Archive for the ‘Volunteer Recruitment’ Category

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6 Tips for Writing an Awesome Volunteer Position Description

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

When you’re recruiting volunteers for a project, it’s nearly unavoidable that you’ll have to write a position description for the position you’re recruiting volunteers for. Recruiting volunteers face-to-face is great, but you might not find all of the volunteers your organization needs while you’re waiting in line at the grocery store.

The position description for the volunteer position you’re recruiting for might be the first contact a potential volunteer has with your organization, here are some tips for making it great!

Have a great headline. Do you read a newspaper article if the headline doesn’t interest you? Make sure the first thing that a volunteer sees on the position description is interesting and exciting. If you’re recruiting a volunteer to help socialize animals at a shelter, “Animal Shelter Volunteer” could work for a headline, but what about “Wet Nose Looking For A Dry Nose,” or “Share Your Life With Someone Who Has Nine?”

Introduce your organization. Don’t assume that everyone knows about your organization. Let volunteers know what you do and how you benefit the community. If you can avoid it, don’t copy and paste your mission statement into the description. While it’s important to share your mission with volunteers, try sharing it in a way that’s playful and exciting. If your mission statement is written that way, great!

Make it exciting! Take a look at some job postings. It’s rare that a job posting is anything more than facts about the position (the Photojojo folks laugh in the face of boring job descriptions). That’s not to say that you should make things up about the volunteer position, or that facts aren’t important, but you can put a great spin on the facts. Have a little fun writing the position – it’s ok; volunteering isn’t serious business all of the time.

Who is your ideal volunteer? Everyone should answer this questions along the lines of “someone who is extremely skilled, has eight arms, sixty hours a week to volunteer, is psychic, and can travel through space and time at will.” We all want a volunteer like this, right? Why not share your idea of an ideal volunteer, even if it’s outrageous, and build that into your position description? Do you need someone with eight arms? Ask for it, and then be open that you’re really looking for four volunteers.

Remember that volunteers are as important as staff. Make it show in your position description! If there’s an opportunity for volunteers to take on leadership positions within your organization, make sure to highlight them. The opportunity might not be there on the volunteer’s first day, but if there’s a potential for growing into leadership, don’t forget to include it.

Tell what a day of volunteering looks like. Try to describe what a day of volunteering look like. There are exciting things that the volunteer will be doing, and probably some things that aren’t as exciting. Be open about the volunteer’s tasks and talk about them in a way that demonstrates their importance to the organization.

 

How do you make volunteer position descriptions exciting? Let us know in the comments!

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Six Tips for Writing Volunteer Position Descriptions

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Position descriptions are an important part of the volunteer recruitment process. They let volunteers know what they’ll be doing with your organization, so it’s important to have a position description that accurately reflects what volunteers will be doing. Here are some tips for writing a volunteer position description:

Be clear about what you want people to do. The volunteer position description serves as an introduction to your organization and to what you’re asking volunteers to do. It’s important to have a clear, easy to read description of what volunteers will be doing with your organization.

Have an interesting title. When a volunteer is looking at a list of available opportunities, what’s going to make yours stand out? Are you looking for an office volunteer or a Chief Morale Officer? Are you looking for a community garden volunteer or an Urban Horticulture Enthusiast? The position title is likely to be the first thing a new volunteer will see, so make it something interesting that will make them want to know more about the position.

What’s the purpose of the position? Make sure your position description not only lays out what the volunteer will be doing, but why the position is important to your organization.

What will the volunteer be doing? Make sure to identify the specifics of what the volunteer will be doing. It helps the volunteer to understand what is being asked of them, and helps you to assign tasks for the volunteer when they start with your organization.

Training. Let the volunteer know what kind of training your organization will give to make sure they’re able to do the tasks you’re asking them to do. Even if it’s just an orientation to their position and the office they’ll be working in, make sure to let them know that they’ll have an opportunity to learn more about what they’re being asked to do.

