Updated: 2/15/2022
Reaching Senior Volunteers: Volunteer management software can help your nonprofit recruit and register tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy senior volunteers.
Volunteerism offers a variety of benefits for seniors who are looking to provide support to their community. Active volunteering has been shown to provide socialization, mental health, and physical health benefits. Many seniors today are looking for ways to stay active in the community and connect with others, volunteerism provides an avenue to do both and seniors are becoming more involved than ever before. According to the Corporation for National & Community Service, 20.7 Million older adults contributed more than 3.3 billion hours of service to their communities over a year. This contribution of service equates to over $75 billion. Talk about value!
When older adults were asked why they volunteered, in a study conducted by Home Instead Senior Care, the most common responses were:
- To assist causes they care about (99%)
- To make a meaningful difference in their community (99%)
- To help others (99%)
Nonprofits today need to do what they can to reach, retain, and engage senior volunteers in their communities. Doing so can create brand ambassadors and provide value. Implementing volunteer management software is not just meant for nonprofits wanting to reach tech-savvy senior volunteers. There are also some recruitment and registration benefits of cloud-based volunteer management software that can help manage non-tech-savvy seniors.
Here are a few ways software can help reach senior volunteers.
Reaching Senior Volunteers: Communication Benefits
The old saying “communication is key” applies greatly when it comes to reaching senior volunteers. Seniors are the fastest growing demographic on the internet according to recent research. A study by Braun Research found that 54% of those 65 and older are comfortable using technology, and this number is climbing steadily each year. Volunteer management tools can help nonprofits reach both seniors who are comfortable with technology and those who are not.
Here are some use cases for using volunteer management software to communicate with both types of categories:
The use case for tech-savvy seniors
Volunteer management software makes it possible for senior volunteers to register, sign up, and commit to opportunities directly from their computers. Nonprofits can post new opportunities and communicate these opportunities via email, text, and social media notifications. Many seniors are becoming more comfortable using social media, text, and email as communication sources.
Here are a few stats to back up our claim:
According to the Pew Research Center, internet use for seniors is growing at a rate of 150% per year. 34% of seniors are currently using social media as a part of their online activities.
According to a Simmons National Consumer Study (NCS), 94% of adults 70 years or older are using text messaging every week.
Forrester Research found that 91% of online seniors (age 65+) use email regularly.
The use case for non-tech-savvy seniors
Tools to help manage volunteers can also help volunteer coordinators reach senior volunteers who do not use communication tools such as email, text, and social media. Volunteer coordinators can use volunteer management tools to easily enter information for volunteers registering over the phone. The capabilities of volunteer management software allow supporters the flexibility of registering for volunteer opportunities in a way they are comfortable doing so. By implementing volunteer management software, volunteer coordinators also have more time to provide seniors needing registration assistance with one-on-one support.
More Time to Focus on Building Personal Relationships
Relationship building is one of the primary reasons that seniors volunteer. Many are looking to help the community and build friendships at the same time. Today’s seniors come from a generation in which face-to-face interaction is the primary means of communication, and they value this type of interaction.
Deploying volunteer management tools allows many organizations to focus time on building personal relationships with volunteers instead of data entry and manual recruitment tasks. Automation both saves time and limits the number of errors that a manual system is prone to.
One of our most recent case studies showed that some organizations are saving hundreds of hours a year and investing those hours into strengthening relationships both internally and externally.
Final Thoughts About Senior Volunteers and Management Software
It is often perceived that volunteer management software only appeals to nonprofits wanting to reach tech-savvy volunteers who are comfortable online. The truth of the matter is that volunteer management software creates opportunities to appeal to both tech-savvy volunteers and volunteers who require a one-on-one offline registration process. A volunteer management solution can free up the time necessary to focus on building volunteer relationships that last a lifetime.
