Recruiting and retaining volunteers is essential to any nonprofit’s success, yet many organizations still rely on outdated, manual processes that make signing up and staying engaged harder than it should be. With the right technology, you can make volunteering easier, more personalized, and more rewarding.

In this guide, we’ll explore five tech-fueled strategies your nonprofit can use to enhance the volunteer experience. With a tech-enabled, streamlined volunteer process, you’ll increase the support you receive and more efficiently work toward your mission.

1. Streamline Volunteer Registration and Onboarding

Start your relationship with each volunteer on the right foot by making registration and onboarding quick and user-friendly. First impressions matter, so use these tips to make sure your volunteers’ experience is as seamless and stress-free as possible:

• Create custom online sign-up forms. Successful volunteer recruitment should go beyond simply gauging interest in volunteering. Your sign-up forms should capture new volunteers’ skills, interests, and availability to create more personalized experiences for volunteers, increasing the likelihood that they’ll want to continue supporting your mission. Try asking volunteers to rate their comfort level with various tasks to get a complete view of their abilities.
• Send automated messages. The last thing you want is for volunteers to sign up and then wonder if their application went through. Preempt any confusion by automatically sending confirmation messages when a volunteer signs up, welcome messages that give new volunteers a warm impression of your organization, and reminders leading up to a volunteer event.
• Provide digital orientation materials. Volunteers have a lot to learn during onboarding, and it’s difficult to remember every piece of information and instruction. Give volunteers digital access to resources like FAQs and training modules so that they can review key details whenever necessary. Your online onboarding materials should also include digital liability waivers—use dedicated volunteer waiver software for easy customization, organization, and secure storage.

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Additionally, volunteer management software helps streamline the entire volunteer management lifecycle, including recruitment and orientation. Use these tools to post opportunities, manage applications, schedule training sessions, and ensure all volunteers are well-prepared for their roles and responsibilities.

2. Use Data To Match Volunteers With The Right Opportunities

The perfect role makes volunteers feel both capable and valued. The more accurately you can place volunteers in roles that match their unique abilities, the more likely they are to stay engaged.

After you’ve collected information about volunteers’ skills and interests, follow these tips to use technology to make informed decisions about role assignment through:

• Segment your volunteer database. Segmenting supporters based on shared characteristics can help you communicate and market opportunities more effectively. For example, if your organization is interested in engaging in nonprofit advocacy and lobbying for a mission-related cause, use your constituent relationship management (CRM) system to segment your supporters based on their interest in public policy.
• Track participation over time. In your volunteer management software or CRM, log volunteers’ interactions with your organization. This will help you determine the most popular events and track patterns in individual volunteers’ participation. From there, you can send tailored invitations for events that volunteers are most likely to participate in and offer personalized role suggestions. You can also make broader changes to your program, such as offering more weekend shifts, if you find that these shifts always fill first.

Showing volunteers that you notice and care about their specific desires and skills is important for improving the volunteer experience. It also strengthens their emotional connection to and investment in your organization. Volunteers want to feel like they’re more than a pair of hands; recognizing their particular abilities shows that you see them as a whole person.

3. Enhance Communication With Centralized Messaging Tools

Clear, consistent communication is integral to creating an ideal volunteer experience. Without it, volunteers can miss important details, disconnect emotionally from your nonprofit’s mission, or drop out of your program entirely. Centralizing your messaging through one platform helps you keep everyone informed while saving staff time.

Here are some tips to tighten up your communication strategy

• Consolidate your communication channels. Rather than try to juggle multiple email lists, spreadsheets, and messaging apps, choose a volunteer management tool that can send email, SMS, and in-app notifications from the same place. Consistency makes it easier for volunteers to access important information, simplifying their experience and reducing the burden on your staff.
• Fine-tune your marketing strategy. You might be surprised by the effect that updating your outreach tactics can have on volunteer retention and engagement. Follow best practices like tailoring your communications to different segments, using storytelling to show volunteer impact, and conducting A/B testing to see how volunteers respond to different types of marketing materials.
• Develop a consistent cadence. It can be jarring for volunteers to receive messages that vary wildly in tone or focus. Develop internal guidelines for communicating with volunteers. These should include when to contact volunteers (for example, that thank-you messages should be sent within 24 hours after the volunteer event) and consistent talking points or key phrases to minimize confusion.

Monitor engagement metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and response rates to determine which communication channels and methods are most effective and adjust your strategy accordingly.

4. Use Digital Channels to Show Your Appreciation

Volunteers fuel your nonprofit fundraising strategy and enable you to broaden your impact. Show them you care about their contributions through proper stewardship. Recognition fosters loyalty, and technology makes it easier to thank volunteers promptly and personally.

Here are a few ways you can do that:

• Personalize thank-you messages. Small details have a big impact on volunteers’ impression of your organization. Show donors that you appreciate their hard work by addressing each volunteer by name and referencing their history with your organization, using data from your volunteer management software. To go the extra mile, try using unique communication methods like handwritten letters or personalized videos.
• Create volunteer spotlights. Publicly celebrate volunteers by featuring volunteer spotlights in your newsletter or on social media. Ask standout volunteers to share why they’re passionate about your cause, how long they’ve been volunteering, and what their favorite part of volunteering is. Be sure to get their permission to share their photo and name with your audience.
• Celebrate milestones. When volunteers have dedicated significant time and energy to your organization, they deserve special recognition. Keep track of volunteer hours and anniversaries, and award digital badges or certificates for significant achievements, like the one-year anniversary of their first event or a celebration of their 100th hour volunteering with you. These gestures inspire your most passionate volunteers to continue working with your nonprofit.

In this case, technology, perhaps ironically, actually enables you to create more human connections with your volunteers. Keeping track of volunteers’ contributions and individualizing your thank-you messages has never been easier, and these efforts pay off tremendously as you create meaningful connections with volunteers.

5. Gather Feedback and Continuously Improve the Volunteer Experience

Feedback is key to creating a program that meets volunteer needs and expectations. As your program grows,  consistently monitor volunteer satisfaction to spot opportunities for improvement. Use these tech-fueled strategies to continuously improve your volunteer experience:

• Send automated post-event surveys via email or text. Keep these surveys short and focused; that way, volunteers will be more likely to complete them. Offer small rewards like entry into a raffle to incentivize participation. Focus on topics like overall satisfaction, communication effectiveness, recommendations for future events, and training experience.
• Analyze survey results using your volunteer management software or CRM’s reporting and analytics tools to identify patterns and improvement opportunities. Pay attention to consistently understaffed shifts or events, confusion with training or onboarding, and recurring suggestions.
• Share feedback summaries and your plans to address the biggest issues with volunteers to show that their voices matter. You can even create a volunteer panel to discuss and brainstorm solutions to common problems and provide a summary of these meetings.

Using volunteers’ feedback as a guide, you can ensure that your program meets and exceeds their expectations.

It’s important to be mindful and strategic about how you use technology to your advantage. Align tech features with specific goals and foster a mindset geared toward constant improvement. Using your tech tools strategically can help you save time, build stronger relationships, and create experiences that inspire volunteers to keep coming back.

Carl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with ongoing web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.