Evaluation. Let your volunteers know how they’ll be evaluated and who they’ll report to. In addition to letting volunteers know what they’ll be doing, letting them know how they’ll be evaluated and by who lets them know there’s some accountability with their position and that it’s important to the organization. Letting volunteers know who they’ll be reporting to gives them a specific person to ask questions to and to learn from.

What are your tips for writing volunteer position descriptions? Let us know in the comments!

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Tips for Recruiting and Retaining Boomer Volunteers

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

The key to recruiting and retaining boomer volunteers is for nonprofits and volunteer centers to develop an ongoing dialogue with boomers and tailoring service opportunities to meet their needs and desires around service. Here are some tips for focusing on boom recruitment and retention:

  • Recruit boomers through wide outreach, including media, community events, and through peer-to-peer outreach.
  • Develop recruitment materials tailored to reflect language, interests, and self-image of boomers.
  • Provide orientation and training to help boomers understand the nonprofit world, the opportunities that are available, and their role and responsibilities as volunteers.
  • Screen and match volunteers based on an assessment of skills and interest.
  • Create ongoing opportunities  through trainings, social events, and group projects for boomer volunteer to learn, gain new skills, meet other boomers, share stories, and work together with other boomers.
  • PRovide recognition opportunities that are meaningful to your volunteers – getting to know your volunteers as individuals is the best way to find out how they would like to be recognized as volunteers.

Do you work with boomer volunteers? What are your tips for recruiting and retaining them?

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Five Tips for Recruiting and Retaining Skilled Volunteers

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Has your organization ever needed help writing a grant or building a website or taking pictures at a big event? Have you considered recruiting a skilled volunteer instead of hiring someone to do the work? A skilled volunteer can bring their experience and knowledge to your organization to help it achieve its goals. Here are some tips for recruiting skills based volunteers:

Define the role of the volunteer. When you’re looking for a volunteer with a specific skill set it’s important to define the role they’ll be playing with your organization. Make the role very specific – the more specific the better. Instead of looking for a volunteer for “grant writing” look for a volunteer to write a specific grant application for a specific reason.

Screening is important. If you’re looking for a skilled volunteer to do work on a certain project, make sure you take the time to meet with them before you bring them on to make sure that they can do what you’re asking them to do. If you find out that they can do what you’re asking them, great! If you’re not sure they’re a good fit for the work, don’t dismiss them. Let them know about other opportunities in your organization that they might be a better fit for.

Motivate! Volunteers will do their best work when they feel inspired by the end result. Before they start, show them what the organization has accomplished. Let them know that they’re now a part of the organization’s future and they’ll be helping to accomplish even more. What kind of incentives can your organization offer the volunteer? Work experience, recommendations, professional contacts, and a fun working environment can help to keep volunteers engaged.

And don’t forget to say thank you often.

Be flexible and show respect. Wouldn’t it be great if the highly skilled volunteers that your organization needs could devote all of their time to your organization and its cause? Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case. Keep your skilled volunteers’ tasks very specific and restricted to short-term projects that only require a few hours per day or a few months of their time. This leaves the door open for the volunteer to accept another project with your organization while being respectful of their other commitments.

Once a project is completed, don’t forget to thank your volunteer for the work they’ve done.

Keep staff morale high. Make sure to use skilled volunteers in a way that complements the work of your organization’s staff and not in a way that looks like you’re replacing staff. Make it clear that volunteers are an important part of your organization and that they allow the organization to function at a higher level than if only staff worked on projects.

Do you work with skilled volunteers? What have you found works best for recruiting and retaining them? Let us know in the comments!

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5 Tips for Encouraging Volunteers to Become More Involved

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Volunteers are great. They help us to do the work that we wouldn’t be able to do without their service.

How can an organization help to create a stronger relationship with a volunteer and help them to become a leader in the organization? Here are some tips to help build a stronger relationship with your volunteers.

Ask them for more.

When you first got your volunteers, you had to ask for them, right? Just like asking someone to volunteer is the best way to get them to volunteer, asking a volunteer to step into a larger role with your organization is the best way to get them to do it.

Have a plan in place for when the volunteer says yes.

