Volunteer Recruitment
a creative, team-based approach

Courtesy of Anna Guest, Founder and CEO, Rising Tide Volunteer Solutions

Volunteers play a crucial role in ensuring the ongoing success of lifelong communities. However, expanding our volunteer base can seem like an overwhelming task. If you're searching for fresh strategies, consider the following approaches.

Involve the Team

Boost your reach and outcomes by adopting a collaborative, team-based approach to volunteer recruitment. When all team members recognize the value and actively seek potential volunteers, you open up more opportunities for connections and meaningful conversations. Regularly discuss your community's volunteer needs as a team, agree on a few impactful ways volunteers could contribute, and keep the topic front and center.  By framing recruitment as a shared responsibility, you foster a culture of collective ownership and enthusiasm.

As a team, walk through these additional activities and discussion points to develop a simple plan that leverages your community’s goals, and each team members’ experiences and connections. Remember, it’s better to have a simple plan that’s doable, rather than a highly detailed plan that feels too overwhelming to get going.

Volunteer Personas - Who are you trying to reach? 

Are there specific types of people you’re hoping to engage in your lifelong community efforts?  Maybe older, retired volunteers, high school students, stay-at-home parents, or others.  Creating volunteer personas - fictional people created to represent a target audience – can help you understand various types of potential volunteers and build more effective recruitment messaging to reach those people. Engage your team in creating personas, considering demographics, motivations, goals, challenges, and preferred communication channels for each type of volunteer. 

Create a persona:

• Background: Who is this person? Work? Family? Interests?

• General Demographics: Education? Socioeconomic status? Identity groups? Age?

• Identifiers: How does this persona align with your goals and needs?

• Goals: What matters to this persona? What do they hope to achieve? What's in it for them?

• Challenges: What could prevent this person from getting involved?

Craft an Intriguing Message - Opportunity is Everywhere

Be ready at any time to have a conversation about the work you do and how people can get involved! Sometimes it’s the unexpected conversations we have at the grocery story or sports game that lead to incredible new connections. Develop a compelling elevator speech to capture the attention of potential volunteers.  Share the impact of your community initiative, highlight the difference volunteers make, and emphasize flexibility.  Incorporate relatable stories and, if gaining traction, provide clear invitations to events or further information. Don't hesitate to seek assistance from friends or colleagues with expertise in messaging.

Create a pitch:

• In a sentence, what is your community initiative trying to achieve?

• Give a concrete and relatable example of how your program is helping people.

• Give 2 examples of how someone might get involved. 

• 1-2 words about why you’re great to work with.

• Make sure everyone on your team feels comfortable with a few basic talking points.

Do a Brainstorm

Having a multi-pronged approach to spreading the word about your volunteer opportunities is important. It increases the likelihood of reaching a broader range of people, and can leverage the strengths of different people on your team. The following activity will help you develop a variety of methods you could use for volunteer recruitment. You don’t have to use them all at once, try 2-3 and see how they work. If you need to update your approach, you’ll already have a list of options to choose from.

• Ask team members to think of 1-2 people they could talk with about volunteer opportunities and needs.

• Are there groups in your area you could be talking with about your volunteer opportunities who could help you connect with people?

• Are you talking about volunteer opportunities at events? On social media? In your local newspaper?

• What kinds of methods could you use to spread the word?

Chunk it Down

Now that you’ve done a brainstorming activity, you’ve got lots of ideas about what you could do.  It might feel overwhelming.  Keep it simple and lean into your team again.

What’s one simple thing you could do today?  Email one person sharing info about your community’s volunteer opportunities?   Ask the librarian if you can hang a flyer when you drop off your book? Contact your local high school about projects students could support?

Sometimes the hardest part is getting started, putting ourselves out there, or trying something that we don’t have proof will work.  Start anyway!  There’s power in action, and momentum can build from small steps.

Attitude is Everything 

Sometimes we decide that something is going to be difficult or not possible before we get started.  Two approaches that can help us flip the script on our success with volunteer recruitment are curiosity and a positive mindset.

Try this activity:

If possible, move your body (walk) or do a monotonous task (dishes, folding laundry) while letting your mind gently meander over the following questions:

• What would happen if you put aside outcomes and just got curious about engaging new people in your community initiative?

• Let your mind know you’re open to new ideas for finding volunteers. Imagine an ideal scenario with new and energized folks on your team.  What would that look and feel like?

Let go of the need to “direct” this activity with your thinking mind.  Notice what ideas pop into your head.  You might be surprised by what comes up, if you feel inspired by an idea, take action and see where it leads you.

Further Resource from Anna

• Attracting and Engaging Diverse Voices and Volunteers

• Master Class, Age-Friendly Volunteers - Around for the Long Haul

• Master Class, Sustaining the Energy as a Community Leader

We are deeply grateful to Anna Guest and Rising Tides Volunteer Solutions for working with Lifelong Maine to develop these training materials. Special thanks to Sharon Kelley, Berwick for a Lifetime, Candy Eaton, Age-Friendly Sullivan, and Jean Saunders, Age-Friendly Saco, for meeting with Anna to share their wisdom, experiences and challenges working with volunteers
We also want to thank AARP Maine for their thought leadership designing these modules.