Volunteer engagement is one of the most critical parts of the volunteer lifecycle. Even if a volunteer is successfully recruited, onboarded, and trained, they may fall off before they even get involved with your organization. And for more established volunteers, a decline in engagement can be an early warning sign of potential turnover.
No matter where your volunteers are in their journeys, investing in volunteer engagement is a necessity. In this article, we’ll offer an in-depth explanation of why volunteer engagement matters and share some practical strategies for boosting engagement.
What is Volunteer Engagement?
Volunteer engagement refers to the process of keeping volunteers involved in your organization: signing up for and completing shifts, attending events, and responding to communication. Engaged volunteers provide a strong return-on-investment, as their consistent contributions to your organization make the time, energy, and money you invested in their recruitment and retention worth it.
An engaged volunteer is someone who:
- Feels emotionally invested in your organization’s mission and success.
- Consistently commits to volunteer shifts.
- Demonstrates enthusiasm on the job.
- Produces high-quality work.
- Regularly responds to communication.
- Contributes positively to your organizational culture.
- Look for ways to expand their involvement with your nonprofit.
Nurturing volunteer engagement requires a multi-pronged strategy. It’s not just about encouraging volunteers to register for shifts or donate to fundraising campaigns; it’s about building a positive volunteer experience that makes volunteers want to get involved. Over time, volunteer engagement leads to a stronger relationship between your volunteer base and your organization, turning enthusiasm into long-term support.
Why Volunteer Engagement Matters
Volunteer engagement is important to your volunteer program’s health, but investing in volunteer engagement also has broad-reaching implications for your entire organization:
Better volunteer engagement leads to increased volunteer retention.
When your volunteers are enthusiastic and active, they are more likely to volunteer with your organization for longer, improving retention and reducing turnover. With 62% of nonprofit organizations reporting difficulty with volunteer recruitment, retaining your current volunteers is more important than ever. Investing in volunteer engagement can save a lot of time and money in recruitment, onboarding, and training costs.
Volunteer engagement builds long-term relationships with your organization.
Engaged volunteers have a strong emotional connection to your organization, which can manifest itself in a variety of ways. Each volunteer is valuable, but your most engaged volunteers will often look for ways to expand their involvement with your organization, serving in leadership positions or on your board. Even if a volunteer’s circumstances change and they cannot volunteer as often, their bond with your nonprofit will remain, and they will continue to be active supporters.
Volunteer engagement boosts productivity and expands your impact.
Engaged volunteers perform better on the job. They report for volunteer shifts on time, enthusiastic, and ready to work. They also have a stronger understanding of your mission, goals, and processes, and they don’t require as much supervision from paid staff members. This dedication leads to increased output, higher quality services, and more meaningful interactions with beneficiaries, donors, and supporters.
Engaged volunteers act as organizational ambassadors.
Word-of-mouth is one of the most effective marketing strategies out there, and when you make volunteer engagement a priority, you automatically generate strong peer-to-peer marketing campaigns. Engaged volunteers will organically talk about your organization to their friends and family, raising awareness, recruiting new volunteers, and attracting donations.
Volunteer engagement increases volunteer-to-donor conversion.
Your most enthusiastic and engaged volunteers will look for other ways to support your organization, including donating. Volunteers make great donors because they fully understand your organization’s mission and how their donation can make a difference, leading to an average 10x increase in gift size. Segment out current or potential volunteer-donors and steward them differently during fundraising campaigns.
Volunteer engagement improves ROI.
Building a strong volunteer engagement strategy requires time, money, and energy, but volunteer engagement also provides a strong return on investment. Each hour of volunteer work is worth $33.49, so engaged volunteers generate a significant amount of value. However, volunteer engagement ROI isn’t just limited to the monetary value of volunteer work; it extends to other parts of your volunteer program. When you invest in volunteer engagement, you save money on recruitment and onboarding, since you have to find and train fewer volunteers. Plus, the potential return from volunteer-to-donor conversion and word-of-mouth marketing is limitless. Engaged volunteers aren’t just nice to have; they’re valuable assets.
How to Promote Volunteer Engagement
You’ve seen that volunteer engagement matters, but how do you boost volunteer engagement levels? After all, you can’t force individuals to be more active with your organization, and it can feel rude to ask someone who is already donating free labor to give even more of their time. However, you can build an accessible, supportive environment that makes getting involved easy and enjoyable, naturally engaging your volunteers at every turn.
Here are the top ways that your nonprofit can invest in volunteer engagement:
Define specific volunteer engagement goals.
Your volunteer engagement strategies won’t be as effective if you have no way to track them. Set clear, realistic goals for volunteer engagement and determine how you will measure them. Find ways to quantify as many data points as possible—such as measuring the percentage of events that each individual participates in or evaluating satisfaction on a scale from 1-10—and use a combination of tools, like surveys, event data, and focus groups, to track your engagement levels.
Provide comprehensive training.
Comprehensive training is key to long-term volunteer engagement. It sets the tone for the volunteer-nonprofit relationship, and volunteers who receive adequate training are 83% more likely to stay with your organization.
