Volunteers play an important role in many successful nonprofits. Having good, consistent people dedicating their time and resources is critical to achieving your organizational goals and accomplishing your mission.

Some research shows that volunteerism is on the rise. In 2017, nearly one third of adults in the United States contributed time to some cause organization, the highest number in over a decade.

Despite their enthusiasm to join a cause, keeping volunteers in one organization can be quite challenging. 2018 saw 38% of volunteers leave the organization they volunteered with the previous year. More people might be joining, but they don’t necessarily stick around.

Our experience has shown that organizations keep volunteers longer when they feel organized, informed, and appreciated. Doing this requires a plan, one that involves resourcing these people and showing them that they add value to the organization.

Below we outlined three essential steps your nonprofit can take to retain your existing volunteer base.

Onboarding

Stepping into a new organization for the first time can be quite disorienting. Volunteers get won over by the nonprofit’s mission and vision, but on their first days, they will still be unfamiliar with the necessary processes, policies, and systems in place that will make them successful contributors. Onboarding helps orient your volunteers so they can feel secure and prepared to do the work needed of them.

Provide Inspiration

Successful onboarding starts with a formal volunteer orientation. Encore, a nonprofit that focuses on bridging generational gaps, explains that the best orientations begin with excitement. Share your organization’s mission, strategic plan, programs, and social impact with the volunteers and help them discover how their role helps the organization accomplish its goals.

Provide a Tour

Volunteers will also need to get oriented with the space they’ll operate within – whether it's an office building, a health clinic, a wildlife facility, or any other location. Some of this has to do with practicality – it’s easier to work in a space when you know where things are – but a more important element deals with the comfort of the volunteers. It can feel intimidating to not know your way around an area, and providing new recruits with a thorough tour will help them get their physical bearings and make them more comfortable.

Make Introductions

Orientations also give you the opportunity to explain different responsibilities of staff and leaders, especially those people they will report to or work closely with. If it’s appropriate and non-disruptive, you may want to introduce them to key leaders, giving them a chance to become familiar with others. As they get more accustomed to the space and the people, they’ll start to become familiar with the organization’s overall culture, giving them a deeper sense of connection with the work and the community they’ll be serving with.

Clarify Roles and Responsibilities

The final part of onboarding will include outlining specific responsibilities for the volunteer. This doesn’t have to be a full-scale training; that will come later. But giving them a chance to see the scope of their work early will help give them an idea of what’s expected of them. Encore suggests making the following aspects clear from the beginning:

• Specifications on the scope of work.

• Goals and expectations.

• Reporting relationships.

• Expectations for check-ins, time frames, and the proper communication channels.

Provide a Handbook

After the orientation, new recruits should receive a comprehensive handbook they can reference for more information. Here’s an example of the policies page from the National Wildlife Foundation that covers items like:

• Expectations around dress code, attendance, and general conduct.

• Information on record keeping, safety procedures, security protocols, and property usage.

• Protocol for training, evaluation, and recognition.

Training

Every volunteer will need some level of specific training to gain the skills needed to do good work for a long time. Most volunteers don’t have extensive experience doing the kind of work they'll be asked to do. Many will have to adapt to the specific systems, processes, and workflows of the organization.

Training Increases Retention

Clear and organized training will help instill confidence in your volunteers, which can also increase your organizational retention rates. Corporations in the for-profit sector have found that retention rates increase by 30%-50% in companies with strong learning cultures. While the exact numbers may not be transferable to the nonprofit world, the data suggests that people are more likely to stick around when organizations value training.

Key Components of Your Volunteer Training

Although specific training content will differ depending on the scope of work, the programs themselves will have many of the same characteristics. In the Community Tool Box, a resource of the Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas, the authors explain that training should be thought out and strategic. Early sessions with new volunteers should include the following four things:

• What to do

• How to do it

• What not to do

• What to do in an emergency.

This framework will help your team think through the specific content of training sessions, but they’ll also want to consider who will be leading the training, a budget for any additional materials or resources, and any other logistical concerns prior to the training sessions.

Utilize Best Practices of Adult Learning

The Community Toolbox also suggests utilizing adult learning practices in the sessions themselves. Show volunteers the relevancy of the material. Provide them with problems to solve, and incorporate interactive learning methods like discussions, demonstrations, or writing. Give them space to share experiences and tap into their creative side. These sessions need not be boring. The volunteers will likely learn better the more they can engage with the material.

Document Your Training Program

Like any successful piece of nonprofit operations, having a plan in place for your training will help things work much better and run much more smoothly. It can be tempting to throw your most experienced people up there and let them speak, but volunteers learn better when they can follow a structured learning path. Lesson plans for individual sessions will help with this as will plans for evaluations and ongoing training.

Rewards and Recognition

Providing appropriate rewards and recognition is the third key step in retaining your nonprofit’s volunteers.

Know What Your Volunteers are Worth

Independent Sector has developed an insightful tool that quantifies the value of volunteers across the nation. In November 2021, the average national value of each volunteer hour is $28.54. While volunteers will obviously not be paid this amount, the figure can raise awareness of the value of their contributions. Organizations can take this information and think of ways to honor their volunteers in lieu of payment.

Know What Your Volunteers Want

The more you know your volunteers, the better you’ll be able to create a rewards program that actually makes them feel appreciated.

People volunteer for a number of different reasons. Many do it because they care or have had a personal impact with the organization or one similar to it. Others do it to network or because they find it a better use of their time. Some volunteers want to use and grow in a special skill they have.

All of these are true, but there’s usually something deeper going on.

Building off of Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Tobi Johnson explains that people are motivated by three things:

1. Mastery

2. Autonomy

3. Purpose.

Johnson then connects Pink’s finding with the nonprofit world: “Pink’s arguments point to the very premise of volunteering itself — volunteers are driven to help organizations and communities, without pay, because they can bring about improvements in society and because they matter.”

Nonprofits can take this knowledge and use it to shape their reward programs.

Know What to Do Next

There are simple things you can do to get a rewards program off the ground. Writing personal thank you emails or handwritten cards, giving public praise or kudos in meetings, or hosting small events to honor the volunteers, are all easy ways to recognize volunteers.

Some organizations may want to go deeper than this, though. Using the knowledge of what motivates your volunteers can come in handy here. Johnson suggests providing training programs that

• Encourage mastery by giving them the tools to learn new things or entrusting them with greater responsibility in certain areas.

• Provide autonomy through self-directed training and resourcing.

• Reinforce purpose by showing them the effects their volunteer efforts are having in the organization and the community as a whole.

Closing Thoughts

Volunteers play a critical role in successful nonprofits, but keeping volunteers in your organization requires keeping them organized, informed, and appreciated. By implementing strong onboarding, training, and rewards programs, organizations can retain more high-quality, dedicated volunteers who are well-equipped to help accomplish the nonprofit’s mission.