169 – How to Meet 3 Core Volunteer Needs Right from the Start

July 3, 2025

Episode #169: How to Meet 3 Core Volunteer Needs Right from the Start 

In this episode of Volunteer Nation, Tobi Johnson dives into the essential human needs that drive a meaningful and rewarding volunteer experience—safety, connection, and purpose. 

Tobi explores how creating a predictable, emotionally safe environment lays the foundation for trust. She explains why fostering strong peer connections is just as crucial as delivering information, and how helping volunteers see the direct impact of their efforts brings deeper meaning to their service. 

Volunteer Needs – Episode Highlights

• [03:03] – The Emotional Needs of Volunteers 
• [06:21] – Core Human Needs: Safety, Connection, and Meaning 
• [10:54] – Meeting Volunteer’s Safety 
• [18:36] – Meeting Volunteer’s Connection 
• [24:07] – Meeting Volunteer’s Meaning 

Volunteer Needs – Quotes from the Episode 

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report 
• VolunteerPro Impact Lab 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #166: Train Volunteers with This Simple 4-Step Framework 
• Volunteer Nation Podcast Episode #111: New Volunteer Orientation: What to Include, What to Leave Out 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #169 Transcript: How to Meet 3 Core Volunteer Needs Right from the Start 

Tobi: Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I hope that if you’re in the northern hemisphere, you’re enjoying your summer. Maybe getting a little time off If you’re in the Southern hemisphere. I hope you’re enjoying your winter. It’s nice here in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve been enjoying some sunshine. 

Not always the case in Western Washington, but I’m looking out my window here at our place up by Hood Canal. It’s gorgeous. The birds are out. We’ve got a hummingbird feeder going and watching hummingbirds, and we’ve got our garden going. We just pruned a bunch of our fruit trees. Yes, we know it’s not the right time of year to prune, but our trees were out of control, so we discovered new types of fruits. We didn’t realize we had a pear tree. So, it’s been fun and really satisfying to get to work on our new property that we’ve been here in our five-acre little homestead. Little small holding. It’s just been fun and doing something that satisfies us is a huge human pull. 

We love to do things that we enjoy. We love to do things that have meaning for us. We love to do things that make us safe, that make us feel safe, that make us feel like we’re moving forward. And that’s the way I feel about our property, that every week we can make some kind of update to it or fix something or get something growing. 

I just planted some chamomile seeds. I’ve got a lot of other things going in the garden, but I planted some chamomile seeds, and I love the hope that’s there when you’re planting seeds and, and vegetables, fruits, herbs, et cetera. Flowers from seed. It’s just a sense of hope, and so it’s a lot of fun to think about what gives us pleasure and what gives us a sense of meaning and satisfaction and deep satisfaction, and those are the things that we kind of stick with. 

I’ve been a Master gardener volunteer. I’ve mentioned it on the podcast before for about 10 years. Next year will be my 10th year, so a decade of Master Gardner volunteering. And it’s been a wonderful experience, and I don’t have any plans for stopping, and it got me thinking about volunteer needs and what are the emotional needs of our volunteers and what are the things we can do that make volunteering deeply meaningful for people. 

We are the architects of the volunteer experience as leaders of volunteers and volunteering organizations, that there are things we can do to create the requirements for folks to have this deep experience. Certainly, we find our own deep experiences on our own, but there’s also ways to create those experiences for your volunteers and I start thinking about this and shared some of these ideas with our teamwork. Makes the dream work volunteer supervisions. Essentials Certificate Core students shout out to our students that have been participating. We’re in our second week. It’s been a lot of fun. People are very engaged and really learning how to lead. 

