Volunteer Recruitment in 2021

Recruiting new volunteers can be an excellent way to give your organization a bit of a ‘facelift.’ In the process of recruiting new volunteers, you’re getting your organization’s name and mission out into new corners of the community. Plus, the new faces coming through your doors can breathe new life and excitement into ongoing projects and programs.

Know Your Audience

Unfortunately, there is no secret formula for volunteer recruitment; volunteers don’t tend to show up through a ‘one-size-fits-all’ sort of recruitment campaign.

Instead, organizations tend to find the most success thoughtfully tailoring a focused recruitment campaign or activity towards the specific audience, or demographic they are hoping to attract new volunteers. So it’s important to know your audience.

Picture your ideal volunteer…

For example, let’s say you are planning an event to introduce your organization and volunteer opportunities to a wider audience. Your staff has offered different ideas: you could host an informal happy hour event, a mid-day coffee gathering, or a more formal seated dinner and presentation. While each of these events has the potential to be a success, consider how they will likely appeal to different types of audiences of different ages/generations, with different kinds of work situations or different priorities for their free time. 

So ask yourself these types of questions: Who is my ideal volunteer? What attributes or characteristics do they possess? And What kind of activity or event would appeal to this kind of volunteer? Go ahead and grab a pen and paper and list them out. Make a ‘T’ chart, with lists of attributes on the right side of the ‘T,’ and places or activities where you might encounter potential volunteers with these attributes on the left.

Have more than a ‘Plan A’

For the best chance of success in meeting your recruiting goals, it’s also a good idea to have multiple approaches or strategies up your sleeve. For one thing, you may want to target audiences through different, tailored approaches. For another thing – realistically speaking, not all of your recruiting events are going to work. That’s just the nature of the beast; it doesn’t say anything about how well you planned or how much money you did or didn’t spend on recruiting. Sometimes you just don’t know what will work the best for the time and place you are in until you try … and try, and try some more!

When creating an annual recruitment plan, a good strategy is this: Create a spreadsheet or table with three or four potential recruitment activities for each month of the year. That’s anywhere from 36 to 48 events. However, this is a master list, brainstorming list, from which you can select different options during each month and modify, choose to try or remove from the list as the year progresses. Depending on your recruitment goals for the year, you may aim to accomplish just one or two recruiting events or activities each month.

Among your master list of events, choose activities that fit into three different categories. 

Remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears … and those chairs or beds that were ‘too big,’ ‘too soft’ and ‘just right’? Use the story for your inspiration.

Big Dreams

A number of the recruitment activities or events are your ‘Big Dreams.’ These are events or activities that you may just be able to pull off if all the stars align. You may not want many of these on your master list table, but you might want to keep a few of these ‘Big Dreams’ there for inspiration or aspiration. These ‘Big Dreams’ might include a large billboard ad, a prominent spokesperson, or a new TV interview.

Soft Events

You also want to include events or activities that are ‘Soft’ events or activities – ones that you could pull off with very minimal effort. These are important so that even during months when you are very busy or have other priorities, you could still include a recruitment activity. These kinds of events could include sending thank you cards or postcards to individuals with whom you’ve interacted in the past month; asking your partnering organizations to include something about your organization in their newsletters or communications, or dropping off flyers for a community board at a library or a coffee shop.

Just Right

Finally, choose some activities or events that are ‘Just Right’ – they may take a little more effort or planning than your ‘Soft’ events, but they have a more focused audience and purpose and may yield better results. Depending on your target audience, these could include speaking or tabling opportunities with partnering community organizations; hosting an event; or being a visible presence as an organization at different community events such as 5K runs, community clean-up days, or volunteering fairs.  

Need some more volunteer recruitment ideas, or help creating an annual plan? Spark Group can help! Reach out today; your first 30-minute chat is free!

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