Where to Find Volunteers
Looking for new volunteers? Start (but don’t stop) with online advertising. The CVS volunteering website is our first suggestion. If you can put things on your own website too, do so, and you can use the CVS site as a signpost to your own pages. Reach Volunteering is also a great idea, ESPECIALLY for trustee recruitment. I have heard from a lot of organisations that have had great success using Reach Volunteering to find new trustees.
But when you advertise a role on a website – whether it’s your own site or ours or some other third party platform as above – you’re reaching an audience of people already looking for a volunteering role. That’s great because it means that someone looking for exactly the thing you’re offering is more likely to find it. But if that’s the beginning and end of your promotion you are leaving a lot of potential on the table! How about trying to find people who HAVEN’T already considered volunteering?
Your greatest recruitment tool is your existing volunteer base and word of mouth, so if you need new volunteers definitely put information onto websites and ask organisations like CVS to promote the call through our social media and bulletins, but also ask your existing volunteers if they know anyone who would like to get involved. If you have flyers or posters, ask your existing volunteers if they wouldn’t mind taking a few with them and putting them up near where they live. Are your existing volunteers on social media? Ask them to share and like your posts about recruitment to give them an additional boost.
Your existing volunteers are also a great way to promote your roles by featuring them – with their permission of course – in any promotions or materials that you produce. Get feedback and quotes from them about their experiences and what they love about volunteering with you. Really give potential new volunteers a chance to see and understand why they should sign up!
If you can attend events, they can be a great way to reach potential volunteers. And if you can’t get along, CVS is usually there, whatever it is, so giving us your promotional flyers and posters will ensure that you have a presence even if you can’t be there in person.
When you’re putting your promotional materials together make sure that they contain all the relevant information – what is the role? What will volunteers be doing? When do you need people? What kind of time commitment will there be? Are expenses for things like travel available? Make your role descriptions as detailed and specific as you can. A generic advertisement will be much less effective than one which drills down into the details. If you can be specific you’ll save time later on because your call is going to appeal immediately to the right people.
The Volunteer Centre can support with all of this so if you want to discuss anything contact Mark for a chat.
