Engaging Virtual Volunteers: 15 Creative Team-Building Activities

Virtual volunteers are a rapidly growing resource. 25% of Americans volunteered online in 2020, and that trend has continued, even post-pandemic. However, engaging virtual volunteers presents certain challenges—especially for organizations that are used to working exclusively in-person.

However, with some forethought and creativity, you can engage and retain virtual volunteering talent. Read on to discover the top 15 virtual volunteer team building activities.

The Benefits of Engaging Virtual Volunteers

Engaging virtual volunteers is a win-win for both the volunteers and your organization.

For volunteers, virtual volunteering is an attractive option because it offers greater flexibility and accessibility. However, virtual volunteers also present major benefits for nonprofit organizations, including:

• Access to volunteers anywhere in the world
• Cost-effective volunteer opportunities that don’t require physical infrastructure
• Unlimited scalability
• Expanded reach and impact

Virtual volunteers give your nonprofit access to the talent you need, when you need it—without geographical constraints—and helps you maximize your impact on both a local and global scale.

Why You Need Virtual Volunteer Team Building

Virtual volunteers are a valuable resource for your organization; however, your organization cannot engage or retain them without virtual team volunteer team building. Virtual volunteers will not experience the natural sense of community that comes from attending in-person trainings and events, so you have to be more proactive about forging those bonds.

Virtual volunteer team building:

• Fosters a dynamic, supportive community
• Facilitates communication and collaboration
• Boosts productivity
• Improves volunteer retention
• Strengthens your overall volunteer program

Simply put, investing in virtual volunteer team building is critical to ensuring the success of your virtual volunteering program and your organization as a whole.

The Top 15 Virtual Volunteer Team Building Activities

There are dozens of virtual volunteer team building activities for your organization to choose from; however, we have curated a list of our 15 favorites.

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

A virtual scavenger hunt is a free, simple virtual volunteer team building activity. It effortlessly encourages your volunteers to share their personality, and it works for groups of any size.

To organize your virtual scavenger hunt, come up with prompts of common household items like a childhood photo, stuffed animal, or favorite book. You also choose broader prompts, like “something pink” or “something old.”

When it’s time to play, gather your volunteers into a video call. Give one prompt at a time, and the first person to find a relevant item is the winner. The individual items may spark conversation, so don’t feel a need to rush to the next prompt if your volunteers want to discuss the current one. Keep score and crown a winner at the end of the game.

Virtual Escape Room

Virtual escape rooms offer all the fun of escape rooms to virtual volunteer groups. A virtual escape room encourages collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, and leadership skills, so it doubles as a team building activity and personal development.

Partner with a provider like The Escape Game or Escapely to organize a virtual escape room for your team over a video call. Many escape room providers offer fun themes like haunted houses, heists, and pop culture properties.

Virtual Karaoke

You don’t need a karaoke bar to give your volunteers the chance to sing their hearts out! Virtual karaoke lets your teammates bond over their tastes in music, and it also encourages them to break out of their comfort zones and express themselves in a safe, fun environment.

To organize a virtual karaoke night, ask each of your volunteers to pick a song or two to sing and find a karaoke track (there are plenty of options available for free on YouTube or Spotify). Then, get everyone on a video call and have individuals volunteer to perform. Make sure the audience members all mute themselves to avoid interruptions!

Craft Challenge

Tap into your team’s artistic sides with a craft challenge. This virtual volunteer team building activity can be extremely flexible. You can all work together on a video call or have your volunteers complete the craft on their own time and share photos in a dedicated messaging channel. Set a few parameters to make the craft accessible to your team, such as time limits, budget, or a required item (like pipe cleaners or glitter), and let their creativity shine!

Tiny Campfire

Tiny Campfire offers a unique virtual volunteer team building experience, complete with s’mores! Tiny Campfire sends each participant a s’mores kit and an electric tealight “campfire” beforehand, and then you all log on to a 90-minute video call for icebreakers, camp games, and ghost stories facilitated by a host. This fun twist on traditional team building activities takes virtual volunteering the next level.

Baby Photo Game

The baby photo game is a team building classic for a reason, and it easily translates online. Have your volunteers each send you a baby photo. Then upload them to a central location, such as a shared virtual folder or photo album, making sure to change the file names to ensure anonymity. Then, have your volunteers review the photos on their own time and submit a list guessing who each baby photo might belong to. After a set period of time, reveal which photo represents which team member and congratulate the volunteer with the highest score! Consider leaving some space open for further discussion in a messaging channel.

Virtual Tasting

Virtual tastings engage your team and their tastebuds. You can opt for a professionally hosted tasting experience from companies like Elevant or Priority Experiences. However, you can also build a personalized, DIY tasting to get everyone on your team involved. Choose a category like wine, cheese, chocolate, or even something funky like snack foods, and try them together on a video call. You can even have each volunteer pick a specific item to try, and they can be the “expert” for it, offering tasting notes, background facts, and reasons why they chose to include it.

PowerPoint Presentations

PowerPoints don’t have to be all business; they can be really fun ways to allow your volunteers to express themselves! Organize a virtual PowerPoint night allowing volunteers to present about seemingly silly topics that nevertheless garner passionate opinions.