And I shared some of this information with the students during a coaching call, and I thought maybe I’d bring some of this over to the podcast as well. In particular, I want to focus on. Offering volunteers and meeting volunteers, offering them the opportunity to meet some emotional needs. Now, when we think about inducting volunteers or orienting volunteers, 

We often think about training, and I’ve done some training, some episodes on training checkout just a few weeks ago, Volunteer Nation, episode 166, where I talked about training volunteers with a simple four step framework that I use, and then episode 111 where I talk about new volunteer orientation, what to include and what to leave out, but that’s not really what we’re talking about today. 

Certainly those types of activities can fulfill the informational needs. Uh, of volunteers, but what about the emotional needs? Are we meeting those needs? Are we connecting on a relational level with our volunteers? Are we ensuring that volunteers are enjoying their experience? I. Remember, volunteering is leisure time for most folks. 

So, we want to make sure it’s fun, otherwise people don’t stick around. We need to take both the informational and emotional volunteer needs into consideration so that we can help. Volunteers experience deeply meaningful volunteering and be satisfied with what they’re doing. And what our organizations will get in return for this investment is future volunteer loyalty, robust word of mouth marketing for our opportunities and higher retention rates. 

When people feel emotionally connected, they tend to stick around. So, today I want to explore this in more detail by focusing on what our research has shown our three core human needs. This has been established by psychological and neuroscience research, and these three core human needs are safety, connection, and meeting. 

And I want to talk about what these are and then translate them into. Actionable steps you can take and initiatives or activities or interventions or things you can do within your program to spark some of these meetings, some of these volunteer needs. So, the need for safety is an important one right now. 

I don’t think everyone feels safe in the world. I don’t think I’m crazy for saying that, but safety is really. Human beings are quite skittish. We want to avoid harm. That harm may be IMI emotional, that harm may be physical, that harm may be spiritual. Human beings have a real need to avoid harm and feel safe. 

And that’s important because if we didn’t feel safe or we, if we, if we didn’t worry about our own safety, our, our species probably would not have survived over the millennia. So, when we think of. Safety with our volunteers. It could ha be in the form of feeling like we belong. It could be in the form of feeling like we will be accepted. 

There’s a fair amount of social anxiety out there. I think we underestimated a bit that it’s sometimes nerve wracking to be in a room full of strangers, and so we want to make sure our volunteers feel safe now. There’s also safety in communities. If people are going to new neighborhoods, people may, there are some volunteer opportunities where safety is a big issue, like in a natural disaster, for example, I. 

We want to make sure our volunteers can feel safe. The other, the second core human need that kind of dovetails with volunteer needs is connection. So, attaching to others, belonging, friendship. This is a core human need and volunteering is a way to make that connection. That’s how many people meet that need. 

Obviously, people make friends, et cetera, but that need to be. Social is something that’s important to human beings. And so, volunteering offers that opportunity. And we saw during the pandemic when people were in lockdown that there were serious issues with mental health because people couldn’t be together. 

And so, it’s a huge human need. The third human need is meaning we want to. Set goals approach. Our goals and rewards have purpose, make progress in our lives. Everybody is moving towards something, or at least in their mind, they want to be moving towards something. And that’s a huge human core human need that we are making. 

Meaning that our life is not without meaning. And really volunteering can help support that when people are making a difference, when you hear people say, I, I want to make a difference, or I’m making a difference in my community, that is about around meeting that human need of meaning. And so. With safety connection and meaning. 

They are core human needs, but they also, we can ensure that those volunteer needs are met. ’cause each volunteer is a human except for our, our animal volunteers. I think we have a few of those out there, but our guide dogs, et cetera. But I want to talk about these in a little more detail about how we might operationalize these to best meet volunteer needs. 

Specifically, when volunteers are early in their experience with our organization. This is the most. Sort of fragile time in a volunteer’s lifecycle with us. And so, we want to do what we can to, again, be an architect of the volunteer experience so that we can best meet those volunteer needs. So, let’s start with meeting volunteer needs around safety. 

