Marketing Volunteer Opportunities Online

Some words of caution:

• Do not begin to recruit volunteers until you have well-defined opportunities they can join in as quickly as possible. It's like advertising a product you don't really have: it can cause hard feelings on the part of potential supporters.

• If your organization cannot or does not answer email within 24 hours of its receipt, you should not include your organization's email address as a way for potential volunteers to contact you. Instead, in your online announcements, tell volunteers to call. Impact Online has heard from a few potential volunteers who read about another nonprofit's volunteer opportunities online and emailed their interest in helping; these potential volunteers were never contacted, and after weeks of waiting, went on to other volunteer assignments.

• include your organization's name, postal address, phone number, email address (if this is an acceptable way for potential volunteers to contact you), and World Wide Web address (if you have one) within the information

• provide information about specific volunteer opportunities -- for instance, will volunteers need to be on-site, or can they be "virtual" (work off-site via a computer)

• provide some information to potential volunteers that will educate them about your organization's mission, program focus, and value to the community

Online Discussion Groups

• Announce volunteer opportunities on appropriate Internet newsgroups and list servers: local groups, whose subscribers are located in or focused on your geographic area, and groups centered around a particular subject or issue (for instance, if you are looking for someone to help with Web site development, contact a discussion group for Web site developers; if you are looking for someone to help with an environmental project, look for an activists group).

  There are many regional newsgroups, too numerous to name here. Here are a few examples (note that if you click on a group to which your Internet Service Provider (ISP) does not subscribe to, you will get a "file not found" error; contact your ISP if you think it should provide access to a particular newsgroup):

  ba.helping-hand
  for announcements of San Francisco Bay Area volunteer opportunities and activities

  austin.announce
  accepts notices of volunteer opportunities for organizations in the Austin, Texas area

  seattle.general
  Items of general interest in Seattle, Washington.

  nebr.misc
  Discussions and postings about anything in Nebraska.

  chi.general
  General discussions, Chicago area, not forsale/wanted.

  chi.places
  Group for announcements of Chicago area events.

  dc.general
  Items of general interest to the Washington, DC area.

  tacoma.events
  Happenings around Tacoma/Pierce County Washington.

  tacoma.general
  General discussions for Tacoma/Pierce County Washington.

  wash.general
  Discussion of general matters in Washington State, USA

  New newsgroups appear everyday, and others disappear suddenly. A good place to look for appropriate newsgroups and list serves is via this Web site:
  http://www.liszt.com/

  Search using the name of the city where you are located to get the names of newsgroups in your area.

• Lurk before you leap; get a sense of the audience on a particular newsgroup or list serve before posting, to make sure that the audience would be receptive to your information. For instance, don't post volunteer opportunities to the newsgroup soc.org.nonprofit, as this group is made up of other nonprofit professionals who are looking for volunteers themselves.

• Announce volunteer opportunities on appropriate electronic bulletin board services (BBS). A BBS usually serves a limited geographic area or specific community.

  To find a BBS serving your community, look in your Internet Service Provider's software library and in an Internet Search Engine (see below). When using a search engine, type in your area code and the letters BBS, your city name and the letters BBS, or substitute the word bulletin board for BBS. For instance:

  408 and BBS
  San Francisco and Bulletin Board
  

The World Wide Web