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« The "Name Letter Effect" in Job Attraction | Main | Retesting Policies »
How to Attract Volunteers
On November 17, 2008 by Jamie Madigan
Thumbing through a recent edition of the Journal of Applied Psychology I came across an article dealing with a niche of the recruiting scene that a lot of us don't often think about, but which probably has its own set of rules: recruiting volunteers. It's no surprise that when you drop that whole paycheck thing from the equation that the rules change and other factors come into play when motivating people to just give you their time and effort.
Perhaps the most surprising and possibly counter-intuitive finding of this research was that telling potential volunteers how totally mind-blowingly awesome you and your charity are may work against you. Specifically, volunteers who were told that the organization was doing a super job at completing whatever goals it had were less likely to volunteer for them, possibly because they felt their services might be put to better use elsewhere. So, don't over sell yourself.
So what does make a big difference? For one, support. Potential volunteers were interested in signing up to the extent that they thought that the organization would provide them with the support they needed to do the job. I imagine this translates to an "Am I going to be wasting my time here?" sentiment? If you're giving up your weekends or evenings, you want to feel like someone is benefitting from it instead of just sitting and saying "Tisk, tisk. Someone should really DO something."
Interesting stuff. The full title is "Volunteer Recruitment: The Role of Organizational Support and Anticipated Resepect in Non-Voluneers' Attraction to Charitable Volunteer Organizations" by Edwin J. Boezeman and Naomi Ellemers. It's in volume 93 of Journal of Applied Psychology.
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