12 Pieces of Advice for Volunteer Managers
Date postedNovember 30, 2023
- Acknowledge your volunteers monthly – birthday cards, thank them for their time, Christmas cards – all make a difference in retaining volunteers.
- Show your volunteers the whole organization. When they understand how the larger organization works, it increases their commitment and their understanding of how their volunteer work serves the community.
- Don’t be afraid to redirect volunteers. Someone may know they want to volunteer, but not know all of the opportunities and what the best fit for their skills and talent is. You may need to send them to another nonprofit to help them have the best experience.
- Be genuine with your volunteers. Let them know you are here for them personally and professionally to offer guidance and support. Make sure they hear how important they are to you. Even when volunteers have to pause, they will come back if they feel like you care.
- Stay engaged with your volunteers, not just when you need them. Show them you appreciate them and the experiences they bring to the table.
- Practice your listening ears. Volunteers are sometimes there for an outlet, friendship, and company. They want to be engaged and meet new people. Learn their skillsets and their motivators. Knowing them as a person makes it easier to retain the volunteers and engage them as donors in addition to their volunteer work.
- Build out a cadence of asking for feedback from volunteers both in person and digitally. Find out if they would recommend volunteering with your organization. Volunteers won’t always share feedback if you don’t directly ask for it. Their feedback can help you dramatically improve the volunteer experience. This can drive retention strategies.
- Most volunteers come through word of mouth and recommendations so make sure you know what your reputation is and actively manage volunteers having a positive experience.
- Don’t underestimate the quantity and quality of what your volunteers can accomplish. With the right support and training, they can do almost anything.
- Help volunteers avoid surprises. That means making sure they understand the rules and guidelines, have appropriate training, and know what the challenges are that they might face.
- It comes down to valuing volunteers and their effort. Often staff who don’t directly work with volunteers underestimate their value and forget to correlate volunteerism with development. Volunteer managers have to teach and communicate that to other staff.
- Volunteers can feel left out and like they are just there as a warm body. Volunteers need to feel included and valued to stay and succeed. Make sure you walk a mile in your volunteer's shoes so you see your process through their eyes.