Chances are you’re going to be asking your volunteer to do something that they haven’t done (or done with your organization) before. Make sure there’s a plan in place for training volunteers on their new tasks before you ask them to do them. Asking a volunteer to do something and not being able to show them how to do it is a great way to lose the volunteer.

Trust your volunteer.

Give them a bit more freedom to do things. You asked the volunteer to do more with your organization because you trust them and the work they do, right? Let them try things on their own. They just might come up with a million dollar idea (maybe literally!) that helps your organization grow.

Let your volunteer grow their own programs.

After you know that your volunteer is working well in their new role, let them build something unique to them and their role in your organization. Don’t just tell them to do something new, though! Ask them to make sure that it’s something they’ll have the time to devote to, and that it’s something that they want to do.

Don’t forget that they’re volunteers.

After months of being involved with your organization, a volunteer can start to feel like part of the organization’s staff. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is important to remember that the volunteer is still a volunteer. Don’t forget the little things that let volunteers know that you appreciate the work they do, and don’t forget to say thank you!

For more on creating service leaders in your organization and across the country, check out Max Klau’s post about service and leadership development on the National Conference on Volunteering and Service blog and today’s post on the importance of service leader development on the Points of Light Blog!

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If You Build It…

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Today’s blog post comes from Charon Gaskins, an AmeriCorps member with HandsOn Network.

For  as long as I can remember, I’ve been doing community service.  In college, I joined a community service sorority, Gamma Sigma Sigma National Service Sorority.  As a member of this sorority I sought after a variety of service projects for my chapter to complete, I never thought about organizing our own projects.

It could have been because I was in college, taking a full load while still being active on campus, planning a project just didn’t seem like something that was easy to do.  Flash forward a few years later and here I am planning my own community service projects!  Through working with the GetHandsOn Campaign, I’ve been able to test out several of the project playbooks.

With the help of the resources I’ve found on the website, I’ve successfully organized several different projects in my community.  From a snack and learn with elementary students to tilling the land and potting seeds for a community garden, this has been an amazing experience.

I was invited to speak to a group of 3rd and 4th grade students about what community service is.  From that discussion, I had the students identify three areas where they were interested in doing community service.  The group of students stated they wanted to work with senior citizens, so from there I worked to find a local senior facility for them to service at.

The excitement these students had while working with these seniors was heartwarming, and the seniors were so excited to have a group of youth come to visit them.  I was told the students began bugging their teacher about their next service project on the way home from that project!

My most recent project was helping in a garden in the Atlanta area.  There was a lot of maintenance this garden needed, because over the years they lost a lot of their volunteers.  However, there is still a community of people that depend on this garden for fresh foods.

Using social media and making announcements in our different circles, we were able to get about 35 people out in the hot sun ready to work. We tilled about two acres of land and potted over 300 seeds   The volunteers for this project ranged from the ages of 13-60 years and everyone walked away from the project excited about coming back to actually plant the seeds in the garden in late April.

One of the volunteers at the garden was actually someone that receives food from the garden and though she is suffering from lupus, she wanted to help out in whatever way that she could.  It’s stories like this that keeps me motivated, doing everything in my power to leave a community changed by my presence.

I’ve had the opportunity to create several projects that focus on different areas and get my friends and family interesting in doing more service.  Several times a week I get a call about a group that is interesting in doing community service, or someone has an idea about a project that they want to do but need some help making it happen.

Working with the GetHandsOn campaign has been one of my greatest joys because it has given me the opportunity to really work with people in the community that want to make a change.  There are people that want to change things in their community but maybe sometimes it just seems so unattainable.

The truth is making a difference in your community doesn’t have to be some huge endeavor; it can be just one or two hrs.  If you are looking for ways to get involved in service check out Get HandsOn or HandsOn Network’s Action Centers for opportunities in your area!

Charon serves as an AmeriCorps National Direct member.  She is a member of Gamma Sigma Sigma National Service Sorority.  She is based in Atlanta, Ga. where she is active in the West End Community.

