Using Third Party Web Sites Like VolunteerMatch to Recruit Volunteers

It's a mistake I see again and again: an organization posts one mega or one general announcement for all of its volunteering assignments on VolunteerMatch, Idealist, or any other of the seemingly endless numbers of volunteer recruitment web sites, instead of doing one posting for each volunteering role.

Instead of one posting for a volunteer to help with web site management, and another posting for someone to help with social media, and another for someone to staff a front desk twice a week, etc., there's just one posting with all of the various volunteering opportunities in that one place.

Even worse: some state or regional offices that oversee other offices often won't allow their affiliate offices to create individual accounts on these web sites so that they can post individual volunteering opportunities; instead, the state or regional office posts one general announcement on the various web sites that list volunteering opportunities and believe this will somehow be understood by different people in different parts of the state -- or the entire country: that there are a variety of unique volunteering roles in each community affiliated with the state or national organization.

Test this for yourself: see how easy, or difficult, it is to use Google.com and any third party volunteer-listing site to find individual, specific volunteering opportunities in your city based on specific search data (type of volunteering opportunity, amount of hours available to give in a month, etc.). Can you easily find specific, individual volunteering opportunities at your own organization, or an organization that has both a national office and local affiliates (like Girl Scouts, YMCA, Habitat for Humanity, etc.), on the first two pages of returned results? For instance, a separate listing for a web manager, a separate listing for a day camp counselor, a separate listing for a translator, etc.? Or just one big mega listing?

Imagine if companies did this for employment: instead of individual roles on Indeed or other job sites, just one big "Hey, we're hiring for lots of paid work! Here's a big long list..." No credible company does that on those job web sites. So why do you think it would work for unpaid roles - for volunteering?

Using a mega/general announcement (a kind of "cattle call") for volunteers on third party web sites (or even your own organization's web site) instead of listing individual volunteering opportunities shows a profound misunderstanding of how people want to use the Internet to look for volunteering opportunities, and means potential volunteers cannot find the service opportunities they are looking for.

Instead, people want to be able search for:

• short-term opportunities for a specific city or neighborhood
• short-term opportunities for a specific time period (a particular month, two weeks, etc.)
• opportunities that require a particular amount of hours each week or month (less than five, 5 - 10, etc.)
• opportunities that require a specific skill set for a specific project (paper newsletter design, online newsletter design, camp management, database design with a particular software, management of a one-day event, translating a document from English to Spanish, etc.)
• opportunities that could be done from a remote location, such as a home or work computer (paper newsletter design, online newsletter design, database design with a particular software, management of a one-day online event, translating a document from English to Spanish, etc.)

If they search for specific opportunities to fit a specific schedule or interest, but only get a general "We need volunteers of all kinds" listing for your organization, they usually don't even read it -- they move on to the organization that has the specific listing: for the web manager, for the office assistant, for the weekend driver, etc.

Imagine it this way: if you were an organization and looking for different paid staff positions, would you just post one classified ad for all your posts, or would you post individual ads for individual jobs?

Listen up, national and state offices: not allowing individual affiliate offices to post their own volunteering opportunities into third party sites denies them the flexibility and specificity they need to recruit volunteers; the office in Tacoma needs volunteers in different roles than the office in Louisville, and their needs change month-to-month, maybe even week-to-week. A state, regional or national office would never be able to keep up with those individual demands through its general call for volunteers on VolunteerMatch or any other of the seemingly endless numbers of volunteer recruitment sites. It's fine to come up with a standard for all affiliates to use in their volunteer recruitment message, to ensure a certain standard.

You can still have that general message on third party web sites, but encourage each organization or affiliate office to type each individual opportunity into a third-party web site of their choice (they don't have to type each into every volunteer-search platform out there, as there are web site aggregators, such as All for Good, that bring all these web sites together in one listing). As an organization or affiliate office should have a written, detailed description of each volunteer role (and these should already be posted on their own web site), this is largely a matter of cutting and pasting into an online form.

And remember, volunteers can help you with this online task! A volunteer could serve as your online recruitment manager, for instance, responsible for getting new opportunities up quickly and keeping postings up-to-date.

Advice for how to wrote assignments on these services:

There are a number of things to keep in mind when writing your online volunteering assignments, that will help make them more attractive to potential volunteers:

Spelling matters!
Poorly-spelled assignments reflect badly on your organization.  

Be clear re: commitment required
Be clear about how much time you think the assignment will require overall or weekly, and how many weeks you are asking the volunteer to commit to do the assignment.

Be Descriptive
For instance, this is an online volunteering assignment description for the Asociación Cultural TEATROVIVO on the UN's Online Volunteering Service several years ago:

This description has a lot of details about the assignment, what it will be like for participating online volunteers, and how online volunteers will benefit the organization's program. This kind of assignment is much more likely to attract volunteers than just a list of all the work that's to be done.

So, don't just ask for a translator; talk about the kinds of materials the volunteer will be working with, and how the volunteer's work will benefit those your organization serves. Don't just ask for a web developer; note why a web site is important to the organization, how its development will impact the organization, and about how much ready-to-use text and graphics your can provide to the volunteer.