How Smart Tech Can Improve Your Outreach to Volunteer Candidates

Outreach to volunteer candidates may seem to be getting harder than ever. But with a few new tactics, and a tech-forward approach, you can begin to attract a whole new audience of enthusiastic supporters.

Advances in technology have always incited shifts of culture. Those same advances have also come with levels of resistance.

The automobile is one invention that created obvious changes in society. Some held out, whether from apprehension of change itself, a fierce belief that no transportation could be as safe and reliable as a team of horses, or maybe just loyalty to their horse.

Eventually, though, we’ve reached the point where no one ties their horse up outside the Apple Store.

Technology has changed how we do almost everything. People have expectations that the product or information they want will be immediately accessible when they want it.

How does this apply to your organization, or to you, as a leader of volunteers?

Take a good look. Is your organization still stuck in the horse and buggy days when it comes to reaching new volunteer candidates?

The same old ways of recruiting supporters for your cause are, if they haven’t already, going to become less reliable and efficient.

The fact is, if you’re going to have to compete for the time and attention of your volunteer prospects, you must leverage the technology people have come to expect.

Your Prospective Volunteer’s Expectations

According to this Forbes article, “Candidates are more like consumers than ever.” They’re speaking about job candidates, but the same can, and should, be said of your prospective volunteer candidates.

As we all are, your high potential prospects are already bombarded with email, ads, and information all day long.

It takes just the right message to break through all the noise and attract their attention. That message needs to convey that further action on their part is worth their time and effort … and is actually worth setting aside something else on their heaping plate of to-do’s.

Your candidate’s (or “consumer’s”) expectations have been shaped by their experiences. In today’s world, their experiences are shaped by convenience. Think: overnight shipping of almost anything, Zoom meetings and video interviews with no need to leave the house for the busy freeway, and being targeted by messages tailored specifically to meet their needs and concerns by artificial intelligence.

Regardless of what you are able to offer right now, your prospective volunteer is primed for information to come to them through multiple channels, all based on their consumption preferences.

They’re used to receiving messages on a variety of platforms and sifting through to determine which deserve their attention. They are expecting to hear from organizations whose causes they embrace, but in the way they prefer.

If your outreach to volunteer candidates still mainly consists of posting paper flyers or appealing only to those who attend your events, then there’s a whole audience from whose attention you’re not going to benefit.

While you believe you have communicated with a larger portion of your community, it’s more likely that most have never heard of you or your opportunities.

The good news is that there are plenty of people out there wanting to be involved, to further the work of a worthy cause.

There is a tremendous audience of active, motivated supporters out there, but you must reach them where they’re at.

Brave New World: Artificial Intelligence Tools

In commercial settings, where for-profit entities are on the hunt for consumers or employees, they deploy technology to source prospects.

Recall how after you watched a YouTube video of a dog playing with a remote-controlled frisbee, you’ll see an ad for dog food or a remote-controlled frisbee pop up on Facebook? That’s a company’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology, feeling you out as a prospect for their product.

There are hundreds of human resource AI technologies available. Hundreds!

They include products such as:

Paradox – Uses machine learning to interact with candidates through a conversational user interface (a chatbot named Olivia!). When programmed by the organization, Olivia answers key questions applicants have about the hiring process, without staff hours being used.

XOR – Has an AI chatbot that can screen candidates, schedule interviews, and answer questions over text message, email, live chat on career sites, recorded videos, and WhatsApp messaging.

Pymetrics – Current employees take a series of quizzes that mimic video games and the algorithm builds personas of people who fit each role. Candidates take similar tests to see if they are a match for an available opportunity.

HireVue – An AI chatbot suite that helps recruiting teams to source, screen, and schedule candidates.

Textio – Helps talent acquisition professionals decrease implicit language bias when writing recruitment marketing content by giving their texts a score and suggestions. It may pick out words that are overly masculine, or that are cliched to the point of being a turnoff, thus increasing the probability of messaging that will resonate with the desired candidates.

Who knew, right?

Four Affordable Strategies to Personalize Outreach to Volunteer Candidates

Now, it’s likely your organization can’t invest in the latest and greatest human resources AI for sourcing and outreach to volunteer candidates.

But there’s no reason you can’t emulate some of the same strategies to add a personal touch, using the tools at your disposal!

Let’s take a look at how your outreach to volunteer candidates can replicate what consumers have come to expect when it comes to communication with a brand.

