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Having troubled recruiting volunteers for your nonprofit or service project? This video is for you! Welcome back! If you haven't been here before, my name is Amber Melanie Smith, and I am a nonprofit founder, executive director, and speaker on leadership, service, and nonprofits. I have been working in the nonprofit field for years, and my specialty is actually volunteer recruitment and management, because the nonprofit that I founded many years ago and currently run today - our whole mission is recruiting and connecting volunteers to hundreds of causes in my local community. So I have heard it all! I have heard reasons people don't want to volunteer. I've heard reasons people do want to volunteer! I've seen really amazing volunteer postings; I've seen some questionable volunteer postings. I am regularly asked, "how can I get more people involved? How can I inspire more people to sign up for my service project with my organization, with my club?" So I would like to offer my top tips and strategies for how you can encourage people to sign up for your volunteer opportunities. I'm gonna talk through five strategies you can do to strengthen your volunteer recruiting strategy. So let's get right into it! The first thing you want to do is make sure that your volunteer opportunities are very aligned with your goals and your mission and your outcomes as an organization. People really want to be immersed in the mission and the cause that you are advocating for, so you want to make sure that the tasks that you are having volunteers do can really demonstrate how their actions are related to the end goals of your organization. And a lot of this takes place in the planning period, when you're doing your strategic planning or your planning for the organization for the year or a couple year period. You want to take a look at your overall organizational goals for your organization for that period of time - let's say, increase the number of people you serve from 100 to 200 in the next year - So that is your goal for this year - you want to walk that backwards and think to yourself, "What are the volunteer tasks that I can design and recruit for that are going to align with that goal and help us meet that goal?" Doing this is really important to keep your organization focused in general, but in terms of recruiting volunteers, it's important because - as I was saying before - volunteers want to feel like they are helping you push your mission forward in terms of the tasks they are doing. They know or can sense how something you might have them do could be busy work or feel unnecessary or somehow doesn't relate to your mission - so you either need to make sure it's really, really aligned, or if it's something that's less clearly aligned, you need to be really over communicating the impact of their activity on your overall mission. The second thing you want to do is really assess whether the volunteer activity you would like to recruit for can be made into a shorter commitment. In today's world, people are looking for those shorter term volunteer commitments, yet nonprofits tend to need those longer ongoing opportunities, because it's easier to train someone once who can be a long-standing volunteer with you than to constantly be training and recruiting people for shorter term opportunities. So there's always this conflict between accommodating volunteers who have a really busy schedule and need a shorter term commitment with your organization's genuine need for those longer term commitments. I'm not saying rule out your ongoing opportunities because sometimes those are really needed, and oftentimes you can find volunteers who want to stick it out and make that long-term commitment to your organization. But if you are talking about recruiting new volunteers or just trying to widen your base of volunteers, if you can break down a task into smaller chunks of a couple hours at a time, you will have an easier time recruiting those volunteers. And if they had a great experience with you then you'll be a lot more likely to be able to recruit those people for those longer term commitments because they are starting to get to know you, they have experienced making an impact with your cause, and so they're going to find time in their schedule to devote to you because now you have that relationship. The third thing you can do to strengthen your volunteer recruiting strategy - and I see this so often - is you've got to have a clear volunteer description - on your website, on a volunteer recruitment website, out in the news - wherever you are promoting your volunteer needs, it has to be clear. So what does a clear volunteer opportunity description look like? A clear volunteer opportunity description covers all the basics - so your When, your Where, your What - and you want to be really clear about that What - as clear as you can be. If volunteers are going to be expected to be doing a lot of moving or heavy lifting, you've got to put that in the description so that people will know that that is what is going to be expected of them. If volunteers need to wear certain clothes in order to be effective at the task you're going to assign them. You need to be sharing where to go. If it is a difficult to find location, you need to be sharing how to find the location. You need to be sharing how and where to park, where to find people to check in with when they arrive, who they can expect to meet on site, and most importantly - you want to share the impacts of the volunteer tasks that they will be doing in the written description as well as on-site when you are volunteering with those folks. The fourth thing you want to do to improve your recruitment strategy for volunteers is communication. In my organization we have developed a sort of "3 email rule". When someone first signs up to volunteer they get an email within 48 hours of that sign up it's kind of like when you're at a restaurant and you're waiting for the waiter to come by and you're just waiting and waiting and nobody's coming by to ask you what you want to drink and you're just wondering what the heck is going on did they see me it's like that when someone signs up to volunteer they are excited they're enthusiastic they want to help you so if you take a long time to respond even a quick knowledge meant saying I see you I got your sign up just give me a little bit more time to give you a more thorough response even just something quick like that will help them feel seen and help them know that they can expect future communication from you if you don't do this first step they are likely to not show up to their volunteer assignment even if they get another email later down the line because by then they've assumed you didn't care you didn't want to reach out to them you didn't see their sign up and they've moved on moved on and made other plans so we do that first email right away within 48 hours then depending on how far away the volunteer opportunity is from the date they signed up we might do a second email maybe one or two weeks before just letting them know that they are going to get final details that final email a couple days right before their opportunity and that's the third email that we send is that final reminder with any last-minute details information about what to do if the weather is bad everything like that about 48 hours before the date of the opportunity starting and the fifth strategy that will strengthen your volunteer recruitment game is as I was saying before you really want to highlight your impacts some of the organizations in my community do this really well for example I know that if I go volunteer at the food bank then in one hour I as an individual I'm going to pack the equivalent of a hundred and forty meals helping serve people in my community knowing that metric is really inspiring and encouraging me to come back it can be a little hard to measure the power of a smile or how you've made someone else's day better but if you can find ways to equate the actions of the volunteers that are serving with your cause to direct measurable impacts you are going to help inspire them to continue their service and understand why what they did is important for you and one final thought volunteers are generous they're giving their time which is an extremely limited resource in today's busy world it's something we never get back so you want to make sure that you're giving people the experience that they expected when they signed up an experience that matches the description you put out there and you're cheerful brand and making it feel like a good time and that they did the right thing by choosing to spend their limited time with you and another great reason you want to make sure that volunteers have a great experience is volunteers often become donors you would think that if someone is already giving their time they might not be inclined to also give their money but the data shows the opposite when someone forms a relationship with your cause by giving you their limited time they are getting to know you they are getting to like and love your cause this makes them want to donate money as well working with volunteers can be a transformative experience and really help you push your cause forward if you recruit them the right way I hope this videos helped you out thank you guys so much please don't forget to hit that subscribe button that red button down below give this video a thumbs up and share with your friends if you are on Facebook don't forget to come out and check out my group change the world or bust where I'm talking with other change makers about all things social impact how we can help others how we can move the needle on important issues and more so come on by check it out thank you so much