Ideally you should be able to create a system that allows the organisation to count on the continuous support of new volunteers.
You should select the ambassadors of your organisation at the beginning of its history or when the fists projects are implemented in the community. After this initial introductory phase, you should rather work on the maintenance and nurturing of these existing relationships to guarantee continuous support and precious help when needed.
To look for new young volunteers and apprentices solely through ad-hoc organised events or by recruiting students when visiting schools and recreational centres is time consuming and not cost effective.
You should be able to establish working relationships with local schools – secondary schools, training centres – and also with jobseekers centres to establish ways in which people willing to spend part of their time learning new skills while helping out a non-profit organisation could be organised. For instance, you should start by creating a document in which you explain the main goals of the organisation, the area in which it operates, the skills and expertise of existing team members and what it has already been achieved (successful applications, successful implementations, successful fundraising campaigns etc). Then, you should present this document to your target organisations. By way of example, you can address managers of secondary schools, job seekers centres, technical schools, religious centres and other organisations that are relevant for what the NGO does in the community.
You should find the way to prove that by volunteering in the organisation, the candidates will acquire new skills in on of the fields of expertise of the organisation.
You should prepare a list of activities that volunteers could be asked to perform, targets to be reached and also skills that will be acquired by completing the volunteering programme. This could be written by considering what has been said for writing job announcements.
Importantly, you should remember that you are asking to people to give up their spare time to work for the NGO with no remuneration. Think about ways to compensate their work. For instance, if your organisation has a cafè, you could give them a discount. You could provide them with lunches when they work in the centre, pay for their weekly travel card, give them vouchers to be spent in local shops or book tokens. Alternatively, you could organise a special event to celebrate the end of their volunteering experience. For instance, you can take them to a weekend trip to discover the surrounding or you could take them to visit a nearby city. Alternatively, you could agree with local schools to integrate the voluntary programme in the school extra-curriculum activities.
In this way, students will get credits for the time spent working in the NGO and these credits will help them improving their final marks or they could choose to volunteer in the organisation instead of attending another optional class or activity organised by the school. It is not easy to establish this sort of collaborations, but it is worth trying. Jobseekers could be given the opportunity to learn new skills, which could be used to find jobs in the NGO sector. It is important to highlight that by working in the NGO individuals will gain more than NGO skills. Rather they will gain transferable skills and first hand experience in administration and event planning that could be used to apply for several other jobs.
