Best Practices 3 min read

School Volunteer Recruitment Tips: 4 Ways to Impact Your Program

Eric Burger July 11, 2019

5:47

Finding the right volunteers for your school is important. Here are 4 ways to impact your school volunteer recruitment strategy.

Providing people with skills and knowledge needed to succeed in everyday life is important. School systems make learning possible for a large number of individuals and teach students about core topics. Many people do not realize that volunteers play an important role in the education system. Many schools, colleges, and institutions are looking for volunteers to help them reach their goals, fulfill their mission, and create opportunities for students in their care. According to a recent study, volunteerism within educational institutions makes up 17% of all volunteer hours provided in the United States. Based on that metric it is clear to see that volunteers are passionate about helping schools and the students that inhabit them.

School volunteers cover a variety of roles. These roles may include coordinating and assisting in fundraising, working one on one with students, providing support to school programs, working as a monitor for lunchroom and playground activities, offering technological support in the computer lab, becoming a student advocate, serving on the school board, and much more. Schools need volunteers to fill an abundance of roles. How is your school reaching volunteers and persuading them to provide your educational institution with support?

There are several important strategies to incorporate into your school volunteer recruitment plan. These strategies will help your school reach more volunteers, engage them, and retain them over time. Here are 4.

Make it Easy for Volunteers to Register for Opportunities

Your school may have the greatest volunteer program on earth, but if it isn’t easy for volunteers to register, chances are your organization is missing out on opportunity. Is your school making the process easy for volunteers? Or is there a barrier to entry? Volunteers want to be able to quickly identify opportunities they are interested in and commit to the role. A manual process of volunteer recruitment can make it challenging to keep up with your organizations needs and find qualified talent. Many schools, just like yours, are spending hundreds of hours a year scrambling to find volunteers to commit their time. Volunteer management software allows your school to create a self-registration process for volunteers, remind them of upcoming commitments, and keep them in the loop about future opportunities to give. Investing in a volunteer management solution can eliminate the barrier of an outdated registration process and take your volunteer program online. A volunteer management solution, like VolunteerHub, will also allow your school to incorporate your brand elements, create opportunity landing pages, promote opportunities online & via social media, and track engagement.

Learn more about VolunteerHub’s volunteer registration features.

Create Opportunities to Teach Volunteers Skills

One of the best ways to keep volunteers engaged, interested, and coming back to your program is through skill-development. Creating opportunities to teach volunteers new skills and sharpen existing ones is a great way to provide supporters with value. Remember, volunteers are offering their time without financial reward so anytime value can be added to your school volunteer recruitment plan, it is a plus. Your school can provide skill-development opportunities by matching volunteers with roles that interest them, taking advantage of their current skill-set, providing them with a mentor, and by challenging them through new duties based on performance.

Create a Volunteer Experience Based on Friendly Competition

Gamification is a popular school volunteer recruitment strategy right now, and for good reason. According to a recent study 50% of business processes will be gamified over the next few years. Friendly competition makes volunteerism more fun and engaging. Volunteer management software makes it possible to incorporate gamification directly into your volunteer recognition program. Volunteers are awarded points based on the opportunities that they fulfill, and these points can be used by your organization to reward supporters based on the number they accumulate. Organizations can also run reports to see how many points have been accumulated by each of their volunteers and create a leader board to show volunteers.

Learn more about VolunteerHub’s gamification features.

Don’t Forget that Communication is Key

Communication is essential to the success of your school’s volunteer recruitment strategy. Your organization should communicate with volunteers often and on the platforms that supporters prefer. According to a recent study, 57% of projects fail due to lack of communication. How is your school communicating new opportunities to volunteers? Are your communication efforts engaging volunteers? Volunteer management software, like VolunteerHub, can make communication with your supporters easy. Your school can easily send out email and text messages to volunteers about new opportunities, remind them of registration and provide updates regarding goal attainment.

Takeaways

The process that your school takes to recruit, manage, and engage volunteers can make or break your volunteer program. Volunteer management software makes the process easy and streamlines your program.