fighting hunger together: recruiting & managing seasonal volunteer
DESCRIPTION
Managing and recruiting seasonal volunteers is always a challenge, particularly when volunteer interest can be skewed towards certain times of the year. While holiday volunteers can be a great asset to your organization, how do you recruit volunteers for the rest of the year? We'll discuss some strategies for maintaining a consistent volunteer base, and conveying the importance of year-round volunteers to your seasonal volunteer team. Made possible through funding from the Walmart Foundation.TRANSCRIPT
Recruiting and Managing Seasonal
Volunteers To hear the presentation by phone call:
(516) 453-0031
Access Code: 481-683-842
Jennifer Bennett, CVA, Senior Manager, Education & Training
Matt Wallace, Senior Associate, Nonprofit Relations
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VolunteerMatch Overview “VolunteerMatch strengthens communities by making it easier for good
people and good causes to connect.”
92,286 nonprofits… 78,641 Active Opportunities…. 6,757,988 referrals since 1998
• VolunteerMatch has been around for 14 years, and is the top-ranked website for online
volunteer recruitment and employee-volunteer programs
• Our Learning Center offers over 20 webinar topics focused on volunteer management
and VolunteerMatch tools, serving an audience of over 6,000 attendees each year
VolunteerMatch & Walmart: Fighting Hunger Together
What are our goals?
• Support nonprofit organizations that are working to end
hunger in local communities.
• Provide hunger relief organizations with the resources
they need to deploy, manage and expand their volunteer
engagement program.
• Support, train and share best practices for engaging
volunteers, and creating a multi-faceted relationship with
volunteers – donors, advocates.
• Increase visibility of the need for volunteers at hunger
relief organizations.
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Agenda
• Seasonal Volunteer Engagement
• Recruit Seasonal Volunteers
• Create a Connection
• The Importance of Communication
• Create a Communication Plan
• Create More Engagement
• Things to Think About
Seasonal Volunteer
Engagement • Seasonal volunteers can make a huge impact for
your organization.
– Can be passionate, loyal and involved
– Allow your organization to meet the needs of clients
during busy times
• May also come with engagement challenges – not
necessarily unique to season volunteers
– Only interested in certain days times
– Ownership of certain work
– May lose interest/not think about organization during
other seasons
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Find Seasonal Volunteers • Give yourself time
– Create a recruitment timeline that gives you enough
time to find and communicate with volunteers
– Balancing act – not too much time for the volunteers
to “forget” their commitment
• Include groups in your recruitment plan
– Fill many slots with one effort
– Ask groups to take on project, day, or shift
• Include impact or seasonal need
– Create messaging about the importance of
volunteering through a season, not just on a certain
day 6
Create a Connection Share information with seasonal volunteers
• Goals – Share what you hope to accomplish
– Set the stage for work to be done, needs of clients or
community
• Impact – What will volunteers be able to change
or how can they make a difference
• Organizational information – what’s going on,
are there milestones, successes, challenges
• Empower them to share their experience, or
spread the story
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Create a Communication Plan During Recruitment
• Different seasons may require a different
message even if the impact is the same
• Convey the importance of the work
– Create a connection or an understanding on an
individual level
– “You and your family will be working on… This is a
really important piece of our work because…”
• Make it easy for volunteers to communicate with
you
– Texts, emails, phone calls
– Recruit other volunteers to be points of contact 8
Create a Communication Plan
During the season
• Focus on the long term need, and share open
shifts – Christmas Day is fully staffed but…
• Share the impacts with all of the volunteers
– Not just hours, but actions and impacts too
– Take pictures
– Use social media - spread the thank you
– Include ways for them to get more involved
• Don't forget to share how that work serves your
mission
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Create a Communication Plan
After the season
• Take advantage of social media
• Create an offseason engagement team
– Ongoing or seasonal volunteers
– Messages with updates, new projects programs –
encourage volunteers to share!
– Pre-Season events
• Always include opportunities for more
involvement
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Create More Engagement Build opportunities for seasonal volunteers to
become more involved with your organization
year round
Consider different types of opportunities
– Projects, skills based, single day events
Invite them!
– Share opportunities and include an invitation to get
involved or to participate
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Resources Learning Center Find upcoming webinar dates, how-to videos and more
http://learn.volunteermatch.org
VolunteerMatch Community Ask and answer questions after the webinar – use keywords Fighting Hunger Together,
Volunteer Management
http://community.volunteermatch.org/volunteer
Fighting Hunger Together Information about the program and additional trainings and resources
http://www.volunteermatch.org/fighthunger
Questions?
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Thanks for attending! Join us online:
Like us on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/VolunteerMatch
Follow us on Twitter: @VolunteerMatch
Visit Engaging Volunteers, our nonprofit blog:
blogs.volunteermatch.org/engagingvolunteers/
For any questions contact:
Jennifer Bennett
(415) 321-3639
@JenBennettCVA