How to Combat Volunteer Boredom

Professionals in nonprofits put their heart and souls into their work. But sometimes we forget that our volunteers are here for different reasons!

It seems like now more than ever smaller nonprofits have trouble keeping volunteers for a long period of time. Trust us, we know the feeling! So read ahead to find a few new ideas to actually keep your volunteers committed.

What Volunteer Boredom Is

If you repeat the same task over and over again you may lose interest after a while. Sometimes the most simple task can get real boring. That's what might be happening with your volunteers.

Your Volunteer Definitely Shouldn't Be this Bored!

The problem is that a pre-defined volunteer role is too limited. If you were forced to only use a small part of your ability, you would probably feel the same way as your volunteers.

Worse, a bored volunteer doesn't care much about your organization or its cause. That means they don't care about work or representing your organization (or your "brand"). They are simply too bored to care. More time may eventually be spent on their phones than monitoring your company social media. 

If you are truly unlucky they may just quit because they won't feel it's worth their time. You need to keep them there!

How to Engage Volunteers

A volunteer who believes in your organization is one who will work hard to achieve things. The quickest way to make someone care is by giving them tasks that can give results. At the same time, they should be held accountable since these tasks are important.

Before you can get to that step, you need to understand your volunteers' objectives. We use a sign-up form that not only gauges volunteer skills, but aks what their potential roles would like to be. 

You want to work with each volunteer and do a few things

• Emphasize your mission, not your organization
• Create an Internship - give your Volunteers more complicated tasks and the ability to grow
• Give them Concrete Tasks to do
• Help Them Grow into leader ship positions
• Show them their results

While this sounds like investing in your employees, it is exactly this. Give people training, give them autonomy, and let them be harder workers than you thought possible.

Have the Right Mindset

Are you reaching volunteers the right way?

We can tell you that posting flyers gloating about your organization's statistics and work is not the way to do so. Remember, younger generations live and breathe the internet.

Create volunteer postings with getting semi-professionals in mind. Post this on social media channels and ask your friends (and hopefully their friends) to share it. Do the same on your website's section on volunteering. Show some benefits of volunteering and show how their efforts will impact your nonprofit's work. (resume building).

Remember your online and offline materials can also attract volunteers as much as they are to attract donors!

You should:

• Create a Clear Volunteer Page
• Be Interactive with slide shows, videos, contests and more
• Do this on Social Media too!

You can even chronicle their efforts in publications and even highlight their work on your blog!

Summary

Taking this approach can actually benefit a growing nonprofit. You will understand more about volunteers, but hopefully gain management experience as well.

Remember, you may find you are getting fewer volunteers replying to your postings, but those you do find will be harder workers! And this doesn't mean you still can't focus on temporary volunteers!

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