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Tips For Community Engagement in Rural and Urban Communities

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

On March 23, the Points of Light Blog asked questions about what makes a group of people a community and what is it about a community of people that makes them successful as a group of volunteers?

We’ve talked about technology communities and how communities can support individuals’ action. Today, we’re going to look at some differences between communities in rural and urban settings.

While we mentioned that with the rise of communication technology, community is no longer restricted strictly by geography, geography still plays a role in how communities come together. Rural communities can be different than urban communities simply by virtue of the type of life that happens in them. If you’re approaching members of these communities about volunteer opportunities, here are some thing to keep in mind:

Rural Communities

  • Take it slow and easy; don’t barge right in. Take the time to get to know the community and its members.
  • Find someone who can introduce you to other community members, you’ll get farther with their help than you will on your own.
  • Community meetings and one-on-one asks can be effective methods for recruiting volunteers.

Urban Communities

  • Make sure staff have worked with the community or have taken the time to get to know the community.
  • Focus on direct messages-don’t run around the subject.
  • Use the internet, email, and other forms of outreach together

There are tips that work in urban and rural communities when it comes to engaging a community. They include:

  • Knowing your objectives and your time frame for action.
  • Getting to know the community before reaching out to them.
  • Know who the influential members and opinion leaders are for the community.
  • Listen to the community members.
  • Be flexible and able to adjust your ask on the fly.

Ultimately, whether you’re approaching an urban or a rural community, they’ll want to know what’s in it for them. Why should they support your feral cat TNR program? What’s so great about a youth mentoring program? Why should they take part of their free time and spend it collecting canned goods? Being able to answer the “what’s in it for us?” question is probably the most important part of approaching different communities for volunteers.

Have you had to recruit volunteers from different communities? Did you have to adjust your approach because of it? What did you learn from doing outreach to different communities? Let us know in the comments!

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Using Technology Communities As A Source Of Volunters

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Today’s post comes from Michael Nealis, Interactive Strategy Coordinator for Points of Light Institute.

I am a member of a community. Many communities, actually.

I live in a neighborhood in a city where neighborhood identities are strong. I work with a group of people who believe that volunteering is an important part of citizenship. I am a volunteer. I’m an AmeriCorps Alum.

I really like technology. I play a game with thousands of people across the world. I have Facebook friends across the country. I follow people on Twitter from around the world.

All of these communities, virtual and real-life, are sources of identity for the individuals that belong to them, in addition to a potential source for volunteers.

Technology communities are a great source of volunteers for nonprofits, especially for organizations that need technology help.

Recruiting volunteers from technology communities isn’t too much different than recruiting volunteers from the community around a nonprofit. Best practices that work for traditional communities work just as well for technology communities.

To focus on technology communities, you should target your recruitment efforts to the places where those communities come together. Posting a flyer in your community center may be an effective recruitment tool for traditional volunteers, but probably won’t work as well for recruiting from technology communities.

Just like for traditional volunteers, your recruitment message for technology volunteers should be targeted to where those volunteers are. Posting opportunities on online volunteer recruitment sites and other places where the volunteers you’re looking for come together online are good ways to bring attention to your organization’s technology needs.

In addition, there are methods for recruiting technology volunteers that won’t work as well for traditional volunteers. Online platforms for supporting technology volunteer projects like Sparked are great ways to bring technology volunteers into your nonprofit.

Sparked provides a place where nonprofits can post small, digitally-based volunteer opportunities that can be done in a small amount of time. These opportunities aren’t just computer-based; many of the opportunities can be done on a smart phone, so time spent waiting in line at the grocery store can turn into time helping to improve a user’s experience with a nonprofit’s website.

Technology volunteers don’t have to be web-based volunteers. They can be volunteers that help to manage the technology infrastructure at your organization. Recruiting these volunteers isn’t any different than recruiting traditional or web-based volunteers. The same best practices that work for traditional volunteer opportunities apply to these volunteers.

What methods have worked best to help your organization to recruit technology based volunteers? Let us know in the comments!

