Recruiting Volunteers

First, the pond. If you’re fishing in the puddle outside your back door, you may not be happy with the catch no matter how hard you work at it. On the other hand, it may not be appropriate to launch a national search for the right volunteer. Let’s find the sweet spot in between.

You have to believe your organization deserves top-flight volunteers and you have to be ready, willing, and able to treat them that way. You have to have faith that the perfect volunteer is out there looking for your opportunity. And you have to be clear about that opportunity.

Then we can look together at an array of techniques pioneered in the Human Resources field to find and reel in that recruit.

Training Volunteers

Training begins with recruiting – they’re not separate activities. The way you recruit has everything to do with the training you’ll need to do.

Volunteers love great training. Please do not leave training to an emailed PowerPoint presentation. Your every word and every action show up to a new recruit as training. While you’re inspiring your recruit about the work and your organization, the person staffing the front desk may be sending an entirely different message.

And by the way, training doesn’t end when someone signs off on the training sheet. Training never ends.

Retaining Volunteers

Besides recruiting great volunteers and setting them up to succeed, you’ll want to do everything you can to make sure your volunteers grow along with your organization. While some volunteers shine up to hats and pins, others prefer to celebrate.

Mostly, volunteers appreciate appreciation.