4 Volunteer Onboarding Strategies
Use these approaches to manage volunteer expectations and increase commitment
A new volunteer position can be stressful and potentially ambiguous. Few people are able to accurately envision everything they will experience as a volunteer in a particular position. This means there is often an initial surprise for volunteers with some aspects of their role, and then room for both the organization and volunteers to adapt and change as needed through their tenure as a volunteer.
Helping volunteers have realistic expectations of their experience will help them feel more confident, make adjustments and feel their impact. Successful onboarding is the core pillar of the volunteer journey, so here are a few tips to help you focus on making it as good as possible:
- Formal training. This goes without saying - having your volunteer go through a standardized and formal training process helps ensure consistency when they start out, increases confidence in the organization they are serving, and to learn some background information which may not seem important at first, but which will help them see how their volunteering fits in the big picture.
- Routine. Having a sense of what to expect as part of each volunteer shift helps reinforce expectations, security and and the volunteer really getting to know the values of your organization from the ground up.
- Facilitate connection. If volunteers tend to come in and their experience of volunteering is mostly solo, or only with other volunteers, then it weakens the connection between them and your organization. Helping encourage relationships and time spent together between some staff and volunteers helps them to feel a part of the culture and team of the organization.
- Demonstrate impact early. Starting a volunteer experience with some wins is a great way for volunteers to internalize and really understand how their volunteering affects the bottom line of what they are there to accomplish. Especially early in the training process or soon after, giving the volunteer a chance to see concrete examples of how and who benefits from their efforts can motivate and make the whole experience more meaningful long term.
There are of course many more ways to help ensure that onboarding is impactful, but these four tactics are significant starting points to ensure that volunteers start their experience with your organization on the right foot.
Want to read more? Read this article by Tobi Johnson and Associates.
