Went to a great talk this week given by Lani Evans (Co-Ordinator with Volunteering Otago). Lani talked about attracting young volunteers to your organisation.
Lani spoke about the importance of ‘scafolding’ volunteering opportunites for young people. This means offering a range of experiences; from short, low commitment opportunties (a couple of hours to one day) to higher ones. Introducing young people to Volunteering at a low level builds comfort with you and your agency and leads to greater connection with your mission. Young volunteers who have a good experience at this low level are more likely to continue with your agency.
I’ve brainstormed some ideas about what these low level possibilities could be. Would any of these suit your agency or do you have other ideas to share?
- Get them to do a mailout providing a half-time break with nice food (offers social connection with a reward)
- Set up a half-day event with entertainment and fun stuff to do in the breaks
- If you have an event planned get young people to publicise this using txting and facebook
- Get them to make products for fundraising e.g. bath bombs, bookmarks, cards. Maybe this could be something they could do in a group (yet again with a half-time break and food)
- There are many artistic young people, maybe they could design something for you.
- Come up with list of jobs suitable for holidays (many young people only have term breaks and the big xmas break to do volunteer work)
Look forward to your feedback. Have a good week.
Cindy.
Hi Cindy
I like your list, it covers a wide range of ideas! The holidays is a great idea to attract young people – we recently scheduled a project here at VW to coincide with the university holidays and it worked really well. It gave us a fixed period of time within which the project must be completed and the participants volunteered to meet up a few times a week during this period to work on the project. We got feedback from the volunteers that it was a valuable practical experience and gave some insight into what particpating in a project in the work environment is like.
Thanks for your comment. Great to hear that your project went well. It will be interesting to see how many of the young people that attended will be interested in further Vounteer work.
I came across a great comment today about youth volunteering. It said “Do you expect marriage on the first date”! In other words are you expecting very high commitment from your Volunteers when they are new to your organisation.
Opportunities such as the one you offered enable young people to try out Voluntary work at a low level of commitment