Part of audience development is increasing volunteer support. In order to obtain more volunteers, I am a firm believer in setting up a very well organized and managed volunteer program. Today I volunteered at our local family assistance agency. They help families in transition to support them through a challenging time. They have a housing program, food bank, gift center, and furniture store.

I saw an opportunity for volunteering during this holiday season, and I emailed them for information. They emailed back within a day and sent me the volunteer form to fill out. After that, I was updated into their database, and they sent me the information for the particular opportunity I was interested in, asking what shifts I could take. I signed up for two shifts.

The day before the first shift, they sent a confirmation to make sure I was still available. They asked me to show up 30 minutes early for training.

I was trained properly during the 30 minutes and there was time to meet a few of the other people I would be working with. After that, they monitored the volunteers, but allowed us to do our tasks!

They overlapped the shifts by 30 minutes so the ones on the current shift could help train the next shift.

After a shift, the volunteers are thanked personally before going home. I will see if they follow up with an email.

It was an extremely smooth experience, and highly enjoyable for me and for them. They were able to help more people efficiently during our time there!

So, I hope you have a volunteer system in place that is well organized and managed. This is all a part of the process of treating your volunteers well so they have a great experience during their volunteer time.

Oh, and I am also a donor! Talk about great audience development. ;O)

If you have a good volunteer experience to share, please reply! 

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, ADS

Today only!  Save 30% on my book, The How of Audience Development for the Arts, with code FAMILY30. There is a chapter about volunteer management!