How to get volunteers for your organization. Advertising your project in order to get the attention of potential volunteers and donors is extremely important. You can rely on many online platforms or agencies though most of them will turn out to be very expensive. They may charge you 50-100 euros per month to be subscribed on their database or ask you for a “intermediation” fee that usually represents 10% – 15% of the money paid by the volunteers. This raises the cost of the volunteer experiences and for this reason it is usually best to rely on agencies as  a “last resort”.

Subscribe on Voluntouring

Before we will write down a couple of suggestions for your organization, we would like to remind you that you can register your volunteer opportunity on our database as a host.

You can read our policy here.

Now, let´see what you can do to help your organization recruiting volunteers.

Post leaflets

Post leaflets and ADs in areas where potential volunteers usually hangout, for example: library bulletin boards, senior center bulletin boards and universities halls

Social Media marketing

Maybe even better than agencies, you should heavily rely on social media marketing – It is really vital in nowaday hyper-connected society!

Build your organization Facebook & Instagram page and post frequent photos and posts with well written descriptions. Also, build a nice website and keep it updated with as many pictures & news as possible. You can create a nice website for free with Google or WordPress, you don´t really need to invest a lot of money in it, as long as it is frequently updated!

Invest in photography.

Recruiting a skilled photographer can turn out very helpful. Ask you photographer friends to help you making a nice series of photos that you will then display in your website and social media pages. The photos should be of a good quality and they should represent your organization, the volunteer activities, the volunteers, the members of the organizations and the general environment.

Word of mouth

Heavily rely on word of mouth: make sure your first volunteers have a nice experience so that they can recommend your organization to their friends and friends of their friends. You could also ask them to be your organization testimonial and write an article to promote your organization and share their experience.

Volunteering is obviously not a vacation, so don´t be afraid to demand for serious work. At the same time don´t treat volunteers as free labourers, but try to make them feel comfortable with their tasks and make them feel part of “the family”.

Other ways to get volunteers:

• Advertise on as many volunteer sites as you know
• publish an announcement on Craig’s list
• Write to local, regional or national newspapers

Have a really good “motivational title” ready. You would need to explain why it’s a good idea for people to volunteer – also what they could benefit from?

Good luck with your search for volunteers 🙂