Managing and recruiting seasonal volunteers is always a challenge, particularly when volunteer interest can be skewed towards certain times of the year. While holiday volunteers can be a great asset to your organization, how do you recruit volunteers for the rest of the year? We'll discuss some strategies for maintaining a consistent volunteer base, and conveying the importance of year-round volunteers to your seasonal volunteer team. Made possible through funding from the Walmart Foundation.

1. Recruiting and Managing Seasonal
Volunteers
To hear the presentation by phone call:
(516) 453-0031
Access Code: 481-683-842
Jennifer Bennett, CVA, Senior Manager, Education & Training
Matt Wallace, Senior Associate, Nonprofit Relations

2. VolunteerMatch Overview
“VolunteerMatch strengthens communities by making it easier for good
people and good causes to connect.”
92,286 nonprofits… 78,641 Active Opportunities…. 6,757,988 referrals since 1998
• VolunteerMatch has been around for 14 years, and is the top-ranked website for online
volunteer recruitment and employee-volunteer programs
• Our Learning Center offers over 20 webinar topics focused on volunteer management
and VolunteerMatch tools, serving an audience of over 6,000 attendees each year
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3. VolunteerMatch & Walmart:
Fighting Hunger Together
What are our goals?
• Support nonprofit organizations that are working to end
hunger in local communities.
• Provide hunger relief organizations with the resources
they need to deploy, manage and expand their volunteer
engagement program.
• Support, train and share best practices for engaging
volunteers, and creating a multi-faceted relationship with
volunteers – donors, advocates.
• Increase visibility of the need for volunteers at hunger
relief organizations.
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4. Agenda
• Seasonal Volunteer Engagement
• Recruit Seasonal Volunteers
• Create a Connection
• The Importance of Communication
• Create a Communication Plan
• Create More Engagement
• Things to Think About
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5. Seasonal Volunteer
Engagement
• Seasonal volunteers can make a huge impact for
your organization.
– Can be passionate, loyal and involved
– Allow your organization to meet the needs of clients
during busy times
• May also come with engagement challenges – not
necessarily unique to season volunteers
– Only interested in certain days times
– Ownership of certain work
– May lose interest/not think about organization during
other seasons
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6. Find Seasonal Volunteers
• Give yourself time
– Create a recruitment timeline that gives you enough
time to find and communicate with volunteers
– Balancing act – not too much time for the volunteers
to “forget” their commitment
• Include groups in your recruitment plan
– Fill many slots with one effort
– Ask groups to take on project, day, or shift
• Include impact or seasonal need
– Create messaging about the importance of
volunteering through a season, not just on a certain
day
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7. Create a Connection
Share information with seasonal volunteers
• Goals – Share what you hope to accomplish
– Set the stage for work to be done, needs of clients or
community
• Impact – What will volunteers be able to change
or how can they make a difference
• Organizational information – what’s going on,
are there milestones, successes, challenges
• Empower them to share their experience, or
spread the story
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8. Create a Communication Plan
During Recruitment
• Different seasons may require a different
message even if the impact is the same
• Convey the importance of the work
– Create a connection or an understanding on an
individual level
– “You and your family will be working on… This is a
really important piece of our work because…”
• Make it easy for volunteers to communicate with
you
– Texts, emails, phone calls
– Recruit other volunteers to be points of contact
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9. Create a Communication Plan
During the season
• Focus on the long term need, and share open
shifts – Christmas Day is fully staffed but…
• Share the impacts with all of the volunteers
– Not just hours, but actions and impacts too
– Take pictures
– Use social media - spread the thank you
– Include ways for them to get more involved
• Don't forget to share how that work serves your
mission
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10. Create a Communication Plan
After the season
• Take advantage of social media
• Create an offseason engagement team
– Ongoing or seasonal volunteers
– Messages with updates, new projects programs –
encourage volunteers to share!
– Pre-Season events
• Always include opportunities for more
involvement
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11. Create More Engagement
Build opportunities for seasonal volunteers to
become more involved with your organization
year round
Consider different types of opportunities
– Projects, skills based, single day events
Invite them!
– Share opportunities and include an invitation to get
involved or to participate
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12. Resources
Learning Center
Find upcoming webinar dates, how-to videos and more
http://learn.volunteermatch.org
VolunteerMatch Community
Ask and answer questions after the webinar – use keywords Fighting Hunger Together,
Volunteer Management
http://community.volunteermatch.org/volunteer
Fighting Hunger Together
Information about the program and additional trainings and resources
http://www.volunteermatch.org/fighthunger
Questions?
FightHunger@VolunteerMatch.org
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13. Thanks for attending!
Join us online:
Like us on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/VolunteerMatch
Follow us on Twitter: @VolunteerMatch
Visit Engaging Volunteers, our nonprofit blog:
blogs.volunteermatch.org/engagingvolunteers/
For any questions contact:
Jennifer Bennett
(415) 321-3639
@JenBennettCVA
jbennett@volunteermatch.org
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