Written by Kasey Murphy Volunteer Coordinator Resource Community Weekly Recap: Nov. 16 - Nov. 23
Volunteer benefits or volunteer incentives are a great way to help retain your volunteers. Especially throughout the giving holiday season, it is a great opportunity to thank your volunteers!
Volunteer benefits can be organization-specific, community-based, or just random acts of kindness! These benefits will help your volunteers think about volunteering with your organization and want to come back.
You can incentivize or give volunteer benefits for a milestone goal they have reached in volunteering, like reaching a certain amount of hours. You can give prizes and benefits to people who have been a consistent volunteer in your organization for a certain amount of time. Or, you can give volunteer benefits to all volunteers during the holidays or every couple months!
This week, we had a Volunteer Coordinator asking other Volunteer Coordinators in our group about how they give out their volunteer benefits.
Advice For Volunteer Benefits From The Comments:
“Our program is all virtual. We provide professional Zoom accounts free to all our volunteers who lead classes.”
“They get unlimited free tea/coffee at our cafe. We also share any special discounts sent to employees for events or services.”
“They are invited to company seminars and presentations.”
You could gather small businesses in your community to make a coupon book for volunteers!
Bring snacks or drinks to any volunteer meeting!
To give more advice or insight on what you do for your volunteers, comment here!
Resources on Volunteer Benefits
Different Ways To Show Volunteer Appreciation During The Pandemic
Volunteer Incentives and Engagement Ideas That Won’t Cost Your Organization A Dime
Volunteer Blogs
Different from a newsletter, a blog can be a forum for individuals to interact with each other and make comments on certain ideas and topics! This can be a great idea for volunteer engagement during the pandemic!
If you are interested in starting a blog for your volunteers, be sure to double check that your volunteers would participate. Whether that means sending out a poll or analyzing from previous volunteer behavior!
To comment on this post, click here!
Comments About Volunteer Blogs
“I have a closed, invitation-only group Facebook page for mine but have specific rules about no HIPPA information on there. I have had good interaction at times but now I think my volunteers are in online fatigue mode. They just want to come back. Maybe depends on the age group?”
“We had a closed Facebook page before the pandemic but had quite a few people join after things closed down. We also just started a vlog that we're sending out monthly. I reached out to them as a group and asked what type of updates they wanted and the resounding winner was that pictures and videos were their favorite - as opposed to an email update.”
“I have also been doing "Contactless Engagement Opportunities" for us to engage. For example today we are doing a zoom call, Warm up with some cocoa and gratitude. We will be making paper chains in fall colors and writing what we are grateful for on each chain link. The participants can then bring them to our shelter to be used as decor or they can keep it at home. Really the idea is to keep the volunteers engaged while we have to remain closed to the public.”
Resources For Interactive Volunteer Blogs
Volunteer Social Media Engagement
Engaging with your volunteers via an online forum or social media can be quite difficult. Especially in this age with social media being trendy, you don’t want to come off as cringey or annoying to your volunteers!
Social media is a great way to engage with your volunteers throughout the pandemic and in general! You can post things about your volunteer organization, or just fun things for your volunteers to loosen up!
Volunteer Social Media Engagement Ideas From The Comments
“What’s your favorite shelter memory?”, “show us your shelter swag!” (Vol tshirt, merchandise, etc), “Why do you like volunteering?”, “Who was your first shelter crush?”
“Livestreams