Enhancing Volunteer Engagement: Strategies and Best Practices

Volunteers: they're more than just auxiliary forces; they're ambassadors of your cause, champions in your corner. That's why focusing on building a robust volunteer engagement capacity isn't just beneficial; it's vital.

Volunteers can be an effective engine in powering our nonprofit mission forward. However, without a strategic approach to engaging this critical human resource, we might find ourselves focusing more on managing our people power rather than managing our impact. In this edition of the Nonprofit Navigator, we're going to look at our volunteers under the microscope, think on what motivates them, and identify a few strategies to supercharge these important stakeholders.

Defining Volunteer Engagement and Its Importance

Volunteer engagement encompasses more than recruitment. It's about creating an environment where volunteers feel valued, understood, and pivotal to the mission. Strong engagement strategies ensure that volunteers are not only committed but are advocates and storytellers for your cause, enhancing both operational efficiency and program effectiveness.

But first, what is a volunteer? A volunteer is someone who freely offers their time, skills, and energy to support a cause or organization without the expectation of payment. It's important to note that volunteers are not employees and should not be treated as such. They are giving their time and resources out of the goodness of their hearts, so it's essential to create an environment that values and respects their contributions.

And second, what is engagement? Engagement is the process of connecting with volunteers on a deeper level, understanding their motivations and interests, and providing them with meaningful opportunities to contribute to your cause. It's not just simply assigning tasks; it's about building relationships and empowering volunteers to make a real impact. For some, engagement can look like a sense of belonging and community, while for others, it may be personal growth and development.

Understanding Your Volunteers

One of the most important aspects of engaging volunteers is understanding who they are and what motivates them. Every individual has their own unique set of skills, passions, and goals, and it's crucial to tap into these in order to create meaningful experiences for volunteers. This not only increases their motivation and commitment, but also allows us to maximize their impact on our organization.

When we begin understanding our volunteers, we might start with basic demographics and stats: age, where they live, if they've interacted with our organization, and so forth. But digging further, we might reveal that a volunteer may have personal lived experience related to our mission, they may have a specific goal surrounding giving back to the community, they may be trying to set a good example for their kids, or any number of other remarkable attributes that have brought them to volunteer with your organization.

Identifying Volunteer Motivations

Just like paid employees, volunteers have different reasons for wanting to contribute their time and effort to our cause. Some may be motivated by wanting to make a difference in the world, while others may be looking for personal development opportunities. It's important to understand and acknowledge these motivations when engaging with volunteers.

One way to identify volunteer motivations is through surveys or one-on-one conversations. Ask your volunteers why they chose to volunteer with your organization and what they hope to gain from their experience. This not only helps you understand their motivations, but also shows that you value their input and want to create a meaningful experience for them. These surveys can happen at the beginning of a volunteer relationship, and are particularly important to tap into throughout their work with you.

Strategies for Effective Volunteer Engagement

Now that we understand the importance of volunteer engagement and how to identify volunteer motivations, let's explore some strategies for effectively engaging our volunteers.

Provide Clear Expectations

To engage volunteers, it's crucial to be transparent about what is expected of them. This includes clearly defining their roles and responsibilities, as well as any necessary training or qualifications. Uncertainty can lead to frustration and disengagement, so it's important to set expectations from the start. Often, clarifying how volunteers can effectively interact with the staff is a great place to start, and providing a vision of what success looks like is the secret sauce to providing volunteer opportunities that will have your people coming back time and again.

Offer Training and Development Opportunities

Volunteers are often looking for opportunities to learn and grow, so providing training and development opportunities not only helps them improve their skills, but also shows that you value their contributions and want to invest in them as individuals. This can include anything from workshops and seminars to shadowing opportunities and mentorship programs. For long-time volunteers, especially those in committee and board roles, there may be conferences and national committees that will offer the opportunity to further their experience in your mission-focused work.

Create a Sense of Community

Volunteers are more likely to stay engaged when they feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves. Creating a sense of community amongst volunteers is crucial for retention and motivation. This can include organizing social events, providing opportunities for volunteers to interact with one another, and recognizing and celebrating their contributions. Creating a buddy system, a private online social network, or offering fun awards can be supplemental to successful volunteer engagement.

Show Appreciation

Volunteers are the backbone of many organizations, and it's important to show them how much they are appreciated. Simple acts like saying thank you, providing small tokens of appreciation, or publicly acknowledging their efforts can go a long way in making volunteers feel valued and motivated to continue contributing. Shout-outs on LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as mentions in your newsletters and annual reports, all support the warm feelings that volunteers experience in working with your organization.

Quick Tip: One Simple Way to Elevate Your Volunteer Engagement

If you're already spread thin, a full-blown volunteer engagement initiative may feel out of reach. We get it! With that in mind, we suggest focusing on sharing with your volunteers a message that follows the structure, "Who will do what by when...and why." This offers clarity in expectations and knits in the connection to the bigger picture. Examples might include:

-"Four volunteers on our facilities task force will walk the property this afternoon and document which of our landscaping beds need to be cleaned up, which will help us create a more welcoming first impression with our family visitors."

-"This weekend you'll be part of a group that will be making calls to our homebound seniors following the script we've given, because we want to make sure that they are feeling as cared for as possible!"

-"In the fall, we'll be doing a community mural project, and we're looking for 8 volunteers to be team leads to train participants on how to get their paint and follow the project our muralist has created. This leadership will keep these folks connected that morning, and will also help us elevate our visibility as they go out and talk about how much fun they had!"

Going Further with Volunteer Engagement

Volunteers play a crucial role in the success of an organization, and it's important to engage them effectively in order to maximize their impact. By understanding our volunteers, identifying their motivations, setting clear expectations, offering development opportunities, creating a sense of community, and showing appreciation, we can create a meaningful and fulfilling volunteer experience that benefits both the volunteers and our organization. So let's continue to prioritize volunteer engagement in our organizations and recognize the invaluable contributions they make to our missions.

The Merit Nonprofit Professional Development system offers a wealth of resources and training opportunities just for nonprofit professionals, including a nine-course series on enhancing your volunteer engagement approaches. Learners can enroll for this learning path and pursue their Certificate in Nonprofit Volunteer Engagement or can enroll in the entire Merit® learning experience in pursuit of their Certificate in Nonprofit Capacity Building.

For board members who are ready to take the next step in enhancing your nonprofit's governance abilities, including its people power, the Nonprofit Help Center offers a comprehensive learning opportunities within the Nonprofit Board Member Basics online course.