Some potential PowerPoint themes include:

• The best (and worst) Halloween candies
• Guilty pleasure TV shows/movies
• Conspiracy theories
• Under- and overrated celebrities
• Top 5 holidays

Ask each volunteer to limit their presentation to 10-15 minutes, and if you have a large virtual volunteer base, have 3-5 volunteers sign up per presentation session. This virtual volunteer team building activity is always a hit, so your volunteers will be more than excited to have a few iterations throughout the year!

Virtual Book Club

If you have some bookworms in your volunteer base, bring them together with a virtual book club. You can start the club by choosing books that have some relevance to your organization’s mission, but as it expands, allow your volunteers to make their own suggestions. Give your volunteers enough time to easily read each selection (typically 1-3 months, depending on the length of the book), and schedule video calls to discuss.

Virtual Werewolf

Werewolf is an extremely popular party game that requires refined communication, attention to detail, and critical thinking, and it can be played on a virtual video call with teams of a variety of sizes. The conceit of the game is that werewolves have invaded a village, and it’s up to the villagers to find and kill the werewolves before they eliminate the entire population.

You will need to designate one person to be the game master; this role is an obvious fit for your volunteer manager, but it can also be a low-stakes way to give a volunteer a leadership position. The game manager will randomly assign your volunteers to a variety of roles:

• Villagers, whose goal is to defeat all the werewolves
• Werewolves, whose goal is to kill all the villagers
• The medic, who can save a player
• The seer, who can find out other players’ roles

Once the roles have been assigned, the game master begins play. They announce that night has fallen, ask everyone to close their eyes, and begin the nightly tasks:

1. Wake the werewolves and have them select a victim. Send the werewolves back to sleep.
2. Wake the medic and ask them to save one player. Send them back to sleep.
3. Wake the seer and ask them whose status they would like to know. Reveal the player’s role and send the seer back to sleep. (If the medic and seer have been killed, continue to verbalize these steps to avoid revealing anyone’s identity.)
4. Announce that the sun has risen and invite all the players to open their eyes.
5. Reveal whether someone perished during the night.
6. Let the players debate who might be a werewolf and take a vote on who should be killed as a suspected werewolf.
7. Anyone who is killed by the werewolves or the villagers becomes a ghost. They can freely observe the entire game—including the nighttime portions—but they cannot comment.

Repeat this process until you have only werewolves or only villagers remaining. Use dedicated messaging channels, either on a separate app or directly through your video call software, to allow the players to communicate with the game master at night without speaking.

Pet Pictures

Everyone loves cute pets! Simply set up a messaging channel dedicated to sharing pet photos. Volunteers can engage according to their preferences, you don’t have to do any maintenance, and everyone can learn more about each other and their amazing pets!

Pancakes vs. Waffles

Pancakes vs. Waffles is a fun game that sparks lively conversations and asks volunteers to express their values in a low-stakes way. Pancakes vs. Waffles is a thought exercise that begins simply enough: the world can choose to keep either pancakes or waffles. The other is going to be destroyed forever. Open the floor to debate, and eventually vote on which breakfast food to keep. Then, you can continue the game by introducing new competitors, such as Pancakes vs. Cupcakes, Cupcakes vs. Puppies, Puppies vs. Kittens, etc. You’d be surprised how intense—and fun—the debating can get!

 Recipe Swap

Food always brings people together, and your volunteers can learn a lot about each other through a recipe swap. Ask your volunteers to share a recipe, and compile a virtual volunteer team building cookbook. You can even take this activity a step further by picking one recipe per week for your volunteer base to try out. Encourage them to share photos and reviews in a dedicated messaging channel.

Collaborative Playlists

Create themed Spotify playlists and ask your volunteers to add a song. Sample playlist themes include:

• Favorite concert experience
• High school throwbacks
• Beach listening
• Motivational songs
• Party mix
• Songs that make you laugh
• Favorite artists

Set aside a dedicated messaging channel for discussion. You can even find ways to incorporate the playlist into your activities, such as playing it in the background of meetings, other team building exercises, or events.

Team Building Bingo

Put a team building twist on bingo by replacing the numbers with prompts that encourage your volunteers to talk to each other.

Personalize the bingo cards with categories like:

• Left-handed
• Favorite color is blue
• From a different country
• Plays a musical instrument
• Fluent in a foreign language
• Plays a sport

Along the way, your volunteers will learn more about each other, find common ground, and build relationships.

Engaging Virtual Volunteers with VolunteerHub

While virtual volunteer team-building activities play a major role in engaging virtual volunteers, a comprehensive volunteer engagement plan should include volunteer management software like VolunteerHub.

VolunteerHub is an intuitive, all-in-one platform that addresses all of your volunteer management needs. Keep volunteers active and engaged every step of the way with features like self-scheduling, automated communication, and rewards systems—all while saving your organization time, energy, and resources.

Request a demo today to learn how VolunteerHub can fully engage your volunteers, prevent turnover, and optimize your entire program.