How do you keep volunteers' contact info up-to-date?
08:31, 29 January 2010
.. Posted in Volunteerism and Volunteer Management.. Link
Having the correct email and phone number for volunteers is vital to the sustainability of volunteer involvement. Organizations struggle with keeping up-to-date information about their volunteers, because email addresses and phone numbers change so frequently (my mother has had the same phone number for the last 40 years, while mine has changed probably a dozen times in the last 25 years), and volunteers often forget to notify organizations they are helping about such changes.
The easiest way to keep volunteer information up-to-date is to make volunteers responsible for their own information, and to create frequent opportunities for volunteers to view and update their information themselves during their regular interactions with the organization.
Whatever requirements you choose, tell new volunteers about these requirements during their first volunteer orientation, and make sure they understand why you have these requirements. Volunteers won't see these requirements as heavy-handed if they understand from the beginning why having their contact information up-to-date is so important to the organization (for instance, do they realize that having the volunteer coordinator tracking down volunteers with incorrect contact info takes away from that person being able to work with and support other volunteers, or being able to mobilize volunteers quickly for a critical situation?).
Some suggestions on how to keep volunteers' contact info up-to-date:
- Require volunteers to sign in onto a paper sheet or via a computer EVERY time they come onsite for service or a meeting. If your resources allow, create a screen on a computer at the checkin point that shows each volunteer his or her contact information at the time of sign in and asks the volunteer to make sure his or her data is up-to-date. If several volunteers arrive at once, you need to make sure sign in goes as quickly as possible; volunteers don't want to stand in a long, slow-moving line just to sign in.
- An alternative to this previous step: if your time and resources allow, at that same time when a volunteer arrives for a major meeting, give each volunteer a print out of his or her contact info, and ask the volunteer to look over the information, update or confirm any information on the paper, sign it and turn the paper back in.
- Require volunteers to review their most basic contact info (email and phone number) and confirm it is up-to-date every time they sign in to a private area on your web site, or create a system so that volunteers are prompted to do this twice a year when they sign in; they cannot proceed to the next screen until they confirm the info.
- Require volunteers to sign in at least twice a year to a private online database to update their contact info, and create a computer program that will let you know who hasn't signed in to confirm or update their info. Volunteers who don't sign in do not receive new assignments or updates, or are blocked from your online group for your volunteers until they update their info.
- Thank volunteers via your online discussion group, print materials and meetings for keeping their information up-to-date, remind others to do so, and review the consequences of their not doing so for the organization, your clients, the volunteers themselves, etc.
- When you get an email returned as undeliverable, call or text the volunteer to let him or her know the email address doesn't work. This could be a task done by another volunteer regularly once or twice a month.
If you are in charge of changing contact information for volunteers (rather than the volunteers themselves, via an input screen on a computer), make sure you change data within 48 hours after receiving the updated information.
More resources to support and involve volunteers here.
