Volunteers add value to your organization; even if the majority of your volunteers are students looking to boost their resumes, they are solving problems in a field they are most likely interested in and your organization has provided a platform that gives them an advantage over their peers.
From disaster aid, global health aid, and social impact, thousands of people volunteer to promote a just and fair world. These roles are very critical but may never get filled if they were not volunteer roles. However, you may lose out on volunteers if your recruitment process is rigid and hard to navigate; for example, 11% of volunteer organizations shut down in the US because of COVID restrictions. But if these organization had adjusted their recruitment process to fit remote work, they could have avoided shutting down.
The bottom line is that the simpler and more accessible your volunteer recruitment process is, the better your chances of recruiting. Let’s look at how to make your volunteer recruitment process easier, more cost-effective, and accessible with volunteer recruitment forms.
Here are the major reasons why you should streamline your volunteer recruitment process with a form:
Over 1 billion people volunteer worldwide, which is a significant number of people. However, the majority of these volunteers are baby boomers. We need the younger generation to volunteer more, especially for more physically demanding volunteer roles such as disaster aid, sports community outreach, etc.
Having a volunteer recruitment form makes your recruitment process more engaging for the volunteers. For example, you can add a video introduction or the statistics of your organization’s impact to help volunteer gauge how much impact they would be making with their actions.
You could also ask more thoughtful questions about the potential volunteer’s interests, skills, and availability to gauge their fit for roles and assign them based on that. This helps you put them in roles that heighten their strength, which would boost their confidence, and satisfaction while volunteering.
The traditional method of waiting for volunteers to walk through your door or email you means you are recruiting people with a passion for the role but you would be sacrificing efficiency. Using volunteer recruitment forms helps you to recruit volunteers in batches instead of waiting for volunteers to discover you or be recommended.
You can also always filter out people who aren’t passionate using interviews and assessments. However, by using the recruitment form, you would be maximizing your resources by recruiting as many volunteers as possible within a short timeframe. Another thing to consider is that most volunteers have full-time jobs or are students, so having a form helps you understand their schedule and assign them roles that fit their availability.
So many non-profits shut down less than a year after opening them and one of the major reasons for this is poor management and planning. Having volunteer recruitment forms, especially well-designed ones ensures potential volunteers take you seriously. The structure the form presents ensures potential volunteers know you are committed to a cause and their time won’t be wasted.
The information collected on the form also gives you the data you need to properly plan your resources and operations. For example, volunteer availability data helps you know how to schedule tasks and events.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating your volunteer recruitment form with Formplus:
Here’s a list of the most important things to include in your volunteer recruitment form:
An effective volunteer recruitment form is not a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. It helps you collect all necessary information on the volunteers to make their recruitment process easier and makes it easier for you too by matching them into positions and fostering a positive volunteer experience.
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