Board and volunteer recruitment and retention are essential to any nonprofit organization. Board members and volunteers can make or break a nonprofit organization. The goal is for these individuals to make – NOT break. In a five-part series, I am honored to share with you my top five tips for recruiting and retaining high-performing board members and volunteers.
Now that we have focused on recruitment of board members and volunteers, let’s turn our attention to the retention of board members and volunteers.
My third tip is to match your volunteers’ interests and strengths to your organization’s needs.
Following are key points to keep in mind:
- Once you recruit high-performers to your nonprofit organization board, you should put the same effort into retaining them.
- You should conduct a thorough board orientation for all new board members. An orientation will set them up for success on your board.
- During the orientation, you should discuss the organization’s history, mission, long-term goals and special initiatives. You should also discuss the board’s standing committees and projects in great detail.
- You should then ask your board members to tell you which standing committees they would like to serve on and which projects they would like to assist with.
- Also, you should ask them how they believe their experiences and skill set will help the committees to progress. This discussion will help you to determine if the committees will be a good fit for the board members. The better the fit, the better the experience for the board member…
I recommend that you:
- Ask your board members on at least an annual basis if they would like to remain on their current committees or change committees
- Give your board members a “buffet” of projects to work on and allow them to choose the ones that resonate the most with them
- Update the full board on the major accomplishments of the standing committees so they can know what each committee is working on and to give board members an opportunity to work on new projects
What strategies would you like to share?
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