Key Methods of Recruiting Volunteers

Continuous recruitment of new volunteers is key to sustaining your volunteer program and organizational operations. While we also need to focus on retaining previous volunteers, we know that not all volunteers will return to serve again, so to keep things running smoothly we need to be bringing in new folks at the same time. This does take a little time, and some intentional effort!

Reaching New Audiences

Your best target for new volunteers are groups of people who are near you, geographically. So, think about businesses in your surrounding area, and the closest schools and universities. These are entities with groups of people that you can tap into. It is usually a better use of your time to recruit from a group of people, than people individually.

Consider stopping by a local business with flyers (with a QR code to your volunteer registration pages!), and asking if you can talk to their employees about volunteering as a group or individually, on their own. Be ready to talk about your work, the impact made, and what volunteers do! They may even be willing to post your flyer in their business, which is especially great if it’s a retail store or restaurant who have customers.

To engage schools and universities, peruse their website to find contact information for staff who are counselors, PTA, BETA clubs, or Community Affairs. These are the folks who can get the word out to the students of the school. Give them a call or email. Remember that students are always looking for volunteer opportunities and often struggle to find projects that allow minors, so usually staff are receptive to spreading the word.

Leveraging Your Current Audience

Another good route, is to tap into the networks of your current volunteers. Likely, many of your volunteers have a job and therefore coworkers that they could invite to join them in service. They may be involved in groups like sororities, or a book club, or a neighborhood association. Often these groups are seeking activities that they can do together, and volunteering with you could be that activity! At the end of every project, when you’re gathering the volunteers for reflection + dismissal, be sure to add an ask to the volunteers to return with a group from their network. You can also ask individual volunteers directly if they are willing to talk to their coworkers about volunteering together, or involved with any groups that they could bring. It’s OK to tell volunteers that you need help recruiting more volunteers, and ask them to help you!

Platforms

The average organization posts their opportunity in multiple places across the internet. These are usually portals, that allow volunteers to connect with the nonprofits, and often they act as search engines for volunteer projects. Usually, the nonprofit has administrative access to post a project that’s then displayed publicly on the portal’s website, and the portal typically has a built-in audience of users (volunteers). Of course you want your opportunities visible on your own website and social media (always include the registration links!), but these external platforms can help your opportunities be seen by more people than just those who visit your website. VolunteerMatch is a global platform. Typically, your local United Way, Hands On, or other Points of Light affiliate act as community hubs and often have volunteer portals. You can also search on Google to find other volunteer platforms which serve your area.

Schools and universities typically have their own portals, too – you can talk to the administration of the school about getting your projects listed. It’s the same case for very large businesses (think: 1000+ employees) who want their staff members to get involved with their communities.

Having your registration listed in multiple places can be a bit to manage. If your project needs 20 people, you may want to recruit 10 from one site or 10 from another, OR, you can recruit 20 from both and if one fills up, close down the other. As you try more platforms, you will find that some work better for you than others, and you can focus on the ones with the best return rates.