Access Assemble
Community feedback: How to attract more volunteers (1/3)
‘How to attract more volunteers’ is the million pound question on most Volunteer Manager’s minds. With service demand up and volunteering down, more charities are moving away from manual recruitment methods and embracing the world of digital volunteer management software (VMS).
In the first of our ‘Community Feedback’ series, we’ll be focusing on volunteer recruitment and the role a VMS can play, including:
- How to attract more volunteers using a VMS
- The benefits of digital volunteer recruitment
- Insights and feedback from sector professionals
How to attract more volunteers with a VMS
No VMS is complete without dedicated recruitment features. As more people look for flexible opportunities that fit a busy schedule, a good VMS will help you evolve your programme and future-proof your recruitment strategy. Streamlining every stage of the process, a VMS enables you to attract volunteers with a code-free, out-of-the-box solution that offers:
- Eye-catching volunteer role adverts
- Simplified, automated onboarding
- Direct communication between applicants and Volunteer Managers
- Enhanced support for Volunteer Managers
Community feedback: how to attract volunteers to your nonprofit organisation
In this section, we highlight five ways a VMS can improve your organisation’s volunteer recruitment. Wondering how it would work for you? A good VMS delivers measurable results, which is why we’ve asked our customers to share their insights and experiences of using Access Assemble.
Build attractive role adverts
Every volunteer recruitment process starts with an ad. And not just any ad. A strong volunteer advertisement will be online, on-brand, and easy to find. It will include key information like role descriptions, responsibilities, shift patterns and location, while looking professional and visually engaging — so that applicants are inspired to read on!
A good VMS makes creating volunteer ads quick and hassle-free by enabling you to:
- Create and adapt online application templates
- Host ads online (using a microsite that fits seamlessly into your website)
- Accept online applications without involving your IT team.
What our customers are saying
Volunteers are a vital part of the services offered by the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation. Before they invested in Access Assemble, both staff and volunteers found themselves navigating laborious, manual recruitment systems. Today the Foundation regularly creates online ads that are true to their brand. It’s a shift that paid off — with volunteer numbers nearly doubling in just one year.
“Enabling volunteers to have access to a swift and seamless recruitment process is a big consideration when removing the potential barriers to entry for volunteers. We can easily create opportunities with all the details in our own tone of voice and share a link straight to the role on our website, where volunteers can apply right away.”
Catherine Rose, Volunteering Manager
Hear more from the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation
Simplify the application process
Encouraging people to apply for a volunteer role is one thing. Ensuring they complete the process, is another. Manual systems can often lead to lost applications, missed follow-ups, or forgotten reminders. Before you know it, the system has ground to a halt and applicants start to drop-off.
A VMS removes these barriers, helping you harness people’s enthusiasm and recruit effectively by:
- Centralising the application process in one hub
- Sending automated reminders to keep applications moving forward
- Enabling real-time application tracking for volunteers and managers
What our customers are saying
In 2018, the RSPCA began a digital journey that transformed their volunteer management, with Access Assemble’s digital recruitment tools helping them attract more volunteers.
“If I had to pick a must-have feature, I really couldn't do without the recruitment tools — they are worth their weight in gold! It just makes recruitment so much easier, and with a standardised approach across the Society, our Volunteer Coordinators love it too. The simplicity of being able to generate opportunities independently, but with full access to our role profiles and the comfort that nothing will get missed throughout the application process, has been game changing.”
Brian Reeves, Head of Volunteer Experience, RSPCA
Find out more about the RSPCA’s experience
Speed up the onboarding process
After the application comes onboarding. With a lot of boxes to tick, it’s easy for the process to become a bottleneck and for promising applications to fall by the wayside.
A good VMS keeps the onboarding process moving and helps Volunteer Managers complete tasks efficiently. Along with automated reminders, a VMS improves collaboration between managers and applicants by:
- Bringing transparency to the onboarding process with live status updates
- Enabling direct messaging between applicants and Volunteer Managers
- Streamlining document and reference collections for a smoother onboarding experience
What our customers are saying
Volunteers are at the core of the National Autistic Society. Before the team invested in Access Assemble, safeguarding checks were done manually — a process which could take weeks.
“One of the best things about Assemble is the automation of references… We are now able to onboard volunteers within a few days of applying and the stages of recruitment through Assemble mean nothing is missed. The average time it takes to clear a volunteer to start has been reduced from approximately a month to 2 to 3 days depending on role.”
Laura Clark, Head of Volunteering, National Autistic Society
Read about the National Autistic Society’s journey
Take a diverse approach
By bringing together volunteers from different backgrounds and perspectives, organisations are better-placed to innovate, solve problems, and create services that truly resonate with their communities. If you’re looking to better understand your volunteer demographics and make your recruitment process more inclusive, our dedicated Diversity & Inclusion feature will help you:
- Gather relevant diversity data with sensitivity
- Anonymise, securely store, and protect personal details
- Analyse data for clear insights into volunteer demographics
- Make informed decisions to meet diversity goals
What our customers are saying
Sustrans has over 3,000 volunteers across the UK. Access Assemble has played a big part in developing its programme and making sure that their volunteer experiences can accessed by all.
“Assemble has also enabled us to begin creating new, more informal volunteering opportunities utilsing easy recruitment and good analytics to track engagement and impact. This is really exciting for us and we hope this will enable a more diverse range of people to volunteer with Sustrans.”
Adam Jukes, Volunteer Implementation Lead
Check out what Sustrans has to say
Speak to our experts about how to attract volunteers
Effective volunteer recruitment systems are a key part of any volunteer programme, and a VMS can transform this process. To learn how Access Assemble can help your organisation attract more volunteers, visit our product page.
Want to speak to a human? Get in touch with our team today.
