5 Secrets From the Most Successful Volunteering Campaigns

Written by Michael Gorman is a highly skilled freelance writer and proofreader from the UK who currently works at assignment help Australia. He loves writing about soft skills, volunteering, and traveling. Being interested in everyday development, he writes various blog posts and discovers new aspects of human existence every day.

Volunteering is a nice activity anyone can do that comes with huge benefits, both for the volunteers and the community. There are many actors, singers, and celebrities that engage in volunteering experiences all over the world, mainly within disadvantaged communities.

Volunteering can be done not only during high school or college but while you work too. It helps you fight stress, manage and handle negative emotions and experiences, meet new people, and make friends, and it brings fun and fulfillment to your life.

Traveling with a purpose is on the rise and more and more people overall get engaged in volunteering activities. If in 2016 about 25% of people volunteered through an organization, in 2018 the percentage rose to 30.3. Volunteering activities can be organized across many domains, from helping poor communities with resources and education, to planting trees, collecting trash in nature, and organizing events for students.

But finding the right volunteers for your organization might seem complicated. Because it is volunteering, many people try working in more than one organization to find the niche they like. And you cannot blame them, as experimenting is an important part of life. The best thing you can do is to focus on what you can do to attract more volunteers, manage and handle a volunteering campaign.

By always considering these five secrets, you can start building and working on your own successful volunteering campaign.

Assess Your Needs

According to a study of college paper reviews, one of the biggest mistakes many leaders of NGOs do is not assessing their needs before starting the volunteering campaign. Depending on the event or activity you organize, you might need people to help you with logistics, photos, video, promotion, or fundraising.

The first secret to managing a victorious volunteering campaign is to know what you need. Many people would like to engage in volunteering activities and are willing to help, but first, you need to know where and how they can help you.

Ask yourself some questions, such as: Do I need volunteers only for this event or activity, or they can get involved in the long-term? Which are the domains where I do not have so much knowledge and that can be filled by a volunteer? What can they help me with?

Firstly, assess your needs and then start looking for volunteers, always in that order.

Recruit Effectively

According to some volunteering experts, many organizations experience a high turnover rate of volunteers because they fail to match their experience with the task.

Recruiting effectively is a secret you need to put to practice. After you have assessed your needs, you should know what you need and what you are looking for. However, you will likely meet people that are willing and open to learning new things and put them to practice just to help you.

So, the most important thing to keep in mind is to ask the applicants about their skills, experience, and interests. Like this, you can match them with the right role. Doing this rightly helps you increase the productivity of the volunteers, and so all the resources and time are spent in a good way.

Don’t automatically dismiss volunteers that don’t have all the skills you need from the start. Instead, meet them with an open mind and heart and keep in mind that sometimes the people that know the least are the most willing to learn new things, improve and develop themselves.

Set SMART goals

One of the most important secrets that help you assure continuity in your activities is setting SMART goals. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and helps you build certain skills that would help you accomplish those goals.

Goals help you organize your activity, assess your long-term needs, and they are one of the primary sources of short-term motivation. They help you acquire knowledge, learn new things, plan your time and resources effectively.

But to accomplish them, they need to be well-defined, so this is why you need to make them SMART. S stands for specific, M for measurable, A for achievable, R for realistic, and T for time-bounded.

So, following this, a goal for your volunteering campaign should sound as: I want to recruit 2 volunteers responsible for photos and filming for the next event within two weeks before the event.

Like this, it will be easier to analyze your efforts and behaviors and decide if you met your goal or not.

Keep Graphic Design Fresh

One of the most common ways to advertise the volunteering opportunity in your organization is by posting posters or attractive images on social media. Especially during these times, people spend more time online, so this might be the best solution.

If you have managed other volunteering campaigns before, the thing you need to know is that you should not use the same posters, images, or text. Instead, use fresher ones to catch the attention of the people that might be interested.

The thing is, people tend to overlook familiar items, photos, news, and so on. And if you use the same poster or a similar one, it is unlikely you will reach your target audience. Because they might have seen it before, there is nothing new that their eyes and brain notices, so they overlook it and go to the next one.

Share Examples

One of the most important things that could attract more applicants to your organization, is not only your cause but other volunteers too. If you already have some people you are working with for some time, ask them to help you promote this opportunity to others that might be interested.

This means that you use word-of-mouth to share this opportunity, but you can also build a nice online promotion campaign. You can collect testimonials from other volunteers where they share their experiences with you and what they have learned.

Conclusion

Building and managing a victorious volunteering campaign comes with challenges so that you work on improving and developing your skills at the same time. The thing you should start with is assessing your needs and creating specific volunteering roles.

Recruit effectively, be open to including people that do not have the knowledge necessary but are motivated to learn and set SMART goals. Lead by example, give your posters, and campaign a fresh look and share other volunteers’ experiences and opinions.

Head to our blog for more stories, tips, and volunteering inspiration! You can also check out our GivingWay – Volunteers, Donors & NGOs connect Facebook group to connect with other volunteers and nonprofits! 😁

The views expressed in this guest post are solely those of its author and do not necessarily reflect the views of GivingWay. The material and information contained on the GivingWay blog is for general information purposes only. GivingWay will not be liable for any false, inaccurate, inappropriate or incomplete information presented in the GivingWay blog.