3. Outreach and Screening
Once all of the potential volunteers have been identified, you need to ensure that you have the right person for each volunteer assignment and if so, you need to ask for a commitment. Here are some steps to consider:
Recruitment Tool Development:
Before you call or interview a potential volunteer in person, you might want to prepare some tools to help you make a case for volunteering as well as keeping track of possible candidates. Here are some ideas:
- Overview of the organization (mission, vision, key messages)
- Outline of the event
- Job description(s) (for this role and possibly others)
- A tool to capture information on each individual. You can also consider asking potential volunteers to complete something like a “Window of Work” tool that will identify their interests, skills and also what they don’t want to do as a volunteer.
Screening / Interviewing
Whether you call or interview potential volunteers in person, here is an overview of what you might want to cover:
- Introduce the organization and outline the overall event;
- Describe specific volunteer needs;
- Determine if the person is interested in volunteering;
- Find out the person’s past volunteer and/or professional experience;
- Determine what role might suit this individual – based on their interests and qualifications;
- Describe a specific volunteer role and what it would entail – including time commitment and tasks;
- Answer questions on the volunteer role and/or the organization.