Posts Tagged ‘recruitment’

Motivate Volunteers by Understanding Their Needs

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

What makes people volunteer? This question often runs across the minds of nonprofit organizations when trying to recruit volunteers for service projects. It is important to understand these motivating factors to recruit more dedicated volunteers to your cause. When individuals have a strong tie to your organization, they are more likely to return for service again. They feel that their needs and feelings are being respected when they are included in project planning.

How can you better serve your volunteers? Check the top six factors that make individuals volunteer for your organization.

  1. Social: Individuals are often motivated by social factors when choosing whether or not they should volunteer. Social factors include statements such as “My friends volunteer” or “People I know share an interest in community service.” These individuals tend to choose organizations they have heard about through word of mouth. Word of mouth is one of your best recruitment strategies. Provide great service experiences so that volunteers want to talk about it and get their friends involved in your cause.
  2. Value: Other individuals are motivated by their core values when choosing their ideal service projects. Value reasons include, “I am concerned about those less fortunate than myself” or “I feel it is important to help others.” It is important to reinforce your organization’s core values in its recruitment message to attract this type of volunteer.
  3. Career: Volunteers can also be motivated by their career paths and goals. Volunteer work is a great way for people who are looking to expand their professional network to find new connections. It is also a great outlet to gain new skills or utilize skills they may not have used  otherwise. This type of reasoning includes “I can make new contacts that might help my business or career “or “Volunteer work will look good on my resume.” It is important for your organization to include the personal benefits to volunteering, as well as the overall community benefits from volunteer work.
  4. Understanding: Volunteering to gain a better understanding of the community and its needs is essential some individuals. These individuals may ask your organization “What can I learn more about the cause for which I am working?” Volunteering allows individuals to gain a new perspective and understanding of their community and its members. It opens new doors for new information that can be used to better serve the community.
  5. Protective: Volunteer work is a great stress reliever. It makes us feel better about ourselves and our current situation when we actively help our community. These factors should be highlighted, when recruiting volunteers, as well. This reasoning includes “Volunteering is a good escape from my troubles” or “By volunteering I feel less lonely.” Volunteering forces you to step out of your comfort zone and find new meaning and perspective.
  6. Esteem: When we help others through volunteering it makes us feel that we serve a purpose and we are an important part of the community. Highlight this aspect in your recruitment message. Let your volunteers know that they are making a huge difference in the overall health of the community in which they are serving. If possible, cite results from the actual project to let volunteers know the  magnitude of their service.

Which one of these factors applies to you? We would love to hear your comments and suggestions in the section below!

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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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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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