So, here’s some things you can do. Safety is about being able to predict the future, right? So understanding where our volunteers are headed and what they expect, and level setting expectations. And sometimes expectations aren’t. Aren’t ones we can meet. So, we need to set expectations. Is really one of the ways of meeting the need of safety, is to surface those volunteer expectations arly on. 

So, what I mean by that is asking during screening and matching, what do you want to get out of your volunteering? What do you imagine volunteering to be like? And people are pretty humble, but you’ve got to have a conversation about this. And sometimes their expectations can’t be met by the organization, and that’s a time to be able to educate folks so that they feel like they can predict a little bit about what’s going to happen with them. 

Another is when people feel safe. When they are feeling like they have commonality with other people. They have shared purpose that they understand, and their worldview is very similar to other people’s worldview. Now, when we don’t look alike, we don’t always assume that people have a similar worldview or a similar lived experience, but we must set up experiences and time and space for people to have conversation about who they are, what their values are, what they’re excited about in terms of their volunteering. There are commonalities amongst your volunteers. And there’s always one core commonality, and that is that they want to support your mission. 

And so, you can always find a middle ground whether or not volunteers come from the same community or same lived experience or similar lived experiences or not. And so, if we make space during, for example, volunteer orientations for people to have conversation, even facilitated conversation, they will find commonalities. 

They will surface commonalities between one another. And so that can enhance this feeling of safety. Certainly, also having guidelines that protect folks. So, if there are guidelines around conflict resolution, if there are guidelines around diversity, equity, and inclusion, if there are guidelines around health and safety, for example, these all can help. 

Create a sense of, a better sense of safety and meet that volunteer need of safety. And so again, there’s different ways to approach this. You also might want to ask new volunteers. If you’re polling, you can ask them about their level of safety, how safe they feel if you’re in a neighborhood or, or volunteers are working in an area that isn’t particularly safe. 

And sometimes this is the case. I know I used to work in the Tenderloin. And other neighborhoods in San Francisco in my work. And I would walk from one of our offices to our other office with my briefcase and my work wear, and I would have to keep my eyes open on that street, those streets I was walking on. 

But I had to get down to my other site and get my work done. And so, I would walk to, if we have volunteers coming, want to help them understand how to be safe in different environments. So, safety’s important. There’s lots of things to think about, and you can think every organization sort of has a different take on safety. 

But I would focus not only on physical and health and safety, but also that emotional and spiritual safety that people need to feel. And harm may be done at some point. You know, I went to a fantastic session at Points of Light with Brianna Duris about repairing harm and microaggression and macroaggression in communities when organizations have done harm to marginalized communities. 

And so, we’ve got to think about that as well. Brianna made wonderful recommendations around owning up and taking specific steps towards repair. So. Safety may have to do with history that maybe you didn’t have anything to do with, but you’re going to now have to deal with. And so again, there’s a variety of ways to approach this. 

You don’t have to do all of them, but as you start thinking about inducting new volunteers, consider how you can create a safe space for everybody. So important, particularly in these times. Let’s take a pause for a quick break and after I’ll continue. I’ve got a simpler ways you can meet volunteer needs by meeting those three core needs. 

And I’m going to talk about the two additional core human needs, which are all about connection and meaning. So don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.  

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Okay, we’re back. And let’s continue our chat about simple ways you can meet volunteer needs by addressing core human needs. Before the break, we were talking about safety and avoiding harm, emotional, physical, and spiritual harm, and all the different ways we might think about safety. 

This next thing I want to talk about is connection. Connection is about attaching to other’s belonging. Friendship connection is really. About people feeling, you know, and safety in some ways is a prerequisite to connection. If we don’t feel safe with folks, we’re probably not going to feel connected to them. 

One of the things you can do to help foster connection, obviously I talked about safety and having conversation and space for conversation to unearth commonalities we didn’t even think we had. Right. But we can also foster solidarity in volunteers, so we can encourage through norms, encourage volunteers to support one another through informal and formal means. 

