Member Spotlight: One Member’s Creative Recruitment Ideas To Grow Program Capacity

In this month’s member spotlight, we sit down with Kari Siverhus, Volunteer Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity La Cross Area, to talk about some creative recruitment ideas that she’s implemented to attract new supporters for her organization and build her program’s capacity to impact the community through volunteer service.    

Kari is a powerhouse of energy and creativity, and she shares her out-of-the box thinking for some places that potential volunteers can be found that you may not have considered.  

Jamie: Thank you so much for joining me today! I’d love to start off by telling our readers a little more about your organization. 

Kari: You bet! I work for Habitat for Humanity La Crosse Area. We serve a five-county area in Wisconsin and Minnesota. So La Crosse County, Trempealeau County, Monroe County, Vernon County, and Houston County in Minnesota. We’re right on the river between Minnesota and Wisconsin.  

I am the volunteer coordinator for all of our areas within the organization, and our volunteers do a lot!  

We have construction…right now we have 10 houses in our possession and are working on even more.  

We have the ReStore, which is our main fundraiser for our programs. It funds at least one house a year, if not more. 

We have our reclaim program, which is a salvage program just started and it has kind of exploded! We haven’t done any marketing or anything, but it’s on track to hit $80,000 in revenue generated this year. It also keeps things out of the landfill and helps with repurposing items that can be used.  

We have our repair program, which we also just started. This is for emergency and accessibility repairs for low-income homeowners, so it follows the same guidelines as our homeowner program to get low-income homeowners what they need to stay in their home.  

And we just started our sustainability wing of everything, that covers neighborhood cleanup, neighborhood revitalization and things like that.  

Jamie: There’s a lot going on! It’s way more than just building houses. Of course that’s huge by itself, but there’s a lot more than what people think of when they think of Habitat for Humanity.  

How many volunteers are participating in these programs on an average basis?  

Kari: My core volunteer group is about 50 people. Over the course of a year, I have over 700 volunteers that come in and out for different projects.  

We also have three colleges in our town, so we get a lot of student participation. They’re not fully regular but they’re regular for a semester, and they help with getting the gaps filled for sure. 

Our volunteers are really the heart of everything we do, because we wouldn’t be able to do it without them.  

They build the houses. We have three staff. Only two of them are usually there during the build times, and the rest of the time it’s all volunteers just coming in and putting up that house. It meets all the inspection codes, and they’re working hard to make sure it’s a quality-built home.  

At the ReStore, same thing. We wouldn’t be able to do it without them. Our cashiers are all volunteers. So the people who deal with the customers, whether they’re angry or happy, are volunteers.  

Our staff is small for what we do, really. Three staff members and hundreds and hundreds of volunteers over the year. If we didn’t have our volunteers, we wouldn’t be able to do as much as we’re doing in our community.  

Thinking Outside the Box: Creative Recruitment Ideas That Attract New Volunteers 

Jamie: Volunteers are invaluable! 

You’ve got a lot going on, and it’s awesome that volunteers are stepping up to meet those needs in the community.   

Kari: For sure. I took over as volunteer coordinator in the middle of covid, and I’m very happy to say that we’re now actually above the number of regular volunteers we had before the pandemic.  

Jamie: That’s huge! Getting back to pre-pandemic numbers has been a challenge for many organizations. 

Kari: I know there’s a lot of people still struggling for that, because my executive director goes to meetings for other Habitats and there are so many that say they can’t find volunteers. I’m thrilled that our numbers are fully up. 

Jamie: What do you contribute that to? What is your team doing differently to see different results?  

Kari: I think it’s important to find new places to recruit volunteers from. So I’m not trying to just go with the same old-same old, which is maybe what some previous coordinators did.  

I’ve looked into job skill programs. So we’ve had volunteers that are paid through programs like SER National. There’s a program called W2 through Wisconsin. I’ve had volunteers come through those programs, and some of them have actually been hired by us, which is great. 

I do a lot of reach out to colleges. We also do a lot of corporate team builds during the summer. Companies come and pay to build, and I try to get the volunteers to come back. Some companies will pay their employees to volunteer, but they also will pay us if they volunteer so many hours. So it’s kind of a win-win for all of us.  

And workers comp volunteers. I had a couple of companies contact me for employees going onto workers comp, that they would rather pay them to volunteer than to stay home. So, for the last year I’ve had a steady flow of ReStore cashiers come in.  

They can’t lift anything, but they can sit at the register. And it’s fantastic, because it covers a major gap that we have.  

I’ve just done a lot of outreach to get those people and to find other avenues that you wouldn’t necessarily think of to find more people. 

And also listening to current volunteers for what unique skills they have and creating roles that can benefit from those skills. 

For instance, a volunteer signed up to cashier at the ReStore, and she’s a retired technical writer. She’s done that for a long time, and when I sent her the volunteer handbook she asked, “Can I redo this?”  

I said, “Go for it!” because that’s a task that’s been on my to-do list. Since then she’s helped with formatting policies and procedures, the technical things that maybe we don’t have the experience for. 

Jamie: That goes back to that creativity we talked about. I think a big part of what separates successful volunteer programs now is this ability to create an engaging service opportunity.  

People don’t just want to work a four-hour shift and go home. They’re looking for something meaningful that speaks to their values or engages their talents that they can really be proud of.  

Kari: I didn’t think I was looking for a technical writer until we had one, and now we’re like, “We have all this stuff we can have her look at!”  

Finding Creative Recruitment Ideas Inside the VolPro Community 

Jamie: Way to go! It definitely takes a lot of time, effort, and creativity to keep a volunteer program running.  

You’re also a VolunteerPro member. What tools and resources from VolPro do you find to be helpful with all this? 

Kari: Before I became a full member, I did the certification class, the Volunteer Management Fundamentals course, just to get into, “Okay, what am I getting myself into here?” Because I had no idea.  

That was a big thing. And then just being able to ask questions and find the resources that I need to get those questions answered has been really good. 

I started with Habitat as an intern and then as an admin assistant before taking on the volunteer coordinator role. I was completely new to it, in the middle of Covid, with no clue of what I was getting myself into.  

Finding a place where I can get the resources has been great for me.  

Jamie: We’re so happy that you’re part of the membership community! Thank you for joining me today, and for the all the hard work you and your crew are doing to make a difference in the community! 

Needing a Creativity Boost in Your Volunteer Recruitment Efforts?   

VolunteerPro membership is a great place to find resources, downloads, templates, and tools to help you look at your volunteer strategy through fresh eyes. 

With live monthly coaching, self-guided study, and a vibrant community of like-minded professionals to share ideas with, VolunteerPro membership is the perfect place to get inspired AND equipped to move your volunteer program forward in the coming year.  

Whether you’re starting from the very beginning, building on an established program framework, or somewhere in between, VolunteerPro Membership has exactly what you need, right where you are, to help build, grow, and scale a sustainable volunteer team of enthusiastic, committed talent.  

Monthly and annual subscriptions are available. Learn more today!