Are you looking for a new way to volunteer? Have you thought about planning your own volunteer project? Volunteering in a group project brings highly motivated people together for a common mission. Here are three steps that can make your volunteer project a success.

Establish Goals, Plan, and Budget: 

Establishing goals at the onset of your group project, allows for you to measure the outcomes of your project. Consider these questions: Is there a current event that has emotionally affected you or might have emotionally affected others around you? What change would you like to see in your community?

Once you’ve established goals, accomplish them! Will you need any supplies, transportation, volunteers, etc? How much money will you need? Contact foundations, private businesses corporate donors and local merchants for funding and in-kind donations. Consider these expense categories: postage, printing/copying, telephone/fax, space rentals, refreshments during your volunteer project, and planning meetings.

Recruiting Volunteers

Find volunteers or contact other local nonprofits that can help provide volunteers. If your project is important to the community, you will find many people eager to be involved. Place flyers at your local post office, park, grocery store, school, community bulletin boards. Volunteer recruitment will also help make people aware of your group project. Social media outlets will also help with volunteer recruitment. Websites such as , , , and a personal blog can easily reach a wide range of people.

Here are some more tips for finding and recruiting volunteers:

• Seven Questions to Ask Before Recruiting Volunteers
• Tips for Recruiting and Retaining Boomer Volunteers
• Five Tips for Recruiting and Retaining Skilled volunteers

Thank You!

Remember to thank your volunteers! Thank your volunteers so that they can feel appreciated and want to volunteer for future projects. Whether it’s a hand-written note filled with a simple message and encouraging words or talking to your volunteers individually-thank them! If you’re not quite sure how, we have a few tips for saying thank you.

Have you planned your own volunteer project? What did you learn from it? Tell us about it in the comments!