Think about how you can build teamwork and solidarity in volunteers. Now some ways are to, you can think about how groups form solidarity. Sometimes it’s about a shared set of goals and making progress towards those goals, which also meets that third. Core human need of meaning. You can think about how teams feel like a team because they’re wearing similar clothes, so maybe volunteers have the same T-shirt, or they have a team name that they’re part of. 

You can see how that creates a connection. You can create connection by matching volunteers with mentors or peer buddies where they can start, especially for volunteers who are more introverted or not going to walk around the room, shaking hands and introducing themselves. Sometimes it helps to have a buddy. 

Sometimes solidarity can be formed through gratitude, so you can. Kickoff meetings with gratitude, people giving gratitude. You can set up kudos boards, either online or in volunteer areas where people can give shoutouts to one another. There’s lots of ways to foster solidarity. You can so foster solidarity through setting up norms. 

And mentioned this just a minute ago. So, norms might be, this is how we, this is how we work together. This is how we consider all points of view. This is how we make decisions. This is how we surface disagreements and resolve conflict. So, these are the ways that we do things around here because we care about each other. 

You as a leader can do a lot. Whether you’re an executive or a volunteer manager can do a lot about around fostering solidarity, just in the words you use rather than using you. Use we, right? And so, there’s lots of ways you can also facilitate connection by coordinating. Formal team building activities as part of your orientation, training, appreciation, social activities. 

There are a variety of ways to do team building. Sometimes there are fun activities at a table where people are working through a problem. Sometimes team building. Is doing self-reflection and sharing around their experience. Sometimes team building is doing something outside together, sometimes doing something outside of the normal work environment. 

Sometimes team building is about breaking bread together, so there’s lots of, you know, you can Google forever and ever team building activities, but it’s really team building. Is most strong when people are working on a challenge together. So, team building does happen around, volunteer teams are built and strengthened through volunteer projects. 

So, volunteering itself is a team building activity as well. And so tons of ways to foster connection. And solidarity amongst volunteers and even making sure that staff are introducing them themselves to volunteers and that folks have spaces to get to know one another. That is another way to foster connection, especially volunteers’ connection to the organization. 

Simple. Actions like greeting volunteers. Some organizations have the 10-foot rule. If you walk by somebody and they’re within 10 feet of you, you always greet them with a smile. I’ve been doing that on my road here. I don’t greet everybody with. I greet them with a smile, but I wave. And there’s some, it’s interesting in some neighborhoods, everybody who passes, everybody waves when they’re in a car or they’re walking down the street, doesn’t matter if they know the person or not, they, they hold up their hand and they wave. 

Well, when I got here to our new community and we moved in, I noticed not everybody was waving. So, I thought, you know what? I’m going to start waving and see what happens. Well, you know what? More people wave now, and so we’re connecting and we’re saying, I see you. You see me. We’re in the same community together. 

Whether or not people are doing work in the community, or they live in the community, people feel connected. Or a little bit more connected. So those are different ways, those types of norms. Now let’s talk about our final way to meet volunteer needs, and that is through meaning making. This is important because volunteers, if they believe that their volunteering has no meaning or has no purpose, they won’t keep doing it for long because the reason people volunteer, I often say this is not because they want to work for free. 

It’s because they want to make a difference. So, if we’re treating volunteers as unpaid laborers. That’s not really what they’re in for. That’s not what they signed up for. They signed up for moving the needle on something, for making progress. That’s a core human need. And so, when we think about meeting volunteers through meaning I. 

There are some things you can do. You can facilitate conversation, particularly I like to at new volunteer orientation, I like to go around the room and ask people why does volunteering with this particular cause matter to you? I. What, what resonates with you about this? And the most fantastic stories are told during this time; people find connection with one another. 

People see that they have shared meaning in their work and that their work is important. So that’s one way. You can also create meaning and help volunteers feel a sense of meaning in their work, is to make sure they’re matched well with the role. And I like to call it matching task with calling. 

