This document provides guidance for effectively recruiting volunteers from diverse communities. It emphasizes that recruitment should involve understanding the target communities, developing culturally competent outreach strategies, and partnering with existing organizations within those communities. The guidance also stresses adapting materials and the program design to be inclusive and addressing any demographic disparities. Effective recruitment requires taking a strengths-based, relationship-focused approach tailored for each community.
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3. Panelists
Sarah Kremer, ATR-BC Jonathan Cowgill
Program Director Recruitment Specialist
Friends for Youth’s Friends for Youth
Mentoring Institute
6. • Not enough resources (staff time and
money) to support adequate recruitment
strategies
• Attracting appropriate volunteers
• Finding diverse and/or specific group of
mentors
• Increased competition for volunteers
• Volunteers may perceive clients as “too
tough,” “too difficult,” or “too scary”
7. • Recruitment policy includes
– How recruitment will be managed
– Roles and responsibilities of staff and
board
– Timeline describing year-round efforts
– Written statement outlining eligibility
requirements
– Recognition and retention activities, as
well
– Sponsorship promotion
8. • Recruitment policy includes
– Measurable and reasonable goals
– Appropriate staff to resources ratio
– Current and potential partners and process
in developing relationships
– Targeted outreach based on participants’
needs
– Opportunities/materials for current
volunteers to easily recruit
– Volunteer opportunities even beyond
mentoring
10. #3 Effective recruitment requires its own system.
Key Points:
! There is no hidden gold pot – recruitment requires work, an organized plan
and a system to support it.
! The plan involves:
o Step 1: Background Work
• Understanding who you are – Market advantage
• Understanding what you want – Goal setting
• Understanding who you want - Market research
o Step 2: The Tools
• The pitch
• The venues
• The materials
o Step 3: Implementation
! Without a well thought out and documented system you cannot grow
relationships - relationships end as soon as staff leaves or staff forgets
contacts.
! Make the system your legacy.
Example: Recruitment Manual
I. Recruitment Goals and Monthly Calendar of Activities
II. Information about Agency
III. Information about Clients
Recruitment: A IV. Program Messaging/Pitch
Strengths-Based V. Venues/Strategies
Approach, Center for VI. Sample Materials
Applied Research VII. Evaluation Results
Solutions,
Application:
• What is one simple activity or task you can begin to do when you get back to work
11. • Program description • Eligibility
• Role of volunteer requirements
• Responsibilities of • Specific preferences
volunteer • Benefits & rewards
• How volunteers & • Outcomes
clients spend time • Support from
together staff
13. Marketing Tools include
• Slogans and phrases
• Blurbs for online postings
• Speeches
• Print (brochures, flyers, posters,
newspaper ads)
• Media (video, PSAs, interviews)
• Media campaigns (radio and
TV interviews)
• Website
14. Marketing Tools include
• Large-scale media (billboards, bus
posters)
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs)
• Promotional items (stickers, magnets,
pens, t-shirts)
• OpEd letters
• Press releases
• Presentations
• Radio and TV spots
15. Strategies
• Easy sign-up/inquiry process
• Regular and consistent visibility
• Prompt follow-up
• Personal attention
• Committed volunteer recruiters
• Community involvement
16. Strategies
• Information meetings at sites convenient to
potential volunteers
• Frequent assessment
• Ability to measure efforts for future planning
• Consistent tracking and timelines to assess/
try new strategies
• Repeat appeal as often as possible to as
many people as possible
17. • 8% inquire match
• 25% info session match
• 50% interview match
• 85% training match
21. INQUIRY ORIENTATION MATCHED
Internet: postings/blogs 38% 46% 36%
Internet: ads 4% 8% 10%
Internet: other 2% 3% 6%
Internet: website 1% 1% 2%
Unknown 15% 9%
Other 12%
Friends for Youth events 14%
Corporate events/postings 10% 6% 6%
Word of Mouth 9% 19% 22%
Newsletters/mailings 3% 4%
TV/radio/print 3% 2% 2%
Community events 2% 2% 2%
Colleges & Universities 1%
Friends for Youth Mentoring Services FY2010‐2011
22. Potential Partners
• Current and past
mentors
• Churches, synagogues,
other faith-based
centers
• Corporations
• Small businesses
• Service Clubs
• Community leaders
23. Potential Partners
• Chambers of Commerce
• Reporters
• Parents/guardians
