Soapbox Engage Blog

Social media is one of the most widely used modern communication channels. You might use social media to stay connected with family and friends, catch up on current events, or share adorable animal videos. As a volunteer coordinator, you can use social media for a strategic purpose: volunteer recruitment and engagement.

Boosting volunteer engagement allows your organization to continue benefiting from the passion and support volunteers provide to your mission. The more volunteers you can retain, the easier it is to gather supporters the next time you have a volunteer opportunity.

Your organization may already be using several social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even TikTok. If you’re not seeing the success you were hoping for with these platforms, it’s time to revisit your social media practices and optimize your strategy for success.

Here are six social media best practices to make the most of your communications:

1. Show your volunteers (and their impact) in action.
2. Maintain a professional, unified image.
3. Create volunteer-exclusive groups.
4. Play on the strengths of each platform.
5. Make it a two-way conversation.
6. Post volunteer shout-outs to show appreciation.

To streamline and simplify your social media strategy, look for a volunteer management platform that integrates with popular social media platforms, like Facebook. This will allow you to quickly share opportunities and information, while also encouraging volunteers to share posts to their networks as well. With this in mind, let’s dive in!

1. Show your volunteers (and their impact) in action.

Your organization likely has a core group of active volunteers who dedicate their time and energy to support your cause. Perhaps these volunteers have a personal connection to your mission, special skills, or a long-standing relationship with your organization. Whatever the case may be, this group doesn’t need a lot of convincing to get involved in each opportunity you offer.

But for other audience members, it can take more encouragement to convince them to volunteer. There are plenty of barriers to getting involved with volunteering, from not having enough free time to feeling self-conscious. Prospects might be worried they don’t have the skills required or that their individual support won’t make a major difference for your mission.

These audience members need proof that their actions will make a difference. Use your social media pages to highlight your volunteers in action, along with their specific accomplishments. This can provide the reassurance that first-time volunteers need to make the leap and sign up for an opportunity.

Share posts such as:

1. Videos and pictures of volunteers in action. Whether your volunteers are building a house, cooking meals for seniors, or planting trees, be sure to take photos (with their permission) and share them on your social media pages. This helps newbie volunteers get a sense of what they’ll be doing ahead of time.
2. Volunteer impact summaries. Post statistics and results on volunteer accomplishments. For instance, share how volunteers at your last opportunity were able to pack 40 backpacks full of new school supplies for local students. Doing so shows prospective volunteers that if they do decide to get involved, their work will make a tangible difference in the community.

You can even livestream on Facebook or Instagram during the volunteer opportunity to give your audience an on-the-ground look at what your volunteers are working on. These actions help reassure any prospective volunteers who are curious about what your volunteer opportunities consist of and what they help accomplish.

2. Maintain a professional, unified image.

Just because social media is seen as a more casual, off-the-cuff, communication channel doesn’t mean your social media strategy should be equally as spur-of-the-moment. When your organization’s volunteer program has a strong, unified brand, you show audience members that your organization is professional and legitimate.

As you develop your volunteer program’s brand, consider how you will incorporate brand elements into your social media communications and posts. Prioritize representing your brand effectively on social media using:

• Images: People are drawn to social media posts that include images. In fact, Buzzsumo found that Facebook posts with images receive 2.3x more engagement than those without. Visuals have the power to capture your audience’s attention, so you should choose your images wisely. Find photos that capture emotion and display your mission in action. Also, ensure any infographics use your brand colors.
• Videos: If your videos look too homemade, you’ll encourage followers to scroll past without engaging. Ensure your videos are professionally designed, with your brand colors and uniform fonts throughout. In addition, include captions in your videos for hearing impaired individuals and those who are watching with the sound off.
• Tone: When it comes to social media, tone refers to the way you write any posts and messages. If your volunteer program was a person, your tone would be your personality. Whether you’re seeking to be an information source or strike a warm, familiar tone, ensure you adhere to the same tone throughout all your posts.

Formalize your social media brand elements into a style guide. Even if multiple people are posting from your social media accounts, you can still present a unified front when everyone references the style guide to create posts and interact with audience members.

3. Create volunteer-exclusive groups.

Facebook has the most users of any social media platform, so it’s important to take a special look at this popular channel. In particular, Facebook Groups have become more popular for creating communities of like-minded individuals or people with common interests.

