Building Community muscle -
Engaging volunteers
Engaging volunteers
Anna Guest, MOT, OTR/L
University of Maine Center on Aging
University of Maine Center on Aging
Volunteers are the heart, soul and leaders of lifelong community initiatives, and tapping into the power of volunteer time, skills, and passion is central to success and sustainability.
This chapter leverages the Lifelong Maine Working with Volunteers Toolkit, developed by Rising Tide Volunteer Solutions, with the addition of some supplemental resources and activities.
Essential Components of Volunteer Engagement
Learn more about why Vision and Values; Outreach and Recruitment; Welcoming and Training; Teamwork and Support; and Recognition and Celebration are important for successful volunteer engagement. Read about steps you can take to build strong practices into your community's work that will give new volunteers a positive start and keep them engaged over time.
Read the 5 Essential Components of Volunteer Engagement - An Age Friendly Lens article.
Reflection
How is your community currently engaging volunteers? Which essential components feel like a focus for you? What ideas did the article spark for working with volunteers? Click here to complete the first of three reflections in this chapter. Entering your reflection will also record your progress. Important: Complete each section before moving on to its corresponding reflection. When you return to the form, you will automatically be taken to where you last left off.
Laying the Groundwork
Bringing new people into our age-friendly efforts requires us to be creative and thoughtful in how we represent our work. What methods do we use to spread the word about available opportunities for involvement? How will we highlight the ways people can bring their time, skills and care to support the community's needs?
In this section, you will:
Learn about developing a recruitment approach that works for your community.
Explore free online resources for posting your volunteer opportunities.
Consider your background checking practices.
Activity One
Get started by reading the Volunteer Recruitment - A Creative, Team-Based Approach and Keep Getting Involved Low Barrier! articles from the Working with Volunteers Toolkit.
Think of a need in your community that would benefit from a volunteer's help. Write a brief “ad” for social media or a local newspaper.
What are 3 things you could do to spread the word about the role?
Activity Two
Online volunteer recruitment has been shown to be a top strategy, and it's also a low-maintenance, passive approach that let's people find YOU. The United Ways of Maine offer a place to list and find volunteer opportunities - at no cost!
Find your local United Way Volunteer listing page.
Explore an organization’s profile and volunteer opportunity listings.
Is this a tool you could use to raise awareness of your work & volunteer needs?
Activity Three
Read the To Background Check or Not Background Check article.
What pros and cons do you see for background checking volunteers involved in your age-friendly work?
Are there any roles you think should require background checks? Why?
Strengthening Your Team
Strong volunteer teams need continuous nurturing and communication. In this section, you'll find additional resources to help you build volunteer leadership skills, engage new voices, respond to challenging situations, and navigate the turbulent waters of role transitions. In choose-you-own-adventure style, dig in to any topics that resonate with your needs in working with volunteers.
Working with Volunteers Toolkit Articles
Volunteers Leading Volunteers - Navigating Expectations and Accountability
Building Skills for Courageous Conversations with Volunteers
In this video, we'll discuss how our community values can support and guide us to have difficult conversations, some of the common reasons we might need to address a situation with a volunteer, and why it's human nature to avoid them.
We'll explore why having courageous conversations is important and how they can benefit the volunteer, our community, and ourselves. We'll also learn strategies for getting started.
Now that we've reviewed some of the core considerations and strategies for venturing into courageous conversations, use these scenarios, designed to help you explore common examples of challenges with volunteers, and reflect on how you might respond.
Click through the scenarios below using the arrows or 3 dots to explore more; then watch the video to "unpack" each scenario.
Resources for Courageous Conversations
Brené Brown - Dare to Lead: The Engaged Feedback Checklist (this is a download)
This checklist provides a variety of helpful items to reflect on your readiness to engage in a conversation with someone when you have feedback to share.
Research Institute for Aging - Enhancing Communication: An Inspirational Guide for People Living with Dementia
This guide explores common communication challenges for people living with dementia. It provides tips and strategies individuals can use and guidance for family, friends, and professionals to enhance inclusive and supportive communication.
