Jayne Blog on volunteerism/volunteering, nonprofits, ngos, aid & development, women's empowerment, communications & random thoughts

How easy is it to volunteer at your organization?

18:31, 30 September 2009

.. Posted in Volunteerism and Volunteer Management


.. Link

Here is a challenge for organizations that involve volunteers, or want to involve volunteers: pretend you want to volunteer. You are someone that might be interested in volunteering with your organization, or interested in volunteering regarding the cause your organization is focused on, or volunteering in your geographic area.

Go online, and see how easy it is to find out that your organization involves volunteers, how to express interest in such, and how a person can get started volunteering with your organization (screening and training requirements and schedules, etc.):

• Go to a web site, such as All For Good and Network for Good, that aggregates volunteer listings from various other web sites, like VolunteerMatch or Idealist. Search for volunteering opportunities in your geographic area, or in a mission-focus related to your organization (environment, arts, children, women, community safety, etc.). Are volunteering opportunities with your organization listed? Are they easy to find? Do they compare well with other organization's listings? If not, enter or edit your volunteering opportunities on VolunteerMatch or Idealist so that they will show up on the aggregator sites as well and get the attention of potential volunteers.


• Check your organization's web site. Is there a direct link from the home page to volunteering information? Does any reference that says "help us" or "get involved" link to only donation information, or does it also link to volunteering information? If your web site has a search function, and you type in "volunteer", what happens? Potential volunteers that don't find information quickly move on to another web site and a different organization.


• Go to Google and type in
  
  • the name of your organization and the word volunteer.
    
  • the name of your city and the word volunteer.
    
  • the name of your state or city and a phrase that describes your organizations work, like help children or support the arts, and the word volunteer
Is your organization and its volunteering information in the first five listings that result from your search? If not, you need to edit your organization's web site to include all the necessary text so that the information will show up more readily.

Finding volunteering information online about your organization should be simple simple simple. You can be selective about candidates, ofcourse, requiring those who contact you to undergo training or screening. But anyone and everyone should be able to easily, immediately find complete information online about volunteering with your organization - NO EXCUSES!

If you want to reach even more people, have information posted on Facebook, MySpace, Change.org, Craigslist and other social networking sites as well that link to your web site information about volunteering.

Information on your web site and on volunteer web sites like VolunteerMatch or Idealist should include:

• what tasks volunteers undertake, or could undertake, for your organization
• all of the activities a potential volunteer must undertake to become an active volunteer (training, screening, etc., and these can vary depending on different volunteer roles, ofcourse)
• an application a candidate could download and complete at home, and then snail mail or email in to your organization
  
• what commitment you require volunteers to make, in terms of hours every week or month and length of service (and these can vary depending on different tasks, ofcourse)

Photos of volunteers in action, profiles of active volunteers, blogs by volunteers, and testimonials by volunteers are also helpful in getting people interested and excited about volunteering with your organization.

But what if you recruit huge numbers of potential volunteers? Are you ready for that influx? Are you ready to place people quickly so that you don't lose candidates, and even turn people off of volunteering with your organization? With that in mind, tomorrow, I'll have a second challenge for you...