From supporting fundraising campaigns to staffing events and program delivery, volunteers play an essential role in nonprofit organizations. But for both you and your volunteers to get maximum benefit, you need to ensure that you're putting the right people in the right roles.
While your organization might rely on nonprofit volunteers, that doesn't mean that everyone who applies will be a great fit. As the leader or manager of a nonprofit organization, it's your job to ensure that volunteers are appropriately prepared and trained to support your mission and community. A great first step is a solid volunteer screening process. Applications, interviews and background checks are vital to the success of your volunteering efforts, especially for organizations that engage with vulnerable populations, such as children and the elderly.
Screening your volunteers will help eliminate potential risks for your volunteers, community members and the organization.
Why Use a Volunteer Application Form?
If you're wondering how to recruit volunteers for your nonprofit, you probably have goals in mind for the people you're hoping to reach. By designing a volunteer application around these goals, you'll ensure that you have all the relevant information to assess whether prospective volunteers will be a good fit for your organization.
A volunteer management platform can help you streamline this process. GivePulse allows nonprofits to set up and customize the application form so individuals and groups can sign up easily and quickly. Through GivePulse's automated application system, nonprofits can configure membership or volunteer applications to include custom fields and materials, like an orientation video, and even accept payments.
Once an application is complete, it's simple to review, edit, deny or approve applications online. This will save you time and energy while also ensuring that your volunteers are placed according to their strengths and interests so that they have a good experience working with your organization.
What to Include
In addition to collecting basic information about prospective volunteers, an application form should be designed to help you with the screening process. The volunteer application form should include all the details required to assess if a volunteer is a good fit and whether you should proceed with an applicant.
Application forms for nonprofit volunteering can differ depending on the organization. However, they are typically designed to collect include basic biographical information, including:
- Name
- Age
- Contact information and contact preferences
- Home address
In addition, volunteer application forms should collect more detailed information to help you get a picture of a volunteer's background, qualifications, interest in your organization and availability. Depending on your needs, you might customize your form to collect:
- A statement of interest
- Information on any relevant training or experience
- The applicant's educational background
- Current and previous volunteer and employment experience
- Key skills
- Languages spoken
- Available hours and days for volunteer work
Depending on your nonprofit's work and mission, it may be necessary to screen prospective volunteers. In this case, your nonprofit might include the following steps in your volunteer application process.
- Background check
- References
Background checks cost money, so it's important to consider who will cover the cost: your organization or the volunteer? GivePulse makes it easy to collect payment to cover additional items, from t-shirts and swag to background checks, as part of a volunteer application.
Lastly, it's a good idea to ask prospective volunteers how they heard about your organization. By gathering data on which outreach methods are proving most effective, you can better understand how to recruit more volunteers in the future.
Utilize a Nonprofit CRM To Manage Nonprofit Volunteer Recruitment
By designing a solid volunteer application process, you prepare your organization and your volunteers for success. But gathering and assessing application information can be a heavy lift, especially if you're already managing a large team of volunteers.
A nonprofit CRM like GivePulse can streamline the application process. Once your volunteers are onboarded, you'll also be able to schedule volunteer shifts, track and record volunteer hours and communicate with your volunteers regularly.
From a seamless application process to intuitive tools to measure impact, GivePulse will support every aspect of your volunteer recruitment, registration, management and scheduling.
Schedule a demo with GivePulse today to see how a world-class nonprofit CRM can help you streamline your recruitment and volunteer application process.
About GivePulse
GivePulse's mission is to enable everyone in the world to participate and engage in lifting their community to new heights. We do so by providing a platform to list, find, organize and measure the impact of service-learning, community engagement, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and volunteerism.
Founded in 2012 in Austin, Texas, GivePulse works with 650,000+ groups, including colleges and universities, nonprofits, businesses, K-12/school districts and cities and municipalities. Together, we connect millions of people in an effort to create positive social change.
Start making a difference today by visiting www.givepulse.com.