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Volunteer Retention: Choose the Right Job for the Volunteer
By Lorna Doone Brewer
Recruiting volunteers is important. Retaining them is even more important. Unfortunately, volunteer retention is going to suffer if you don’t take the individual’s skills, abilities, and (especially) interests into consideration. We’ve spent a few days talking about how to recruit volunteers, but today’s post is about what to do once the volunteer has stepped through the door. What to do after the internal dance of joy, that is.
If you’re in the middle of a big envelope stuffing project and a new volunteer walks in, the first inclination is to put him or her to work folding and licking. Let’s be realistic. If you’re in the middle of a project like that, it’s exactly what you’re going to do. It’s exactly what we’d do, too.
But once the chaos of the current project has passed, there’s probably going to be another just-as-urgent project right around the corner. It’s far too easy to just keep shuffling that volunteer from project to project. Today it’s envelope stuffing, tomorrow it’s data entry, the next day it’s moving boxes around the warehouse . . . The problem that this process doesn’t foster volunteer retention. By the time you hit next week, that volunteer is liable to be long gone, and you’re back at square one.
One of the most valuable things you can do boost your nonprofit organization’s volunteer retention rate is to ask newcomers what they’d actually like to do.
Maybe you’ll luck out. Maybe the new guy will answer with, “I’m here to fulfill my childhood dream of sending out direct mail appeals.” More likely, he’s going to tell you that he’d like to offer some IT support or that he’s interested in working outdoors, or any number of things that are decidedly not envelope-stuffing related.
Many volunteers are going to tell you that they’ll do whatever you need them to do. And they will. But they won’t do it for long. If you can match the volunteer’s skills to a job you need done, your chances of keeping him or her onboard go up. Taking time to do this type of thing shows the volunteers that you’re not just devoted to your cause, but that you’re devoted to them, as well.
Topics: Volunteers |