31 Recruitment Tips

1. Offer power point presentations or video programs illustrating clients being served by volunteers for use at condominium association meetings in your area.
2. Offer a program on ways to become involved to large companies for use in their pre-retirement seminars.
3. Talk to the manager of your local cable TV program at a high school or college station to present a program on your agency.
4. Never walk away from a meeting where you have given a talk about your agency without getting the name and contact information of everyone who was interested. Get back to these people within one week if possible.
5. When you are going to make a presentation to a large group, take several volunteers with you both to talk about their own experience and to help you deal with interested applicants.
6. Get lists of other organizations in your area to see if they can help your recruitment effort by advertising your program, offering you time on their meeting agendas, distributing written information to their membership, posting notices on bulletin boards, etc. Churches are especially good at this.
7. Have someone do research on clubs, groups, schools, etc., who have as part of their activities a project similar to yours. People in those programs are excellent prospective recruits for your program.
8. Since a tool that augments recruiting is publicity, consider ways to get your story (of clients, not organizational history) across, such as identifying businesses that buy newspaper ad space and asking them to plug your cause and how people can become involved.
9. Work with other volunteer groups in your community to sponsor a volunteer fair at a shopping mall or company.
10. The 211 Service or your local volunteer center can help you advertise for volunteers on their websites or in the newspaper.
11. Get churches to announce your needs to their congregations.
12. Contact high school and college department heads in any subject areas that coincide with your agency’s purpose to see if volunteering with you can become part of a class assignment.
13. Talk to personnel directors of companies, explaining volunteer opportunities and ask if they can direct retirees and current employees to you.
14. Create a “Resource Inventory” file of groups, individuals, media, clubs, businesses, etc. List name, contact information, past history of collaboration, publications and all other useful information.
15. Don’t forget that you can recruit whole groups to help you with a project. Recruit the National Guard to serve as safety marshals fro your special event. Let the Lions Club co-sponsor and operate your Jailathon. Get the Toastmasters Club to serve as your Speakers Bureau.
16. When trying to involve minorities as volunteers, find leaders in that community and recruit them to recruit their peers.
17. When trying to enlist a teacher, pastor, or leader of some group, take one of their members with you to help persuade them. Make sure this person is both committed to speak and informed about your agency.
18. Speak the language of the person you are trying to recruit. Ask yourself, “what do we do that would be of interest to them?” and highlight this in your presentation.
19. When trying to recruit a group, look up its creed or mission and use some of the wording in your presentation. Don’t overdo it.
20. Always tell why you are personally committed to your work when enlisting others, since it personalizes the job you are seeking to fill. If you aren’t personally committed, recruit someone else to do the recruitment.
21. Always recruit volunteers on the basis of their service to clients, not the needs of the agency. People work for people, not things.
22. When trying to recruit businesses, look up their advertising slogan and build it into your presentation.
23. Tell people what they will do, how long they will be expected to do it and who will benefit.
24. Remember that you’re trying to remove people’s reason for saying “NO”, not twist their arms into volunteering.
25. Never use guilt when trying to recruit.
26. Be honest and up front with people when trying to recruit. Do not lie about or minimize the work or the time needed.
27. Avoid “First warm-body-through-the-door” methods or recruitment. If you can’t get the right person, don’t take anybody.
28. Ask grocers to stuff flyers into grocery bags about your program.
29. Break large volunteer jobs into smaller components that recruit people on these lesser time-consuming jobs.
30. Be careful about recruiting people to titles without explaining the actual job functions and responsibilities. “Secretary” can mean different things to different people.
31. Diagram where your potential volunteers will fit into the overall pattern of work, this will help you identify where to target your volunteer recruitment methods to get the best possible match for your pattern of work.