Yes, you should start thinking of your volunteer program and the opportunities offered as a brand. That mindset will be helpful as you plan to enhance your outreach strategies.

#1 Expand Your Reach with Networking

Using the technology you have; your reach is already more expansive than you may have recognized.

These days, and especially due to the massive shift to virtual caused by the pandemic, online networking has become the norm.

Thanks to social media, strategic networking is no longer just those awkward happy hour events. It’s quite common to meet in a virtual setting, whether one-on-one or in groups, and to request an introduction to others who have similar interests.

Any interaction your organization is having online can, and should, be laying the groundwork for recruiting volunteers. Staff or volunteers at those touchpoints should keep that in mind and steer the conversation toward recruitment when an opportunity presents itself.

#2 Refine Your Online Presence

People are more comfortable with and receptive to new connections being brokered from a virtual setting.

Social media platforms make it easier for volunteer candidates to do their own research. They’re looking for opportunities and organizations that match their interests and motivations. That means you need to be appearing in the places they’re looking – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook – with stories, pictures and data that conveys the organization’s mission and work.

Your website should be clearly communicating the atmosphere and culture of your organization. That message should be consistent across all digital platforms where prospects might be learning about you. Your brand should be recognizable in appearance, language and tone wherever it shows up.

To further demonstrate the culture and community that a volunteer would enjoy with your program, you might want to have a Facebook group where a prospective volunteer can virtually meet other volunteers and get to know more about the opportunities. The community should be reflective of the volunteering experience and give someone an idea about how the team interacts.

Feelings of support and belonging will be nurtured by questions posed in the group receiving prompt replies. Maybe volunteers can rotate weeks of who will respond to inquiries. This kind of interaction assures a prospective candidate that their volunteering experience will have the responsive support they’re seeking.

#3 Provide Data and Transparency

Today’s prospective volunteer knows how to research your organization and opportunities.

They’ll want to know if you’re aligned with their views on the environment and other social issues and whether your services produce the kinds of outcomes they can be proud to support. They will want to know that contributions of their time and money are being well-allocated and used. With technology, they have the means to find out.

Beyond learning that there’s work for them to do toward your cause, people want to know that they’re working with a good organization. In the last decade, companies invested more of their recruiting budgets on telling stories about their workplace to convey the right information to employee prospects.

This power dynamic makes it more necessary than ever for organizations to be transparent, even at the earliest stages of engagement. Your organization has the technology to provide the data and analytics that today’s candidates expect from a reputable cause.

As a well-rounded recruitment tool, your website should make this information readily available to anyone seeking it. This supports your organization’s open and honest image and reputation.

The generous availability of informative data can create not just more candidates, but more-informed candidates.

#4 Focus on the Entire Volunteer Experience

Partially due to the extended reach of social media, employers now place great importance on providing a great candidate experience. Since word of a laborious or protracted hiring process can be spread world-wide almost immediately, it makes sense to create a pleasant recruitment and hiring experience.

We’ve suggested ways by which volunteer job descriptions and recruitment messaging can be improved by crafting them from the volunteers’ point of view. Planning your outreach to volunteer candidates from their perspective will make your efforts more effective.

Similarly, to develop a continuous pipeline of interested talent, focus on the volunteer experience you are creating right from the first interaction. It’s important to treat everyone as a prospective candidate. Even if a potential volunteer isn’t ready to commit just now, they may become a supporter when the next opportunity comes open.

Create a relationship with them using tactics from recruitment and sales, like a steady stream of automated drip campaigning and friendly, informative content. Your goal should be to create constant opportunities for communication, like you would with a friend.

Savvy volunteer prospects know there are opportunities to serve all around. Your focus on delivering a great consumer-like candidate experience will keep you top of mind when they’re ready.

Program Benefits from Use of Technology in Outreach to Volunteer Candidates

Aside from the obvious win of gaining more volunteers for your organization’s cause, leveraging technology to aid in recruitment can bring about other benefits.

Having ongoing, automated processes will make your volunteer program more efficient. This can “buy back” time for you to invest in other initiatives.

Using social media, texting and other tech-savvy recruitment tools signals to younger demographics, professionals and the technically inclined that you are current on trends and could be a culture fit for them.

Technology also makes it much easier to develop a community around a brand, cause, or project.

And if you are able to invest in a full-scale volunteer management software system, you’ll be able to track attendance and performance, match interests and qualifications with roles, and monitor the progress of volunteer training.

Doing that would enable you to promote new volunteer opportunities more efficiently.