• Referral agents/youth
professionals
• Board of Directors/Advisory
Board
• Universities or colleges
• Local personalities
24. • People don’t join agencies - they join other people
• Volunteers, board members, staff, and donors all want
to join winning team
• Sad stories don’t sell
• Share your enthusiasm and your passion
• Consistency pays off
• Increase your circle of influence
• Leave legacy by strengthening your infrastructure
25. Recruiting volunteers is similar to raising funds:
• Relationship, Relationship, Relationship
• Understand who you are talking to
• Sell your story in an eloquent and organized
fashion
• Diversify efforts
• Speak to heart and mind of clients
Susan Ellis, Volunteer Recruitment
27. • Imagery reflects ideal volunteers (signed
releases)
• Accurate to role and population served
• Outlines benefits and costs for volunteer
mentors
• Attracts appropriate and careful volunteers
• Indicates commitment, frequency of
meetings, and screening process
• Expresses realistic aims and expected
outcomes
• Expresses strong Call to Action
28. • Spencer (2007) found that many volunteers enter
mentoring relationships with high expectations of
“making a difference” in life of child, but these
relationships prove to be more challenging than
anticipated
• When imagined outcomes are not immediately realized
or take a different form than what was originally
expected, mentors may decide that relationship is not
what they had bargained for and may end match
prematurely
29. • Women more likely to volunteer than men
• Older generation more likely to volunteer with
school-based programs
• Biggest challenges: lack of time, lack of confidence
• Volunteers from higher incomes sustain longer
relationships
• College students have less stable mentoring
relationships
• Corporate volunteers prefer site-based opportunities
Center for Applied Research Solutions, 2006
30. Question: What do we do to
recruit people of color/certain
age/specific gender as
volunteers?
Answer: The same thing you
do to recruit people from
other communities!
BUT tap into cultural and ethnic
organizations that already
exist in these communities
Sales, 2011
31. • Culture: behaviors and practices, attitudes and
core values and institutions of influence that
create and define people or organization’s
values.
Ensure your organization is culturally competent
– Organizational awareness
– Value diversity
– Manage dynamics of differences
– Adapt to diversity
– Institutionalize cultural knowledge
Sales, 2011
32. • Evidence of voices from
underserved and unserved
(community not just providers)
included in program planning/
selection
• Outreach strategies are creative
and innovative
• Program design addresses
demographic disparities
Sales, 2011
33. • Program targets specific
strategies for under/unserved
populations
• Evidence of cultural specific and
language strategies, across age
groups
• Include clear analysis of
population disparities
• Program/strategy is tied to new
solutions and program design
Sales, 2011
34. • Start within your organization and use current resources
– Current staff, mentors, Board members of same cultural group
seeking
• Conduct asset mapping exercise to identify people and
organizations (TCAM)
• Host focus groups
• Create visual profiles of wanted mentors from collage
images (Sales, 2011)
36. • Ask directly
• Be clear and upfront about commitment, costs,
expectations
• Empower ambassadors already familiar with agency
• Be prepared to ask different questions depending
upon readiness of potential volunteer
• Be proactive – plan answers to obstacles and
challenges
– Time commitment
– Unsure of activities
– Potential mismatch
37. Center for Applied Research Solutions http://www.carsmentoring.org/publications
• Recruitment: A Strengths-Based Approach
The Center for the Advancement of Mentoring http://www.advancementoring.org/
• Asset Mapping Action Plan
National Mentoring Center http://educationnorthwest.org/nmc
• Volunteer Motivation and Mentor Recruitment
• Effective Mentor Recruitment: Getting Organized, Getting Results
• Marketing for the Recruitment of Mentors
• Putting the "Men" Back in Mentoring
MENTOR http://www.mentoring.org
• The Wisdom of Age: A Handbook for Staff (2009)
• RIA, Issue 8: Mentoring Across Generations: Engaging 50+ Adults as Mentors
• RIA, Issue 2: Effectiveness of Mentoring Program Practices
Mentor Michigan http://www.michigan.gov/mentormichigan/
• Men in Mentoring Toolkit
40. Next Webinar
Tuesday, September 20
Out Here in the Field:
Special Issues for Rural
Mentoring Programs
with Kathryn Eustis and
Dena Valin, presenters at
the 2011 Friends for Youth
Mentoring Conference