Recruitment

Volunteer recruitment messaging is long overdue for an overhaul. But what wording works best? This Training Designs article will walk you through the technique of “testing” messages to determine which are most effective with different audiences. You’ll learn how to design and develop your own recruitment test using a simple A/B (split testing) method that Training Designs Editor Erin Spink has used successfully. Through this article, you will have all the tools you need to design your own tests. And you’ll be on the way to improving future recruitment results.

Like the proverbial phoenix that rises from the ashes, George Washington Carver Senior High School rose from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Over the decade since the storm, the community has seen the emergence of a new brand of school and a different way of teaching—along with a new group of caring people, reaching out and giving back to help restore the city. One such project is Big Class, an organization that goes into the city schools to help students with their writing and creative skills. Through the mentoring of noted poet, writer, and essayist Kiese Laymon, and a corps of other volunteers, the Carver students are now authors of a published book.

History Between the Folds: Personal Narratives by the 11th Grade at George Washington Carver Senior High School, published in May 2017, is written by the 11th grade students of Eric Parrie, a young, energetic history teacher at Carver, a predominately African-American, inner-city school. Parrie, who is white, brought with him a style of teaching that gives the students a chance to have a voice, to see history, and to make history. The book gives readers the opportunity to see into the hearts and minds of teenagers who were young children when Hurricane Katrina hit, and some teens new to the city. They share their personal experiences and feelings about life and their futures.

This very special e-Volunteerism feature, by writer and writing volunteer Willmarine B. Hurst, reveals the process of writing and publishing History Between the Folds, and explains how volunteers served as student writing mentors.

More people want to volunteer today than ever before. As practitioners, we recognize that it’s important to not just make volunteer opportunities more accessible but to also make them more personalized.

While some of us have yet to adopt a web-based approach to recruiting and working with volunteers, the conversation has already advanced to using more effective mobile apps. These apps offer more relevant opportunities to individual volunteers and also help automate check-in, background checking, and dynamic reporting processes. Today’s app developers aim beyond visual interfaces to target voice detection and artificial intelligence capabilities – such as those supported by Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Samsung's Bixby – to predictively deliver personalized content and experiences to us. Such advances have real implications for volunteer engagement, too.

In the past, the volunteer community has often been burned by online volunteer opportunity registries and other volunteerism-related website providers who over-promise and under-deliver. But improved electronic tools now offer growing opportunities for us to engage more volunteers and retain them. In this e-Volunteerism feature, Sam Fankuchen, the founder of Golden, a top-ranked mobile app for volunteers, shares his expertise on electronic access that impacts volunteers. Fankuchen clearly challenges us to broaden our vision when he asks: Are we ready to position our volunteer opportunity listings so that every volunteer on every device in every community can find them? 

Free, live-streaming video platforms like Facebook Live, Twitter’s Periscope, and YouTube Live allow users of smartphones or tablets to live stream something they are viewing in person so that people off-site can view and share in it, too, in real-time – events, speeches, announcements, celebrations, and more.

The keyword here is live. Viewers watch the video at the same time it’s being filmed. While videos are recorded on Facebook and available after the live event (just like on YouTube), the draw for Facebook viewers is that they can view the event as it is happening, in real time. As with other Facebook posts, they can even join in by commenting.

Could Facebook Live and other live-streaming video platforms be used to celebrate volunteers? Welcome new volunteers? Educate and train volunteers? Recruit new volunteers? “Sure!” argues Jayne Cravens, an internationally-recognized volunteer management researcher, consultant, and trainer. In this e-Volunteerism feature, Cravens outlines some captivating ideas for how to embrace live-streaming video platforms to benefit volunteer engagement, noting that you can even “plan out” your video ahead of time. “It doesn’t have to be entirely spontaneous,” writes Cravens. “It just needs to feel that way.” 

A concept that spreads the love through volunteering? Good deeds and dating in a single package? In this e-Volunteerism feature, volunteer-manager-turned-entrepreneur Hannah Whitehead describes her efforts to innovate against all odds—and yes, she brings Cupid along for the ride, too!

