(from Susan's Tip of the Month in the Monthly e-Mail Update)
This month's "Spring Cleaning" Hot Topic leads to this month's tip. If you post volunteer opportunities with any online registry such as Volunteer Match, are you paying attention to what you said? (If you are not yet making use of the wonderful free sites available to you - in many different countries as well as the US - go to this list of sites and explore you options: https://www.energizeinc.com/directory/website-opportunities.)
The online registries are growing daily and that means that every message has increasing competition. Do a search for your zip code or type of setting and see what other organizations come up as well as yours. Read their postings. How does your description sound against theirs? Is it welcoming? interesting? motivating? If not, change it!
There is no cost to update your postings except for your time. The Internet is a fast-paced environment and users expect up-to-the-minute information. Anything you can do to make prospective volunteers who read your posting in a registry feel that you want them NOW will be more effective than a message that is clearly old and unchanging.
In general, the best way to use online registries is to post many specific assignments rather than only a few big general ones. One posting that says: "tutors help children ages 10 to 14 with all sorts of homework assignments" can become the following:
- Tutors needed for three newly-arrived Cambodian children ages 10, 14, and 15 who need homework help and practice in speaking conversational English.
- Tutors needed on Saturday mornings for teenagers who want to improve their reading as they prepare for the driver's exam. You'll use the state driver manual as your "text."
- Tutors needed for sixth-grade math, especially working on fractions.
The beauty of the Internet is that is allows "needle in a haystack" searches. If you really want volunteers available on Saturdays or with skill in sixth-grade math, this is the perfect place to hunt. Being specific will also cut down on screening calls from people who are generally exploring what they'd like to do. The three examples above may not generate 20 phone calls, but if one or two people contact you because these postings struck a chord, you're likely to be talking to strong candidates.
Assign a volunteer to monitor all your online postings, checking them monthly for accuracy and appeal. Be sure to delete positons that are filled! Or at least remove them temporarily until you have openings again. It's as much an art as a science to recruit online. But the two keys are BE SPECIFIC and BE CURRENT.