4 Tips to Boost Your Online Volunteer Recruitment
Volunteers are a crucial part of your organization. They generously donate their time and energy to your cause because they care deeply about the work that you’re doing. The best volunteers always show up on time, invest in the work they’re doing, and help make your organization better. So how can you find and recruit these spectacular volunteers?
Recruiting great talent is difficult for any organization. Often, you might feel like volunteer recruitment is a never-ending task. While some candidates may have the necessary skills, they may not be the best fit for your organization. For organizations looking to recruit volunteers, the process might be even more challenging since you have to contend with busy schedules.
Designing a clear and streamlined recruitment strategy for your nonprofit ensures that you can connect with the right volunteers. If you don’t know where to begin, don’t worry—the volunteer experts at Get Connected by Galaxy Digital are here to help. In this guide, we’ll explore a few strategies you can use to boost your volunteer recruitment efforts online. Here are our top tips:
- Ensure your messaging emphasizes the benefits of volunteering.
- Allow current volunteers to share their experiences.
- Use the right technology to automate aspects of the recruitment process.
- Share volunteer grant opportunities.
Great volunteers can make a huge difference when it comes to reaching your organization’s goals. With passionate volunteers on your side, you can forge meaningful relationships and provide an unforgettable experience. Let’s get started!
1. Ensure your messaging emphasizes the benefits of volunteering
While your volunteers certainly have a passion for your cause, they will likely want to know what they will gain from their volunteer experience. As potential volunteers browse your website, you should highlight the benefits of volunteering, especially when it comes to furthering your cause. When crafting your volunteer recruitment messaging, consider the following tips:
- Share how volunteers make a difference: The best way to demonstrate the impact that your volunteers can make is by sharing how your existing volunteers have helped forward your mission. Whether you share how many students your volunteers have helped tutor or the number of trees you’ve planted, make the impact tangible for prospective volunteers.
- Partner with other like-minded groups: Making connections with local businesses, schools, or other organizations is a great way to find volunteers for your organization. Once you’ve identified the main benefits to share with your volunteers, connect with other organizations that share similar interests or values. With aligned messaging, you’re more likely to attract the right volunteers.
- Maintain consistent branding: As you determine which benefits you decide to share, keep your branding consistent. Brainstorm the top three benefits you’d like to emphasize and target all of your messaging around these three advantages. This way, you can really hammer home the most meaningful experiences your volunteers will gain.
Remember, volunteers want to feel as though their contributions will make a positive difference. Get Connected by Galaxy Digital’s guide to volunteer recruitment emphasizes that a positive tone will encourage more volunteers to get involved. Put yourself in the shoes of potential volunteers: you’d want to sign up for a program that promises great hands-on experience and the potential to make a real impact.
2. Allow current volunteers to share their experiences
No one can better represent your volunteer program than your existing volunteers! While you certainly have a lot of expertise to share when it comes to talking about your nonprofit, your volunteers can speak to what the role is like on a personal level. For this reason, you must get your current volunteers involved in the recruitment process.
Here are a few ways to naturally incorporate current volunteer experiences into your website:
- Include volunteer testimonials: When designing your recruitment page, reach out to your most active volunteers and ask them to provide a testimonial about their volunteer experience. Prospective volunteers can then read their testimonials and imagine what they might experience as a volunteer once they sign up.
- Encourage active volunteers to act as ambassadors: Volunteers who love your program likely want to share the experience with other passionate volunteers. Invite these volunteers to act as ambassadors for your program to speak at recruitment events or to reach out to prospective volunteers.
- Host virtual meet-and-greets: Whether you launch an ambassador program or not, it’s still a great idea to give prospective volunteers the opportunity to connect with current volunteers face-to-face. Consider hosting a virtual meet-and-greet so that your volunteers can speak directly about their experiences.
Connecting current volunteers with prospective ones is also a great way to lay the foundation for the onboarding and training process. Ideally, prospective volunteers will develop a great relationship with your current volunteers, which will encourage them to enroll in your program.
3. Use the right technology to automate aspects of the recruitment process
Volunteer recruitment requires a lot of your attention and effort, so why not automate the process when you can? One of the best recruitment lessons from industry experts advises leaders to automate tasks when they can. Doing so frees up your energy for other more important tasks that will make your program stronger overall.
Here are the top platforms you should invest in to support your volunteer recruitment process:
- Volunteer recruitment software: Volunteer recruitment software is available to help you streamline the process. It can help you keep track of interested volunteers, how you’ve connected with them, promote new opportunities, and more. These solutions help ensure that your strategy remains on track and that you can connect with all the right people.
- Marketing tools: Volunteer recruitment requires a lot of marketing. Whether you’re sending emails or sharing details about your program on social media, consistent marketing becomes much easier when you have marketing tools in place such as an email marketing platform, social media analytics, or graphic design software on your side.
- Background check software: Using a background check platform can streamline your recruitment and onboarding process. This is especially important if your nonprofit works with children, the elderly, animals, or other vulnerable populations. You want to be sure that every volunteer who walks through the door is the right fit for your organization, and background check software makes it easy to verify.
Although you may be hesitant to invest in technology for your recruitment process, it can save you a lot of time and effort down the line. Rather than struggling to complete background checks in time or spending a ton of energy organizing your email list, you can complete these tasks with the touch of a button. This way, you can put your time and energy towards creating a great volunteer program and connecting with your supporters.
4. Share volunteer grant opportunities
As we’ve already mentioned, volunteers want to feel as though their contributions can make a difference. While generous contributions of their time and energy provide a lot of value to your nonprofit, some volunteers may feel like it’s not enough. That’s why your nonprofit should also share volunteer grant opportunities.
Volunteer grants are financial contributions made by a volunteer’s employer once the volunteer has fulfilled a certain number of hours at your organization. These grants can provide even more value to your organization, but only if your volunteers know their eligibility.
According to Double the Donation’s guide on volunteer grants, this is how the process works:
- A volunteer signs up for your program and confirms that their employer offers a volunteer grant program.
- Your volunteer participates in your program for a certain amount of time to meet their employer’s grant threshold. You and your volunteer record these hours.
- Once your volunteer hits the hour threshold, they share their hours with their employer for confirmation.
- The employer donates to your nonprofit in accordance with the number of hours that your volunteer worked.
During the recruitment process, be sure to advertise opportunities for volunteer grants. It might be just the extra push that a volunteer needs to sign up for your program and start making a difference. Don’t forget to remind your volunteers of grant opportunities during onboarding and training!
Closing thoughts
Volunteering is a wonderful way for passionate supporters to deepen their engagement with your nonprofit. All you need to do is to encourage them to sign up! With these tips, you can give your volunteer recruitment a boost and begin securing more volunteers right from your website.
Interested in running background checks to hire volunteers? Contact Checkr today.