by Aaron Viles of Care2
There is a limit to how many people a nonprofit can hire, but that doesn’t mean there’s a cap on how many people an organization can recruit to do good work. Volunteering has a long history in the United States, but finding active volunteers and keeping them engaged with your cause can be an ongoing challenge.
These days, the internet provides new ways to meet that challenge. You can not just engage a devoted few volunteers, but mobilize a movement of people that can do more to improve social good. Why recruit volunteers online? Here are a few good reasons:
They help you get more work done in more places.
The heart of volunteering has always been providing opportunities for people to give back to their community or further a near-and-dear cause. Traditionally—at least for the cadre of volunteers whose experience is limited to service learning requirements in school—that often meant on-the-ground work like visiting with the elderly at a nursing home or attending an organized river or roadside clean up. These are great ways to contribute, but require a lot of coordination from the sponsoring group and limit the pool of potential volunteers to those who are nearby and available at a set time.
Contrast this with internet engagement. Online, organizations don’t need to expend effort trying to corral folks to a specific place (virtual or otherwise), but can instead meet them where they are, like asking supporters to share a petition on Facebook or issuing a call to action on Twitter. It allows people to get involved on their own schedule, so they can juggle work, making dinner, taking the kids to baseball practice and myriad other responsibilities without having to sacrifice the chance to volunteer.
Administrative work, like organizing pet adoption events or designing a rally sign, can be done as easily on a home computer as one in a nonprofit’s office. Volunteers need not even live or work in your community: the mission of a conservation organization is furthered if a tree is planted in Utah or Massachusetts. Recruiting and engaging volunteers online means nonprofits get to expand the definition and slate of volunteer work, as well as their reach.
They’re your evangelists.
Word of mouth is powerful. Every person that engages with your organization is a potential ambassador to their friends, family, neighbors and colleagues. In many ways, volunteer recruitment is a numbers game. There are plenty of people in every community with the time, ability and inclination to volunteer with your cause, but you need to find a way to reach them. Volunteers can help you penetrate new networks.
Social media amplifies this exponentially. While social media use varies by age, even the least-networked people (generally people born from the mid-1920s to the early-1940s) have an average of more than 100 Facebook friends. The best-networked group—young adults age 18-24—have an average of 649 Facebook friends. Each social media share by a volunteer reaches a significant portion of this network, both spreading your message, but also expanding your potential pool of supporters and volunteers, many of whom may be more likely to get involved based on a positive review from a trusted source.
Website and social media platforms make money by helping companies and nonprofits target their ads to the people most likely to be interested in them, based on reams of self-entered data about interests, activities and demographics. This data is critically helpful, but limited to each individual’s willingness to share online. Our friends and family know us better than Facebook and Twitter ever will, so getting a volunteer to share your message or opportunities for involvement with their like-minded network or specific people is the best targeting of all. Plus, it’s free!
They’re a source of fresh ideas.
At its core, the internet is a repository of information—historically in the form of static content, but now as a medium for access to people and expertise through networks. How many of us have booked a vacation, then turned to our social media networks for advice about where to eat and what to see?
Your volunteers give you access to their networks’ collective knowledge about how to make a difference. Social media allows for real two-way conversations between institutions and individuals, which can foster information-sharing and cross-sector learning that improves process and outcomes. As with all volunteer engagement, taking full advantage of volunteer value requires relinquishing some control and decentralizing operations. Allowing more people to participate not only increases your impact through sheer volume of action, but keeps your organization nimble, responsive and relevant to the communities and issues you work on.
Aaron Viles is a Senior Grassroots Organizer for Care2. He works with citizen authors on The Petition Site to create petitions that will win concrete victories for animals, the environment, and other progressive causes. Prior to Care2 he spent decades working within the non-profit environmental advocacy field. Aaron honed his craft while working for Gulf Restoration Network, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Faithful America. He began his career with Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing. When not in front of a screen or on a conference call, Aaron can be found doting on his daughters, pedaling furiously to keep up with the peloton, and serving as a volunteer leader for the Sierra Club, Dogwood Alliance and his church.