Recruiting and inspiring volunteers is incredibly difficult. Think about some of these volunteer statistics. On average, people volunteer 50 hours per year. That's less than one hour a week. 71% of people only volunteer in one organization, and approximately 63 million Americans (about 25% of the adult population) volunteer each year.

When you look at these statistics, you realize there are not a lot of volunteers and not every organization has an overabundance of volunteers. So, when recruiting and inspiring volunteers, you must do it well and help a volunteer to love their work, love your mission, and be engaged.

Here are five things leaders should consider as they think about recruiting and inspiring volunteers.

1. Focus on retainment, not recruitment.

Recruitment is when you are actively trying to get new volunteers. Retainment is being committed to the culture and the care of your existing volunteers. Retainment is the new recruitment. Keeping your volunteers engaged and satisfied and creating a culture where they love to give their time, talent, and treasure to your organization is incredibly valuable. If you start anywhere, start there.

2. Create timebound pathways.

As you recruit and inspire volunteers, create time-bound pathways by month. Let’s say an average person has an hour each month to give you. What could they accomplish in an hour? Be specific about those opportunities. What if a volunteer has three hours a month to give? Or five, or seven, or 10? Be very specific about what a volunteer could do if they gave you 10 hours of their precious time each month.

3. Leverage current volunteers for future volunteers.

You may already know this one, but very few of us put it into practice. A lot of leaders think about how to engage volunteers by communicating their needs and leveraging a newsletter and social media when, actually, some of the best ways to recruit new volunteers is through your existing volunteers. Some suggestions include things like giving people the motivation to bring someone to an event where they can volunteer together. Or create a contest where your organization encourages current volunteers to think about people within their network and sphere of influence who would love to serve.

The organizations that are doing an incredible job of engaging volunteers right now are those that serve animals or are animal rescue locations. People have a very unique care for animals and pets, and those organizations are seeing some of the greatest opportunities for volunteerism. So, learn from them. Figure out ways to engage your current volunteers to invite their circles to volunteer for something that they have shown interest in.

4. Empower people’s passions.

I’m a passionate person. I love to be passionate about the things that I do. People are often much more successful over a long period in volunteering when you match their passions with what they are doing. Let me give you an example. If you know someone is more of a people-oriented person, the worst thing you could do is put them behind a desk and ask them to work alone on their computer. And the opposite is true. If you have someone who loves working with spreadsheets and doing a project to completion but doesn't love being with people, give them those kinds of projects to do. Maybe it's an Excel spreadsheet or working on your database. Finding out where people's passions are and leveraging them will help people engage with your organization and stick around long term. If I’m engaged in something and passionate about what I’m doing, the likelihood of me sticking around and telling other people about it is much higher.

5. Five “Generations” exist to engage volunteers... Optimize this.

Engage the five generations to serve and volunteer in your organization. This might be my favorite thing to look at. This chart shows the generations in the U.S. workforce: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and we have Generation Alpha coming in next. But look at the percentage of the current U.S. population amongst those core four generations. They are all about the same. And if you have a volunteer recruitment idea that only fits one of those generations, you are missing out on the others.

When it comes to recruiting baby boomers, you recruit them differently than you would recruit Gen Z. You recruit a Millennial differently than you would recruit Gen X because they all have uniquenesses and nuances to the things that make sense to them. When you think about a Baby Boomer, they are kind of within the box: this is what I do; this is the time that I show up; I’m always 15 minutes early; this is when I leave. But you might get something different from Gen Z that is more creative or cerebral in their thinking. They are passionate about the mission and not just accomplishing the task.

So, as you think about how you are going to recruit and inspire volunteers, you want to think about how generations will hear your message and how they can serve your organization in different ways.

For more guidance on how to create a strategy that will help you recruit and inspire volunteers, contact us to speak with a consultant.

Billy Dunn is a Senior Consultant at The Center Consulting Group and has over 20 years of church and nonprofit leadership experience. He serves as the Character Coach for the Lehigh University Men’s Basketball team and the Director of Ministry Leadership for Word FM. Billy has assisted with the launch of a number of nonprofit organizations and has worked with organizations and ministries across the world. Billy has an M.S. in Organizational Leadership and brings experience in the areas of leading change, leadership coaching, resource development, church growth planning, and strategic thinking and planning.