nonprofit or organization does in the community. However, adding a little more incentive to keep volunteers inspired is never a bad idea. There are many things that motivate volunteers to sign up and donate their time to a cause, and it can help your recruitment strategy to understand these reasons for your own volunteers.

Here are some common volunteer motivations:

• Passion for the work
• Meeting new people
• Learning new skills
• Gaining relevant experience for career development

Once you have a solid understanding of why people would want to volunteer, you can build out tempting incentives that directly correlate with those motivations.

For example, if you know about 20% of new volunteers will sign up to learn new skills, talk about the impactful training program you offer on your volunteer recruitment page and social media posts. The more value you can provide to potential volunteers, the more likely they are to donate their time to your organization. 

5. Explore corporate volunteerism.

Corporate social responsibility initiatives are no longer just for the largest companies in the world. More and more, medium to small sized businesses are looking to give back and make a difference in their communities through corporate volunteerism programs. For a business, this approach offers a great opportunity for their employees to bond as a team while giving back to a local community organization.

Consider partnering with a number of businesses who have these corporate volunteer programs. Not only will those partnerships bring in motivated and skilled volunteers to help your organization, but they can also collect additional donations through corporate volunteer grants as well. These partnerships can really be a win-win solution for both the businesses and your organization.

Volunteers have such an important role in helping your organization meet its goals. That makes investing in a powerful volunteer recruitment plan critical to ensure you bring in the right volunteer to do the job.

We hope you can take these five tips and put them in action. Help your organization bring the best volunteers to join your team and make the largest impact possible.

About the Author

Cassandra Smallman

Cassandra is a passionate content creator dedicated to fostering positive impact through thought leadership in both the Nonprofit sector and live events industry. You can find her work at www.initlive.com or on Linkedin and Twitter.