8 Tips for Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers

Whether you have a handful or an army of volunteers, they’re the lifeblood of your charity. From helping at fundraising events and manning helplines to collecting cheques on your behalf, without them, many organisations would be unable to cope.

They’re your (unpaid) advocates, champions, ambassadors, and worker bees. So, it pays to treat them well.

With this in mind, here are a few top tips to help you recruit and retain volunteers.

1. Consider the reasons why people volunteer

Taking the time to consider why people volunteer can inform your recruitment campaign and the way you structure your volunteer roles. Some of the common reasons include:

• Giving back to the community and/or a cause they feel passionate about

• Wanting to be part of an event that excites them

• Looking to meet new people

• Hoping to learn new skills

• Wanting to build up experience for their CV

• Building their professional network

Think about each of these motives and build your volunteering programme around them. And be upfront about asking each of your prospective volunteers about their motives, so you can better match them with an assignment. When meeting with volunteers, ask what their motivation is and find a way to satisfy their needs and deliver on their expectations within the role they take on. This will ensure they stay motivated.

2. Prioritise volunteer inductions

You only have one chance to make a good first impression, so make sure you give volunteers a warm welcome and a great onboarding process.

For the uninitiated, ‘onboarding’ is the mechanism through which new volunteers acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviours to become effective organisational members.

A few tips to create a good onboarding process:

• Create a volunteer handbook containing all the key information about the organisation, the cause and the people behind it

• Set up 1:1 meetings between volunteers and key managers/senior members of staff

• Offer substantive training

For a more in-depth look at how to onboard volunteers, check out this article by Rosterfy

3. Help them develop new skills

Anyone who is willing to volunteer is likely to have a healthy curiosity and willingness to try new things. Indeed, many volunteers get involved specifically to develop new skills.

Consider your volunteers as extra staff who are capable of performing complex tasks using their experience and skills.

Consider running initial training workshops and doing refreshers every six months to allow volunteers to come together to share their ideas and experiences.

Provide leadership opportunities to those who want to shoulder responsibility and guide others. Help them connect with people they may not otherwise interact with. Understand their skills and background, as they may be able to do more than you’re currently offering them.

You can find out more about training volunteers in this blog post by markel.uk.

4. Support, don’t manage

You’re not paying your volunteers so you can’t manage them as paid staff. It’s a balancing act, negotiating what you need against what a volunteer wants to do and gain from the experience.

Get the balance right and you’ll have volunteers for life, but if the balance shifts in either direction, things can go horribly wrong.

Like any relationship, regular communication is key, but don’t forget it’s your organisation. If things aren’t working out, you’re well within your rights to call time on the relationship.

5. Implement regular catch ups

Regular meetings are vital as they’ll give your volunteers a sense of direction, especially at the beginning of their tenure. Make sure you give volunteers a chance to have their say and provide support and supervision when they need it.

6. Be accommodating

Try to be as flexible as possible with your volunteers. After all, they’re offering up their free time to help your charity, so be as accommodating as you can if they need to take time off or are unable to work their usual hours.

7. Acknowledge their contributions

Gratitude is a powerful thing. It can change a person’s outlook on just about any situation. Maintain morale by showing gratitude and demonstrating it openly. Don’t overlook the power of those small, simple gestures like taking your volunteers out to lunch, giving them a small gift, or sending a thank you card to their home.

8. Shout about their successes

Include volunteer case studies and quotes in your internal/external communications. Ask volunteers if they’d be happy to share their experience on film as a short video or in a case study to use in your recruitment and training collateral.

You could also recognise volunteers’ contributions publicly by highlighting their work in your newsletter/blog, or at an award ceremony.

With our extensive database of contacts, we’re in a strong position to help you find talented volunteers and paid fundraisers. Give us a call on 0203 750 3111 to get the process started.