Create a volunteer-exclusive group for your supporters to get to know one another and learn more about your organization. Make membership in your volunteer group an exciting prospect by offering perks such as free merchandise, coupons for local businesses, giveaways, and other incentives.

You can also use this group to promote upcoming opportunities and encourage supporters to share them with their personal networks. As Get Connected by Galaxy Digital’s volunteer recruitment guide states, volunteer prospects are more likely to trust recommendations from their friends and loved ones.

You can also promote special opportunities to active volunteers within your Facebook Group, such as volunteer grants. Volunteer grants are a form of corporate giving where companies contribute donations to nonprofits after their employees volunteer for a specified number of hours with those organizations. Volunteer grants are often highly motivational for supporters because they can maximize the impact of their volunteer work.

Creating a Facebook Group is an effective strategy for fostering a more engaged volunteer base that interacts with your organization daily.

4. Adjust your content and message depending on the platform.

Don’t take a one size fits all approach to your social media posts. Each platform is unique, so the content you post on each channel should be tailored to it.

For instance, consider the following aspects of each social media platform:

• Instagram is photo and video-focused.
• Facebook is popular for text posts, photo albums, videos, livestreams, Events, and Groups.
• Twitter is text-focused and has a 280 character limit. Images and videos are also popular on this platform.
• TikTok is fully video-focused.

It’s important to develop a strategy for each of these platforms, but ensuring these tactics work together with a multichannel communications approach is recommended. With a multichannel strategy, you can ensure you’re reaching different segments within your overall prospective audience. For instance, your younger audience might prefer communicating via Instagram, while your older audience prefers Facebook.

5. Make it a two-way conversation.

Your social media strategy shouldn’t just focus on communicating to your audience members, but also with them. Your social media interactions should be a two-way street that leaves the door open for volunteers to contribute feedback and get their questions answered.

Showing volunteers you care about their feedback encourages satisfaction and loyalty. Plus, when you design your volunteer opportunities with volunteer feedback in mind, you can boost attendance. People will be more willing to come if they know the experience will appeal to their interests and preferences.

Use social media to send short surveys after each volunteer opportunity to assess participants’ satisfaction levels and ask specific questions about aspects of the experience, from check-in to the actual work volunteers did.

For a more comprehensive understanding of how your volunteer program fits into the community and serves a need, you can create a community needs assessment. A community needs survey helps you understand your community’s gaps and how you can help fill those gaps with your services.

However, a community needs assessment is a comprehensive survey, so be sure to invest in a volunteer management platform that helps facilitate custom web forms. Review Double the Donation’s volunteer management guide for top systems, such as GetConnected by Galaxy Digital.

Your volunteer management platform can help you build your community needs assessment and store the data you collect from this survey. Then, use your insights to adjust your programming or projects to better serve your community.

6. Post volunteer shout-outs to show appreciation.

Your volunteers help your organization drive its mission forward and achieve its goals. Therefore, your volunteer engagement strategy is not complete without appreciation efforts that thank your volunteers for all the hard work they do to help your organization.

This Soapbox Engage post recommends a variety of volunteer appreciation ideas that you can incorporate into your social media posts, such as:

• Creating and posting volunteer impact reports that detail volunteer impact throughout a year (or more frequently, if you like). When you can point to the tangible outcomes that you’re thanking your volunteers for, it makes your appreciation messages more relevant and trustworthy.
• Posting “volunteer of the month” shoutouts that highlight the contributions of a dedicated volunteer.
• Tagging volunteers in your photos so they can easily share them on their pages.

You can also choose a top volunteer each month to win a special prize, such as a free t-shirt or coffee mug, and post a photo of them posing with their reward. Ultimately, you want your volunteer appreciation efforts to be memorable and special, ensuring volunteers return to your organization's opportunities again and again.

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Social media is an effective, inexpensive marketing channel to grow your volunteer base and engage current volunteers. With the right strategy in place, you ensure that your social media pages stay active and keep volunteers interested in what you have to offer.

Remember, you should find a volunteer management system that facilitates social media integration and survey creation, allowing you to manage your social media strategy and other volunteer management activities all under one roof.

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Guest Post by Addison Waters

Addison Waters is a Content Writer at Galaxy Digital, the best volunteer management software for managing, tracking, and engaging volunteerism. Addison holds a Master of Creative Writing from Durham University.