In June 2016, Whitehead launched a social enterprise called Good Deed Dating that works alongside charities in London to coordinate volunteering events for single people. In a nutshell, Good Deed Dating combines good deeds with dating, providing single Londoners with the chance to meet someone who shares their values while doing good for their communities. Spreading love while volunteering! The concept has been widely embraced and is growing, working to potentially change not only volunteering constructs but the lives of dating-challenged, adrift, Bridget Jones-like Londoners everywhere.  

“When I was working as a volunteer manager, I had big ideas and an appetite to make volunteering not only super accessible, but also genuinely engaging to as many people as possible,” writes Whitehead. “However, like many others I found myself hitting red tape and brick walls at every turn. I knew that there were hundreds of potential volunteers out there who just needed the right incentive to get involved.  Feeling frustrated, I decided to make the leap and set up Good Deed Dating to support charities to achieve more and empower volunteer managers to get creative with their volunteering programmes.”

With a great sense of adventure and a keen eye for program innovation, Whitehead describes why “thinking outside the traditional volunteering box can feel risky or like an uphill struggle, but it doesn’t have to be. Our goal is to spread the love through doing good and provide a new way for Londoners to meet likeminded people who share similar values whilst meaningfully contributing to their community.”

Volunteerism research has produced a wide range of palpable evidence supporting various motivations for volunteer involvement, including but not limited to humanitarian and altruistic concern for others; an unassuming yearning to help; a desire for satisfying self); an unwavering commitment to an organization’s mission; rewards; appreciation; or the reputation of an organization. While nonprofit and public organizations continue to rely heavily on volunteer support, there is still no simple answer to determine what motivates individuals to not only volunteer but also return on an ongoing basis. One tangible resource that has proven to aide in engaging volunteers is the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI), first proposed in 1998 by Gil Clary and Mark Snyder.

In this quarter’s Research to Practice, author and volunteer management consultant Tonya Howard Calhoun looks at a study that provides an online VFI for 155 registered volunteers working for different NGOs and NPOs in Saudi Arabia. The goal of administering the VFI was to determine the significance of the six functions measured by the VFI to volunteer behavior in the Saudi cultural context. The study not only illuminates the effectiveness of the use of VFI instrument across cultures, but also confirms that the VFI can help design training manuals for volunteer organizations, as well as enhance the volunteer management practices of recruitment and retention.

 

It all began when people with intellectual disability told us they wanted their own friends: friends who were not part of their own family or paid to spend time with them. At IHC we listened, and that premise became the foundation that IHC Volunteer Friendship Programme is based on: One person with intellectual disability is matched with one volunteer, and both decide together what they want to do out in their communities. — Sue Kobar

IHC is New Zealand’s largest provider of services to people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Its one-to-one, Volunteer Friendship Programme has been very successful. As author Sue Kobar explains in this feature story, IHC’s desire to attract younger volunteers has now expanded the concept of what the friends do together to include opportunities for much shorter, focused, and task-specific volunteering. While maintaining the same one-to-one premise, IHC implemented skill-based volunteering to support a person with intellectual disability as he or she sets out to learn a new skill (like using public transportation, for instance) or to achieve a personal goal (say, attend a Zumba class). 

As Kobar explains, these shorter-term assignments are a win-win for all involved. Such opportunities, which allow volunteers to set the time commitment to fit the project, have attracted younger volunteers to IHC who may very well be on the road to long-term volunteering. And along the way, the people supported by IHC learn new life skills. 

The world is evolving and volunteers with it. Today’s volunteers have diverse lifestyles, preferences, and needs that must be accounted for when volunteer managers develop volunteer roles and fine-tune their personal leadership approaches. That said, one thing remains constant: the key psychological processes that drive human behavior.

New discoveries in brain science, psychology, and human behavior are disrupting business as usual and creating new opportunities to connect, collaborate, and mobilize volunteers for the greater good. In this feature article, volunteer engagement consultant and trainer Tobi Johnson presents four well-researched brain phenomena that she argues can be strategically tapped to engage and sustain volunteer participation at your organization.

Volunteering is generally presented very seriously – largely because many of the causes volunteers support are very serious. But not all. And even grim situations can evoke laughter, since a sense of humor is a great coping mechanism.

Humor is also a great communication tool, especially when it tells the truth about a situation. In this Voices feature, we present examples of effective humor used in recruiting, training, and recognizing volunteers. These include YouTube postings, blog and newsletter entries, and cartoons. When can you provoke a smile and also generate action?