The national average for volunteer retention is only 65%. How does your organization plan to retain volunteers in 2022? Here are 4 volunteer retention tips that can help.
Focusing on volunteer retention is an important step your organization can take to fill opportunities in 2022. Even in times of uncertainty, there are many reasons why volunteers will want to continue to support your organization in 2022.
Making it easy for your volunteers to participate is key to their retention. Here are 4 volunteer retention tips that can help your organization increase retention rates and increase volunteer value.
Tip #1: Make Registration Easy
When volunteers choose an organization, they want to become involved with, the registration process must be simple and convenient. Volunteers will get discouraged and give up if they cannot figure out how to register for events. This will cause your volunteer retention rates to suffer.
In today’s fast-paced society, people want tasks completed right away. If they have to call your organization to sign up for events, likely, that they won’t sign up. Volunteers may feel your registration process is too cumbersome or too time-consuming to complete if it is not communicated.
Make the volunteer registration process simple and streamlined. Communicate the appropriate steps to take directly on your nonprofit’s website, with a link to the registration page. Using volunteer management software can be a great solution for organizing registration online.
You can create a tailored registration page for your volunteers, including easy-to-follow instructions. Click on the link, and they are immediately directed to the registration page.
Your organization can retain more volunteers by making this process simple for them.
Check out how these organizations are using VolunteerHub to streamline volunteer registration:
Tip #2: Create Volunteer Groups Based on Interest and Skills
Organizing volunteers into groups based on their interests and expertise is a great way to save them time. It makes registration easier and helps guide them to the correct opportunities.
Automating this process is the best way to organize your volunteers into groups. It will help guard against error, missing a volunteer’s registration, or having a volunteer placed in the wrong “interest” group.
By using volunteer management software, placing volunteers into groups can be instantaneous. Volunteers can select areas of interest while registering, or your administrators can place them into groups after the registration process has been completed.
This will make it easier for volunteers to find the perfect opportunity for their schedule and interests.
Tip #3: Send Emails to Volunteer Groups
At times, life gets busy, and a volunteer may have other priorities that come before volunteering. They may volunteer for one event and not sign up for another one until the next year. A great way to engage them and keep them interested is by sending specific group emails with upcoming opportunities.
Separating your volunteers into groups by talents or interests is a great way for your organization to optimize all of their skills. You can send out a tailored email to a specific group you would like to target.
This can be accomplished by preparing an Excel spreadsheet; however, this is time-consuming and labor-intensive to manually email each volunteer. Using volunteer management software can simplify and streamline this process.
Let’s say you have a tutoring event, and you need more volunteers. You can email all of your parents and teachers requesting their presence. It is that simple, and they will be happy you kept them in the loop.
Sending reminder emails is another great way to help make your volunteers’ lives easier. It is easy for life to get in the way of some commitments. Reminding volunteers of their commitments will be greatly appreciated and help ensure they will not miss your event.
Tip #4: Make the Sign-Up Process Quick and Consistent
Communicating and making events easily accessible will encourage volunteers to continue to sign up. Just like the registration process, if it is too challenging to see events and opportunities, they will move on. Providing relevant event descriptions can help volunteers make quick decisions on how they would like to participate.
Volunteers do not have time to sort through thousands of opportunities to find what will fit their schedule and interests. By keeping event descriptions organized and constant, it makes it easier for volunteers to find what they are looking for.
Simple Volunteer Retention Tips for Making Lives Easier
Making your volunteers’ lives easier will help your organization increase volunteer retention. Using the helpful tips above will help cultivate a user-friendly environment for your volunteers. Here are a few more ways you can make life simple for your volunteers and keep them participating:
- Make all communication clear and concise for volunteers to understand.
- Be consistent with all forms of communication, including social media and emails.
- Bring opportunities to your volunteers by promoting all events.
- Be clear about your intentions and goals for each event.
By incorporating the above tips into your volunteer management process, you will also make tasks and communication easier for your team. Make it simple!
