After spending the time and effort to recruit new volunteers it is important that they want to continue to give up their time for your canoe club.
There are a number of steps you can take to ensure that the volunteering opportunities that you offer are a valuable enough experience to make volunteers want to stay with you.
Induction process – The majority of volunteers leave their role within the first 6 months. The induction process needs to be comprehensive and reflect how important the volunteer is to your club. The induction process can include:
Volunteer welcome pack – Designed to provide the volunteer with important information about the club
Mentoring – Assigning an ‘experienced’ volunteer to the new recruit for the first few weeks will help the new volunteer feel supported and provide them with someone to ask questions and learn the ropes.
Volunteer review – Although it’s sometimes difficult to find time to sit down and speak with your volunteers on a regular basis, you should try and meet with them one to one at least once a year. This will enable you to find out how they are getting on, if they need any support/training, if they want to change role, get more or less responsibility and also give them an opportunity to feed back about how they feel the club is managing its volunteers. This will be a worthwhile experience and help you retain your volunteers more effectively.
Communication – It is sometimes easy to overlook volunteers when making important decisions for your club. It is important to ensure that your volunteer workforce is included in the overall club communications and they are kept up to date with policies which may affect them:
– Hold volunteer briefings (but not too often!)
– Communication via online social networking can be quick and easy. Set up a secure online forum for your volunteers to communicate through
– Include a volunteers section in your newsletter
Rewards and recognition can also be an effective way to retain volunteers. To find out more information about rewarding volunteers click here