Using Third Party Web Sites or Apps / Volunteer Matching Web Sites or Apps to Recruit Volunteers

It's a mistake I see again and again: an organization posts one announcement for all of its volunteering assignments on of any of the seemingly endless numbers of volunteer recruitment / matching web sites, instead of doing one posting for each volunteering role. The result is that those organizations miss out on volunteers, who never find those opportunities in their search.

Instead of one posting for a volunteer to help with web site management, and another posting for someone to help with social media, and another for someone to staff a front desk twice a week, etc., the mistake these organizations make is putting up just one posting with all of the various volunteering opportunities in that one place.

Even worse: some state or regional offices that oversee smaller affiliate offices often won't allow their affiliate offices to create individual accounts on these web sites so that they can post individual volunteering opportunities; instead, the state or regional office posts one general announcement on the various web sites that list volunteering opportunities and believe this will somehow be understood by different people in different parts of the state -- or the entire country: that there are a variety of unique volunteering roles in each community affiliated with the state or national organization.

Imagine if companies did this for employment: instead of individual job roles on Indeed or other job sites, they posted just one big "Hey, we're hiring for lots of paid work! Here's a big long list..." No credible company does that on those job web sites. So why do you think it would work for unpaid roles - for volunteering?

Using a mega/general announcement (a kind of "cattle call") for volunteers on a third party web site / volunteer matching app (or even your own organization's web site) instead of listing individual volunteering opportunities separately shows a profound misunderstanding of how people want to use the Internet to look for volunteering opportunities, and means potential volunteers cannot find the service opportunities they are looking for.

Different people want different kinds of volunteering, and they look for volunteering in different ways. And there is no one, magic volunteering advertisement or listing that will reach all of these people. That's why your organization needs to list EACH volunteering role separately in third party volunteering web sites and volunteer matching apps.

People - potential volunteers - want to be able search for:

• short-term opportunities for a specific city or neighborhood
• short-term opportunities for a specific time period (a particular month, two weeks, etc.)
• opportunities that require a particular amount of hours each week or month (less than five, 5 - 10, etc.)
• opportunities that require a specific skill set for a specific project (paper newsletter design, online newsletter design, camp management, database design with a particular software, management of a one-day event, translating a document from English to Spanish, etc.)
• opportunities that could be done from a remote location, such as a home or work computer (paper newsletter design, online newsletter design, database design with a particular software, management of a one-day online event, translating a document from English to Spanish, etc.)

If they search for specific opportunities to fit a specific schedule or interest, but only get a general "We need volunteers of all kinds" listing for your organization, they usually don't even read it -- they move on to the organization that has the specific listing: for the web manager, for the office assistant, for the weekend driver, etc.

Again, my message for national and state offices that have smaller affiliate organizations: not allowing individual affiliate offices to post their own volunteering opportunities into whatever is the most third party site or app in their geographic area denies them the flexibility and specificity they need to recruit volunteers; the office in Tacoma needs volunteers in different roles than the office in Louisville, and their needs change month-to-month, maybe even week-to-week. It's fine to come up with a standard for all affiliates to use in their volunteer recruitment message, to ensure a certain standard, but don't limit where they can post such, or prevent them from doing so at all.

You can still have that general message on third party web sites, but encourage each organization or affiliate office to type each individual opportunity into a third-party web site of their choice. As an organization or affiliate office should have a written, detailed description of each volunteer role (and these should already be posted on their own web site), this is largely a matter of cutting and pasting into an online form.

And remember, volunteers can help you with online recruitment! A volunteer could serve as your online recruitment manager, for instance, responsible for getting new opportunities up quickly onto whatever volunteer matching web sites or apps you might want to use, keeping postings up-to-date, and doing an analysis every month to see which online tools is resulting in the most volunteers.

Advice for how to write assignments on these services:

There are a number of things to keep in mind when writing your online volunteering assignments, that will help make them more attractive to potential volunteers:

Spelling matters!
Poorly-spelled assignments reflect badly on your organization.  

Be clear re: commitment required
Be clear about how much time you think the assignment will require overall or weekly, and how many weeks you are asking the volunteer to commit to do the assignment.

Be Descriptive
For instance, this is an online volunteering assignment description for the Asociación Cultural TEATROVIVO on the UN's Online Volunteering Service several years ago:

This description has a lot of details about the assignment, what it will be like for participating online volunteers, and how online volunteers will benefit the organization's program. This kind of assignment is much more likely to attract volunteers than just a list of all the work that's to be done.

So, don't just ask for a translator; talk about the kinds of materials the volunteer will be working with, and how the volunteer's work will benefit those your organization serves. Don't just ask for a web developer; note why a web site is important to the organization, how its development will impact the organization, and about how much ready-to-use text and graphics your can provide to the volunteer.

• The Fundamentals of Recruiting Volunteers
  Free resources to help nonprofits, NGOs, government programs, community organizations and others quickly get the volunteers they need. All of these are written by me, Jayne Cravens. These are based not on theory but actual practice: this advice is what I myself follow in recruiting volunteers, and it's been altered over the years as trends and tools come and go. I also network regularly with other managers of volunteers and I volunteer myself. Unlike other consultants, my advice comes much more from practice than theory.
   
• Recruiting Local Volunteers To Increase Diversity Among the Ranks
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• Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
  There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential "tech" volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such short-term projects. This is a list of short-term projects for "tech" volunteers -- assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a couple of months to complete.
   
• Please, No More Volunteer-Matching Web Sites
  Please, no more volunteer matching sites for North America. There are plenty. In fact, in my opinion, there are too many. If you insist on launching such a site, I offer this advice.
   
• Lessons from onlinevolunteering.org
  Some key learnings from directing the UN's Online Volunteering service from February 2001 to February 2005, including support materials for those using the service to host online volunteers.
   Nonprofit Organizations and Online Social Networking (OSN): Advice and Commentary