Volunteers are critical to the success of your nonprofit’s events, campaigns, and other initiatives. However, effectively engaging and retaining volunteers is an ongoing challenge for charitable organizations.
According to the Volunteer Management Progress Report, 32% of volunteer managers said recruitment was their organization’s greatest roadblock. If your organization is struggling with volunteer engagement, the key to revamping your efforts is to get creative. Changing up how you interact with volunteers can inspire supporters and inject energy into your program.
This guide will explore these seven creative volunteer engagement ideas:
- Interact with volunteers on social media.
- Offer a reward for volunteer of the month.
- Inspire friendly competition with gamification.
- Give your volunteer opportunities a fun theme.
- Encourage volunteers to bring along family and friends.
- Help volunteers cultivate new skills.
- Create appreciation videos.
Engaging with volunteers in unique and meaningful ways starts with having the right software solutions on your side to keep your stewardship efforts organized. Bloomerang recommends investing in nonprofit software that allows you to view and manage all constituent data in one place, whether volunteers, donors, or other supporters. This can make it easier to track volunteer interactions and leverage data to personalize volunteer outreach as you try out these ideas.
1. Interact with volunteers on social media.
Social media is more than just a tool for accumulating followers. It’s also a great place to show off your volunteers’ achievements, update them on upcoming events, and express appreciation.
Level up your social media interactions by taking these steps:
- Post volunteer shoutouts. Highlight successful volunteer projects or specific volunteers who went above and beyond during a recent opportunity.
- Share photos from events. Take candid photos during volunteer events and tag volunteers in them on social media with their permission.
- Let volunteers do an account takeover. Account takeovers are a popular way to provide a behind-the-scenes look at your nonprofit’s work. Give a long-time, trusted volunteer access to your Instagram account for a day to share videos and photos on your story of them participating in volunteer activities.
- Interact with volunteers’ posts in support of your nonprofit. For example, let’s say a volunteer shares a link to your online donation page in a Facebook post. Show your appreciation by liking the post and commenting to thank them for their support.
Social media is also a useful communication method for sharing important information with your entire volunteer base. You can post timely updates about volunteer event logistics, cancellations, open shifts, and other urgent matters. This gives volunteers a convenient way to stay informed about updates relevant to their involvement.
2. Offer a reward for volunteer of the month.
Acknowledging and rewarding your volunteers is critical for keeping them engaged and motivated. Your volunteers donate many hours to your cause, so it’s necessary to recognize their dedication and positive impact on your organization.
To reward volunteers who make a sizable impact on your mission, consider offering a volunteer of the month program. Choose one volunteer per month who went above and beyond the call of duty, whether by helping find new donor prospects for a major campaign or taking on a major project by themselves.
Make the designation extra-special by offering winners a prize or award. Examples of rewards can be:
- A gift card to a local business or restaurant
- Free merchandise, such as a branded t-shirt or hat
- A trophy or certificate to serve as a symbol of your appreciation
If you have a smaller budget, even a simple gesture of gratitude like a handwritten note can go a long way toward making volunteers feel appreciated.
3. Inspire friendly competition with gamification.
Gamification involves adding game mechanics to non-gaming environments using elements such as points, leaderboards, and badges. This concept can be used to motivate and engage your volunteers in a fun way.
To get started with gamification, use your volunteer management tools to keep track of each volunteer’s progress. For instance, you might track volunteers’ total hours or how many peer-to-peer donations volunteers raised. Then, incorporate gamification into your volunteer tracking system to inspire a little friendly competition.
Award volunteers with badges or points once they hit certain milestones, such as a specific number of hours worked or donations raised. Then, they can continue earning points until they hit a certain benchmark, at which point they can receive a prize.
4. Give your volunteer opportunities a fun theme.
Giving your volunteer events a theme turns a routine volunteer opportunity into an exciting, fun experience.
For example, if you’re hosting a canned food drive around Halloween, consider making it more than just a canned food drive—make it a spooky canned food drive! Or, if you’re holding a volunteer and donor appreciation event, you could give it a groovy 60’s theme.
Themed events make it easier for your volunteers to socialize with others, making their volunteering experience less work-intensive and more fun.
Making your volunteer and fundraising opportunities themed also helps market them to community members. You can catch the attention of anyone who passes by, offering a great opportunity to talk about your event and volunteer program. This can encourage community members to donate to your cause or even sign up to volunteer at a future opportunity.
5. Encourage volunteers to bring along family and friends.
Volunteers will feel much more comfortable participating in your events when they can bring along a friend or family member. Encouraging volunteers to bring a loved one also promotes awareness of your program to a wider audience.
Be sure to offer a fulfilling, memorable experience that encourages current volunteers to promote your program via word-of-mouth marketing. Use the tips in this guide to create fun events with themes, gamification, and recognition opportunities. Volunteers will feel more inclined to invite their loved ones when they’ve already had an amazing experience.
When volunteers do bring their friends, collect the names and contact information of volunteers’ loved ones to add to your volunteer database. This makes future follow-up easier and allows you to grow your volunteer pool organically.
6. Help volunteers cultivate new skills.
Every volunteer offers a unique set of skills and strengths. By providing training opportunities, you can enhance their skill set and cultivate skilled volunteers.
Help volunteers earn new skills through:
- eLearning. Create digital modules for volunteers to complete at their own pace. The courses should be relevant to your volunteer activities. For example, if volunteers at your organization help maintain your community garden, your courses could be centered around gardening best practices. Offer certificates for completing online courses and spotlight volunteers who completed this training using your social media or email newsletter to recognize their achievements.
- Leadership opportunities. Long-time or experienced volunteers may want ways to level up their involvement. Offering them leadership opportunities is the perfect way to recognize their commitment and allow them to become even more involved in your mission. Train them to lead volunteer events by themselves or onboard new volunteers.
- Mentoring program. Match experienced volunteers with new supporters to help inexperienced volunteers learn the ropes. This is also an effective way to foster personal connections among volunteers, creating a stronger volunteer community.
Provide support for each of these opportunities as needed, whether through technical support or troubleshooting, answering questions, or facilitating connections between mentors and mentees.
7. Create appreciation videos.
An appreciation video is a memorable recognition tool that will stand out in supporters’ email inboxes and social media feeds. Your videos can include thank-you messages directly from those involved in your nonprofit’s mission, such as:
- Staff members
- Beneficiaries
- Volunteer leaders
Include interviews, video clips from volunteer events, and direct quotes to demonstrate volunteers’ impact.
After posting an appreciation video, make sure to track video data, such as how long supporters watch your videos or how many supporters click on videos within your emails, to improve your strategy. For example, if you discover that most supporters stop watching your videos after a minute and a half, you can shorten your videos to that standard length.
After reviewing these creative engagement ideas, consider which strategies will work best for your volunteer program based on your volunteers’ preferences and your current resources. Don’t be afraid to test different approaches to see what works and what doesn’t. The more creative and flexible your approach, the more your program will stand out to volunteers and provide them with an enjoyable, satisfying experience.
Author: Joshua Meyer brings more than 20 years of fundraising, volunteer management, and marketing experience to his current role as the VP of Demand Generation for Bloomerang. As a member of the Bloomerang marketing team, Josh manages the organization’s growth marketing efforts. Through his previous roles at the Human Rights Campaign and OneCause, he has a passion for helping to create positive change and helping nonprofits engage new donors and achieve their fundraising goals.