So, what is that volunteer’s calling? Is it working with people? Is it working behind the scenes? Where do they feel best? Suited to help. Where do they feel they have special sauce? Where do they feel like they have some superhero skills to share? Where would they feel that they could make the most impact and making sure that they have a meaningful role to fulfill. 

We also of course, can reinforce the greater good, both the impact, well, let’s start with impact reinforcing with volunteers and reporting back to them the impact they’re making. One of my friends used to volunteer for food bank, and at the end of every shift they would weigh all the food and or as they were working on their shift, they would weigh food and at the end they would report back to all the volunteers who were on shift, how many pounds of food they had distributed. 

And so that, that made people feel like, you know what?  

This is really making meaning. You can also reinforce the greater good to society that volunteering. Is important not only to individuals and the people volunteers’ impact, but also to communities and society as a whole. The more people are engaged in work in the community, the more people and more experiences we can empathize with because we’ve been able to, to bear witness, but also. 

The more we are civically engaged, the more educated we are about the greater community’s needs. And so that civic engagement is really part of a healthy society. And so, by volunteering, they are contributing to that healthy society. So, I think that’s important to call out to volunteers. 

Sometimes they don’t realize that they’re making a bigger difference. They’re making a big difference inside the community. Volunteering is impacting them as well as human beings. And also, they’re contributing to this greater good across society. And so, I think that’s important to point out. I also think, as I kind of intimated before storytelling of any kind, anytime we can get volunteers reflecting on their experience, the more they tell stories, the more they make meaning. 

Telling stories is how human beings. Understand, uh, legacies. For example, family legacies, the legacies of their work. They understand their context. So human beings have used storytelling to help us build a greater understanding of our context and our family. My grandmother. Had on my mother’s side, grandma Lucy, 10 kids, 20 some grandkids, 20 some great grandkids. 

I think she had about 12 great, great grandkids. She died at 101. And there are many stories in our family that are told about my grandmother or that my grandmother said that we repeat in particular the conversations we’re having. And the reason those stories are repeated is because we’re reminding people about a value or a way of behaving that is common to our sort of clan, our family tribe, right? 

And so, it’s very interesting to think about how we might do that with volunteering and tell stories and have volunteers relate their stories of volunteering. So, I hope this has helped you think. More about the relational side of orienting new volunteers, giving volunteers a warm welcome. How to meet those three core volunteer needs right from the start, the ones that are aligned with core human needs. 

Those needs of safety, connection and meaning. So important. And if you just focus on those three simple core needs, you will be doing so much for your volunteers and you, you, you don’t have to think about other needs. Those are the core, those are the most important. So, we don’t have to go beyond that now in informational needs. 

Whole other side of the story. What are the guidelines? What are the rules, what are the, all that good stuff. We always, uh, I think we already do a pretty good job sharing all that. I think the relational side is the side we need to work on. And so, think about this. It’s not just about being courteous, it’s just, it’s not just about how do we give a warm welcome per se, but it’s really about how can we create a depth of experience for those who want to support us and are giving us their most precious talent, which is, or their most precious asset, which is their time. 

And when we do that, when folks have a very meaningful experience, they’re more likely to deepen their engagement with our organization, to talk about our organization to others, and to stay continuing to make meaning and to have a fantastic experience. So, when you take the time to understand the core human needs of safety, connection and meaning, and build them into your volunteer strategy, you can begin to build next level experiences that volunteers are drawn to and that fill them with a deep sense of satisfaction that they’re making a difference by bringing their best selves to your good cause. 

So, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. If you do, I hope you share it with a friend or colleague who could use a little inspiration. And if you would give us a review, a rating, and review, let us know how we’re doing. We love five-star reviews because it helps us get the word out better about what we’re doing here. But I appreciate you. I appreciate every one of you as listeners to the podcast. And I hope you’ll join me next week. Same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation.