Recruiting Volunteers with Two Simple Marketing Strategies When recruiting volunteers do you post to VolunteerMatch, your website, and social media and call it good? Ask volunteers and staff to tell their friends and you’re golden? Send an email blast to your entire list and pray for the best? Maybe these will work, but perhaps you [...]
How to Unlock Service-Learning's Power for Your Nonprofit Service-learning offers a unique opportunity for nonprofits to connect with students who are actively seeking volunteer experiences that support their professional and career development. According to SOURCE, the community engagement and service-learning center for the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Schools of Public Health, Nursing, and Medicine, service-learning [...]
How to Build an Awesome Volunteer Network A colleague and I were chatting today about the ever-present issue of finding enough volunteers to support your cause. We seem to focus all our attention on the individual we hope to recruit instead of taking a look at how we can use our volunteer networks and larger [...]
What is the #1 thing that creates loyal customers? It’s the social construct of reciprocity. Reciprocity is one of those social norms we live by. No matter where we come from, we feel obligated to return a favor. But, how can this concept work for volunteer programs?
I have a new friend who is an engineering professor at a local university. He’s been struggling with implementing a new student service program in one of their dorms. He asked for suggestions, so I thought I’d share them with my readers, too.
In the midst of scandals and declining trust, businesses are increasingly concerned with maintaining a positive brand reputation in the public eye. This represents a potential windfall for nonprofits who are looking to leverage needed resources from the business community, including volunteer support. So, what does buisness want?
How to Engage the New Remote Volunteers In Part I of this post, I discussed the changing nature of the workplace and how technological advances affect how we can work with remote volunteers. In today’s world, most volunteers are both virtual and mobile -- even those that work on-site -- because many already access information, [...]
Whether you are trying to recruit volunteers, raise money, or advocate for an increased budget there’s nothing quite like a captivating testimonial to build support. The only problem is that it’s hard to come up with factual stories “on demand” when you need them. That’s where storybanking comes in
To help nonprofit leaders better persuade others to support their missions, I've been studying what motivates human behavior, more specifically what motivates us to switch direction, away from our well-worn path toward something new.
How to Mobilize Communities: Top Lessons from the Women's March If you followed the meteoric response to the Women's March on Washington, you can't help but admire this tremendous feat of community organizing, resulting in the largest march in US history. Nonprofits, activists, and leaders of volunteers can learn a lot about how to mobilize [...]