Charity Volunteers - Ten Top Tips For Recruitment

Recruiting charity volunteers is a vital mission for many non profit organisations. Volunteers are needed for day to day tasks and for special fundraising events. Without the efforts of these hard-working volunteers many charities would not be able to function at all. Yet so often recruiting these vital helpers is left to chance, word of mouth or relying on friends and family. This can result in too few helpers or too many which is actually just as bad as no-one likes to be hanging around with nothing to do, especially if you have given up some of your own free time.

Properly organising the recruitment of charity volunteers, tracking numbers and managing your volunteers effectively is really important.

Here are a few tips to that will help with recruitment.

1. Design A Simple Contact Form - Make it easy for people to give you their details. At any fundraising event have a clipboard with some simple volunteer forms on it. Keep it handy and encourage people to sign up. If possible put one person in charge of it. It makes you look organised and professional and means bits of paper with phone numbers etc will not get lost.

2. Bring A Buddy - Use your current volunteers to recruit their friends. Make sure that when allocating roles they can be working together if possible.

3. Hold A Recruitment Event ... BUT DONT CALL IT THAT! - A small social event is a great way to collect contact details of potential helpers. This works brilliantly for parent teacher associations - A new parent's barbecue at the start of term is a great way to get them signed up for plans and programmes later in the year, and of course find out if they have any useful skills or contacts.

4. Use The Local Press And Radio - Many will offer free listings to charities. Make it as simple as possible for people to contact you.

5. Use Students - Students can make great volunteers as they try to get some experience for their CV's. Helping out in a charity office or at events provides real life experience and impresses potential employers.

6. Keep Up To Date Records - Make sure you are keeping records of people who have helped in the past and contact them again.

7. Define Roles - When putting a shout out for volunteers try to have specific roles in mind that you can suggest to people. People like to know what they are signing up for.

8. Brand Your Team - Give them a name The St Mary's Angels, the Maia Lane Fete Team. Anything will do but it builds the idea of belonging and commitment.

9. Kit Out Your Team - This builds on the last one but matching T shirts, tabbards or hats is a great way to build team spirit and make people feel part of something important. At the very least stickers help give your team an identity. Things like this also show potential volunteers that there is something special to be part of. The word volunteer on the back of a T shirt or tabbard also helps show your organisation in a good light to the public. - something people give up their time for must be worth supporting.

10. Make your fundraising events as fun and interesting as possible!!