“Anyone can be great because everybody can serve”. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Recruiting volunteers is tough. People lead busy lives. The folks you want to include into your organization are probably busy volunteering with other organizations. If not that, they are busy with work and family. So how do you convince them to volunteer for your organization?

Gettingattention.org has great tips for finding and enlisting the help your organization needs. The illustration here shows those tips in steps. 

You want to have a volunteer program in place as soon as you have organized. Of course, you need to look at the volunteers you have now. If you are new, think about the people who supported you in finding your organization. They are perfect candidates! 

What do you need? What tasks do you want a volunteer to do? Can they do it from home? Via Zoom or other platform? 

Ask your present volunteers or if you're just getting started, appropach the people you have been supportive to see if they can fulfill the needs or your organization. 

Create job descriptions to let people know your needs. Keep them simple but allow people you recruit to choose what they will do. 

Work with your team, your board of directors, to create a list of people that you will approach. If you already have vounteers, ask them who they know, get the contact information and ask them to help you approach the new people. 

You may find that some people were just waiting to be asked.

When I was on the board of a free health clinic, I was recruited as a volunteer. I was invited in part because of my skills and involvement in the community. The best part for me was that the board of directors met quarterly. Whatever I did in between meetings was simple. Sometimes keeping things simple is the best way to reruit volunteers. If they can do something once or twice a month? That can fit their busy life. 

Put your self in the place of the person you want to recruit and "pitch" them in a way that fits their overall life. You will find that finding volunteers is easier than you thing.