Posted on March 3, 2017Ok you have all your plans for the year in place. Do you have enough volunteers to get everything done? The answer is no, you can never have enough volunteers.
Ok how do we attract new volunteers?
The answer is bite sized. Bite sized pieces of work that isn’t scary, is easy to understand, and won’t take a huge amount of time or effort.
Easy to Understand
Can you explain what you want the new volunteer to do in a few sentences? Are there written instructions? Is there somone that has done it before that the new volunteer can go to and ask questions? When they are told the task you want them to think yes I can do that, not I don’t have a clue on how to do it.
Find the right pieces
Look at your planned projects. Hopefully you have written sub tasks for each project. Find tasks that are of short duration, easy and not time critical. A task that doesn’t have to be done first, before other tasks can start. Something that has easy to follow steps already written out for it. Perferably something that was done last year following these steps, for example something from an annual event.
Scary
Scary is something that seems overwhelming, that no-one can really explain what exactly it is or how long it will take. It has never been done before or, if it has been done, there is no-one available to explain how it was done.
Short time and effort
People don’t want to volunteer for a task that will take many hours per week and last for several months. They also will balk at something that requires a lot of effort. Give them something easy for their first task as a volunteer.
Target your volunteers
Send out information about your plans to your members. Find out, via discussions or surveys, who is interested and passionate about what you plan to do. Target those people by asking them if they are willing to help with a small task for the project they are interested in. Tell them why they would be a good fit to take on the task. Look at the rest of the people on that particular project – will they get along, is there someone that can mentor the new person?
Baby steps
Your strategy for new volunteers should be baby steps. Bring them in to do a small, easy task. Let them enjoy the success of getting the job done and working with the rest of the team. Then position them at a later date to take on a more difficult task.