Planning for Volunteers

Do you want volunteers to feel a sense of belonging within a team that reflects the broader community?

This part of the toolkit helps with the planning and the internal work needed to create inclusive volunteer experiences. It contains tools for strategic planning, documentation, marketing, communication, creating inclusive volunteer position descriptions, and recruitment. Use these tools to enhance some of your current practices or identify where you may have some gaps on your way towards a more welcoming volunteer experience.

A Guide for Creating Inclusive Volunteer Position Descriptions

This tool helps you to create inclusive volunteer position descriptions to attract a representative group of potential volunteers.

Broadening Access to Volunteer Opportunities: Things to Consider

This tool provides ideas and examples of things you can do to ensure that your organization’s volunteer opportunities are accessible to as many potential volunteers as possible. 

Documenting Volunteer Involvement Part One: Planning for Data Collection

This tool provides ideas and examples of things you can do to ensure that your organization’s volunteer opportunities are accessible to as many potential volunteers as possible.

Equity Practice Framework

This chart guides you in assessing your current volunteer engagement practice through an inviting lens.

Focused Volunteer Recruitment: Questions to Consider

This guide helps you consider how to reach a specific audience of potential volunteers. Reflect on your responses to these questions before putting a marketing plan or recruitment strategy into action.

Guiding Questions for Equitable Community Collaboration

This tool is designed to help you explore and deepen partnerships with collaborators in your community who seek to volunteer with your organization. Use these questions to guide and inform conversations with potential and existing collaborators.

A Guide for Organizational Conversations on Broadening Volunteer Engagement

This tool guides you through a series of questions on your organization's efforts in applying principles of equity and inclusivity when engaging volunteers. The questions will also help you look ahead and take steps to identify the individuals who need to be involved in making progress and creating plans for the future.

Inclusive Volunteer Recruitment Guide

This guide helps you plan for broader volunteer engagement at each stage of the volunteer recruitment process.

Visualizing Equity

These visuals can be used during discussions around broadening volunteer engagement with volunteers. Use these images during your strategic planning, training, and communications with volunteers and other stakeholders.

Preparing Volunteers

Do you want volunteers to succeed in their roles and feel that they are contributing to your community’s health and well-being?

To meet the various needs of volunteers, these tools are designed to help you create accessible orientations, inclusive training, and meaningful reflection. Tools found here will help you communicate the impact that volunteers can have when you partner together. Use these tools to enhance some of your current practices or identify where you may have some gaps on your way towards a more inviting volunteer experience.

Accessibility Considerations when Partnering with Volunteers

This tool helps you think about accessibility when partnering with volunteers.

Checklist for Training Volunteers Around Equity and Inclusion

This tool provides a list of training categories to consider when preparing volunteers to partner with your organization. Providing additional training in these areas is a step towards creating a more inclusive experience for volunteers and the community they partner with and serve. 

Getting to Know Volunteers through Values-Based Questions

This tool helps you get to know volunteers by asking values-based questions that allow them to express themselves in their own way.

Volunteer Training Formats: Strengths and Limitations Guide

This guide provides you with an overview of common training formats, highlighting their strengths and limitations. Refer to it to craft training formats that are accessible, welcoming, and best suited for specific situations in your particular organization.

Building Volunteer Relationships

Do you want to strengthen relationships with volunteers in your organization or community?

Tools found here focus on how you value volunteers. Some tools guide you in applying a broader approach to coaching and mentoring current volunteers. Other tools are designed to help you reconsider ideas around recognizing and retaining volunteers. Use these tools to enhance some of your current practices or identify where you may have gaps on your way towards a more inclusive volunteer experience.

A Progressive’s Language Guide

Created by The Sum of Us, this document provides guidance on avoiding discriminatory language. It provides examples that reflect a broad range of identities and perspectives.

Defining Retention Worksheet and Defining Retention Tutorial

This worksheet supports you in creating a definition of retention that considers the range of characteristics in your organization’s volunteer base. You may want to watch the tutorial before you get started.

Documenting Volunteer Involvement Part Two: Ethical Data Collection

This tool suggests questions to consider for collecting data ethically. You may need input or expertise from other staff or volunteers that you partner with in order to answer some of these questions.

Documenting Volunteer Involvement Part Three: Collecting and Using Data

This tool suggests questions to consider once data is collected and being used. You may need input or expertise from other staff or volunteers that you partner with in order to answer some of these questions.

Encouraging Reflection in Volunteer Opportunities

This tool is designed to encourage volunteers to reflect on their roles and experiences. It provides questions intended to support volunteers as they navigate their biases and help them develop greater self-awareness, empathy, and understanding of their impact. 

Identity Signs: An Exercise to Encourage Conversation and Reflection about Equity

This training video introduces you to the Identity Signs exercise, an interactive tool to start and enhance dialogue around access and privilege. Discover the benefits of using this exercise in your organization to foster teamwork and critical thinking, while addressing potential challenges and sensitive topics. 

Volunteer Motivation Questionnaire

This tool will help you create a volunteer motivation questionnaire. Knowing the unique motivations of volunteers as individuals allows your organization to connect with them personally.

This toolkit is an outcome of the Assessing Diversity and Equity in Volunteer Inclusion (ADEVI) project. The project is a partnership between Arizona State University (ASU) and the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration (CCVA).