Training gives recruits the chance to learn more about your organization, familiarize themselves with day-to-day processes, and hone the skills they will need on the job. Make sure that your training sessions incorporate:
- A volunteer handbook outlining important policies and processes
- An overview of your organizational mission, goals, and values
- Position-specific training
- Tutorials on any software that your organization uses
- Information about the sign-up and registration processes
- Modules to address knowledge and skill gaps
When volunteers know exactly what is expected of them, it is easy to get involved!
Match volunteers with the right positions.
Volunteers who enjoy their work are more likely to stay engaged, so it’s important that you match your volunteers with the right positions—roles that speak to their motivations, engage their interests, and make use of their unique talents.
When assigning volunteers to specific roles, keep the following factors in mind:
- Motivations
- Interests
- Hard and soft skills
- Strengths and talents
- Personal and professional goals
- Working style
Effective role matching doesn’t just improve volunteer engagement; it also improves productivity by ensuring that the right person is doing the right job.
Target your communication.
Communication is key to volunteer engagement, but it is a delicate balance. If you communicate too little (or too much), volunteers could easily disengage. Organize your volunteers into distinct segments and personalize your messages so that every piece of communication is relevant and compelling.
Whenever you reach out to a volunteer:
- Tailor the message to the volunteer’s interests and motivations.
- Consider the volunteer’s preferred communication styles, as well as the best medium for your message (i.e., email, text, etc.).
- Have a specific purpose with a clear call to action.
- Time your communication for when it will be most convenient and pertinent, like sending a feedback survey immediately after an event.
Clear, consistent, and relevant communication will keep your volunteers in the loop, without overwhelming them.
Offer flexible volunteering opportunities.
Many volunteers want to be more engaged, but their busy schedules get in the way. Work, family, and school commitments can prevent individuals from taking on long shifts, but you can offer flexible volunteering opportunities that fit into even the busiest schedules.
Explore flexible volunteering opportunities like:
- Micro-volunteering initiatives that require a minimal time commitment
- Virtual volunteering
- Flexible shifts during different times of the day and week
- Childcare and family-friendly volunteering opportunities
- Easy online self-scheduling
The easier you make it for volunteers to get involved, the more engaged they will be!
Create a culture of appreciation.
Recognize your volunteers at every step of their journey. Building a culture of appreciation goes beyond occasional awards or shoutouts; it means embedding gratitude into your processes.
Try these techniques for showing your volunteers how much you value their contributions:
- Incorporating praise into informal interactions
- Thank you notes
- Incentives and points-based reward systems
- Social media shout-outs
- Newsletter features
- Volunteer appreciation events
- Volunteer awards for engagement, longevity, etc.
A simple “thank you” can go a long way to keeping your volunteers engaged!
Provide opportunities for leadership and personal development.
Giving volunteers something to work towards can increase their engagement with your organization. Develop ways to support volunteers’ personal development, as well as offering advancement within your nonprofit.
Offer continued education opportunities like:
- Upskilling
- Workshops
- Mentorship
- Networking
- Leadership positions
- Professional references and letters of recommendation
Your volunteers invest a lot in your organization. When you show them that you are investing in them, too, this reciprocal relationship generates long-term support.
Build a strong, supportive community.
Don’t let the social aspect of your volunteer program take a backseat! Many individuals start volunteering to meet new people, and if you can strengthen the bonds between your volunteers, you will also strengthen your volunteers’ relationship with your organization.
Try these community-building techniques:
- Organize social events, like happy hours and movie nights
- Fold team-building activities into trainings, educational events, and meetings
- Create online groups on platforms like Facebook and Discord
- Connect recruits with mentors from your long-term volunteer base
- Start fun seasonal traditions that volunteers can look forward to (and stick around for)
Gather and act on volunteer feedback.
To build the kind of volunteer program that inspires loyalty, you have to incorporate volunteer feedback. You can gather informal feedback on the job, but it is also important to build regular cadences of volunteer surveys to gather more objective and organized data.
Maximize engagement by conducting:
- Regular post-event surveys within 48 hours of the shift
- Satisfaction surveys to gauge larger trends in your volunteer base
- Exit interviews to understand why volunteers turn over
However, collecting feedback is just half the battle. To show your volunteers that you value their opinions, you have to act on them! While not every piece of feedback may be realistic or pertinent, if you notice certain issues coming up regularly, they are worth addressing.
Share volunteer impact data.
While some volunteering activities give individuals the chance to see their impact immediately—like the smile on a child’s face when they get a hot meal or the sparkle of a litter-free stream—volunteers may not always be aware of the difference they are making. And, over time, if volunteers don’t know that they’re making an impact, they may disengage. Regularly collect volunteer impact data, including hard figures, case studies, and beneficiary testimonials, and share it with your volunteer base to inspire a feeling of accomplishment and a commitment to continued action.
Leverage technology to streamline the volunteer experience.
Volunteer management software like VolunteerHub can streamline your volunteer management processes, improving the volunteer experience and boosting your engagement levels.
Make volunteering easy and enjoyable with features like:
- Self-service scheduling, registration, and check-in
- Automated communication, including reminders and thank-you notes
- Robust data management options
- Customizable landing pages
- Rewards and recognition systems
- Personalized group organization and volunteer segmentation
Volunteer engagement strategies require a lot of time and resources, but with volunteer management software, you can automate repetitive administrative tasks, freeing up your volunteer coordinator to focus on higher-level projects.