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Tips for Recruiting Volunteers Outside of Traditional Groups

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

Think of a volunteer.

Who did you think of? Was the person younger than 18? Were they older than 65? According to Volunteering in the United States, the largest percent of adults who volunteer are between the ages of thirty-five and forty-four. Sixteen to twenty-four year olds have the lowest reported rate of volunteering (21.9%) and only 23.6% of adults age 65 or older volunteer—although they have the highest average hours volunteered per year of any age group.

How can nonprofits more effectively recruit from these populations? Here are some tips for recruiting volunteers from these groups.

youth volunteers, volunteer, volunteeringIdentify the barriers to volunteering for these groups.

Address the cultural myths that say youth and older adults can’t make meaningful contributions to their communities. Both of these age groups have skills and knowledge that are meaningful and should be shared.

Think about what motivates these groups to volunteer.

Build volunteer experiences that increase a sense of connectedness to community and give volunteers an opportunity to meet new friends through volunteering. Make sure your volunteer tasks have an impact that is easy to see.

Think about timing.

If you’re looking to recruit younger volunteers, think about the events that might be going on in their life that could serve as a barrier to volunteering. Of course school commitments, both classes and extracurricular activities, can make volunteering harder during the school year. Family vacations and summer camps can make summer-time volunteering a challenge, too. What types of weekend or after-school opportunities does your organization have?

Older volunteers may have less timing restrictions to volunteering than other volunteer groups. Think about the volunteer opportunities that you have during the traditional work day.

Make sure your recruitment message sells your program.

Crafting a detailed recruitment message is important to recruit any volunteers. It’s okay to have more than one message that targets different kinds of volunteers. A message that appeals to a younger volunteer may not be as appealing to an older volunteer.

Don’t restrict your recruitment message to one medium, either. Traditionally older volunteers are targeted through community centers and newspapers.     On Facebook, the fastest growing group of users is women over 55. Facebook could be a great tool for recruiting both older and younger volunteers.

 

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7 Tips for A Stronger Volunteer Program

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

The Corporation for National and Community Service’s Research Brief: Volunteering in America’s Faith-based Organizations reported that faith-based organizations have the highest rate of volunteer retention than any other type of organization. Faith based organizations report a 70% retention rate, where hospital or health organizations report a retention rate near 60%.

The report that the research brief draws from suggests partnering with religious organizations because they maintain a stable base of volunteers.

Here are some tips that can help any nonprofit to better keep and grow their volunteer base:

Regular Communication With Volunteers. Keeping volunteers up to date on the latest news in the organization is a great way to keep them informed about the work that they’re helping to support, but don’t forget to ask what’s going on in the volunteer’s life and what they do outside of your organization.

Regular Collection of Information on Number of Volunteers and Hours Served. Volunteers like knowing that they’re having an effect on the programs that they work on. When you record the number of hours and volunteers that work on different projects, you can more easily show the effect that they have.

Screening Procedures to Identify Best Matches. Sometimes ‘any warm body’ doesn’t make the best volunteer. Taking some time to get to know a volunteer before you accept them into your organization lets you learn if they’re a good match. If you find out that they’re not, make sure you can suggest some other organizations they may better match up with.

Written Policies and Job Descriptions for Volunteer Involvement. Written policies let you and the volunteer both know what is expected out of the volunteer relationship.  This way, there aren’t any surprises about what is expected, which can lead to losing volunteers who might think they’re signing up for something else.

Volunteer Recognition. There’s nothing wrong with letting your volunteers know you’re thankful for the work they do to support your organization. Recognition doesn’t have to be a big event, it can be a thank you card or small gift for the volunteer.

Volunteer Training. Don’t just show a volunteer a pile of work and tell them to go at it, take the time to introduce them to the organization, the work they’ll be doing, and how it helps the organization to support its goals.

Staff Training. Training members of the organization’s staff is as important as training volunteers. Staff support of volunteers can help to make the volunteer’s experience more rewarding, especially if staff can take the time to show volunteers how parts of the organization work and the volunteer’s role in supporting each part of the organization.

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