Measuring and Celebrating Volunteer Impact
Volunteers have tremendous impact in our communities. How we capture and share these contributions is a critical "gel" that solidifies our teams, keeps people engaged, and raises awareness about how and why the work we do together matters.
In this video, you'll hear about the power of storytelling and how it can be used in a variety of ways.
One tangible way we can demonstrate the value of volunteers is to calculate the monetary value of their contributions. In 2024, the non-profit coalition, Independent Sector, published the Estimated Value of a Volunteer Hour at $33.49. When multiplied by the total number of hours a volunteer or a group of volunteers contributes to your community's leadership, activities and services, this can become a very powerful way to communicate with funders, municipal leaders, and others about the value and impact your work brings to your community.
This example from Age Friendly Biddeford demonstrates how a few simple numbers come to life to tell a story about volunteers impacting lives and bringing value to the community. A graphic like this could be used to celebrate with volunteer teams, to bolster grant applications, and to advocate for support from a municipality.
Activity - Showing the Impact of Volunteers: Exploring Ripple Effects Mapping
The true value of volunteer impact goes beyond the number of volunteers, riders or hours donated. Ripple Effect Mapping is one tool that can be used to capture the nuanced and life-changing contributions of volunteers. The process is designed to capture the ‘ripples’ of impact that are hard to measure by more traditional methods or that don't happen immediately.
Ripple Effects Mapping (REM) is a dynamic participatory evaluation method that captures the broad impact of community initiatives, such as the work of age-friendly volunteers. This innovative approach brings volunteers together to explore and visualize the direct, indirect, and often unexpected outcomes of their efforts.
Ripple Effects Mapping employs group discussions and visual brainstorming to create a picture of how community programs affect different areas of local life. This approach helps people see and understand the wide-ranging impacts of their work. This process reveals not only tangible outcomes but also subtle, interconnected changes that might otherwise go unnoticed.
In the context of age-friendly volunteering, Ripple Effects Mapping helps:
Recognize the full scope of volunteer efforts
Foster a sense of accomplishment and motivation
Provide insights for program improvement and resource allocation
Communicate impact effectively to funders and policymakers
By illuminating the far-reaching effects of community initiatives, Ripple Effects Mapping offers a powerful tool for understanding and demonstrating the true value of volunteer efforts.
After watching the video, explore this Ripple Effect Mapping Toolkit to learn more about demonstrating the volunteer impact in your community. This can be a powerful, team-building activity to celebrate your collective work.
Reflection
Does your community currently have a method of measuring volunteer impact?
Do you see opportunities to capture and celebrate this impact?
Click here to complete the second of three reflections in this chapter. Entering the reflection will also record your progress. Important: Complete each section before moving on to its corresponding reflection. When you return to the form, you will automatically be taken to where you last left off.
Share & Learn With Others
There's no one-size fits all approach to finding, engaging and keeping volunteers. Visit the Padlet below to share your tips, strategies and approach, and learn from others while you're there! In the Padlet, click on the "+" signs under each category to add your ideas.
Engaging Volunteers Padlet - Click Here to visit and contribute.
Reflection
What questions do you have about working with volunteers?
What would you like to talk and/or learn more about?
Click here to complete the final reflection in this chapter and record successful completion of the Volunteer chapter. Note: Clicking will bring you back to where you left off when you completed your last reflection. When you have finished, please click "submit" to record completion of the Volunteer chapter.
Additional Resources
Working with Volunteers Toolkit
This resource includes 3 Master Class recordings and a series of articles tailored to volunteer engagement for age friendly communities.
Volunteer Liability Insurance Materials
Explore these resources to learn more about this insurance option made available through AARP Maine.
Independent Sector - Value of Volunteer Time
Check the current national value of an hour of volunteer time.
During this chapter, we hope you will gain a few tools for working with volunteers.
If you have any questions as you are going through the material, please email: lifelong@maine.edu.