Understanding the Challenges of Volunteer Retention: A Guide for Nonprofit Organizations

Struggling to keep youth volunteers retained in your organization? There might be a few reasons why and today we’re going to dive into two main challenges organizations face when implementing volunteer retention strategies.

What is volunteer retention?

Volunteer retention is the strategy organizations use to keep volunteers involved and engaged in their organization. After pouring so much into recruiting volunteers, organizations forget that that is only half the battle. Keeping them in your organization and engaged enough that they want to stay involved is another challenge – which is why you need a youth volunteer retention strategy.

When analyzing and addressing volunteer retention issues, two main challenges tend to come up more than others, with each on opposing extremities.  First, there is the challenge of keeping them engaged. Then there is the challenge of preventing volunteer burnout or feeling underappreciated.

How can you counter or overcome these challenges? Let’s look at a few strategies.

Challenge 1: Keeping youth volunteers engaged

You got youth volunteers into your organization – great! Now what? How do you ensure that the efforts you put into recruiting them bring some sort of return on your investment? Your organization has to work just as diligently to keep them engaged. Here are a few strategies you can use to keep your youth volunteers engaged.

Strategies:

• Organize regular events or activities that require volunteer support.

  • Bonus tip: Have youth volunteers lead some of these events and activities.

• Ask youth volunteers if they have any professional skills they can contribute or would like to gain experience in and see how they can be leveraged to help your organization.

  • Anticipate your organization's needs or gaps and see how youth volunteers’ skills can help fill in those gaps.

• Provide youth volunteers with leadership opportunities within your organization and support youth leaders already in your community.

• Review ways you can implement youth into your decision-making processes.
  

Challenge 2: Prevent burnout and feeling unappreciated

When it comes to volunteer retention, there is also the other extreme that volunteers might be feeling. Either volunteers feel like they are not being engaged enough or they are putting in too much and feeling burnt out or underappreciated. Here are a few strategies to prevent your volunteers from feeling burnt out or underappreciated and increase your youth volunteer retention rate.

Strategies:

• Establish clear and realistic expectations of youth volunteers, with corresponding boundaries regarding the work being done.

• Ensure that projects and tasks that volunteers are helping out with are organized and delegated appropriately. Consider a realistic timeframe, the required experience level, and the work involved in completing the task.

• Set up regular check-ins with volunteers to get their feedback and see if they are comfortable with their volunteer load. This is a great time to see if they want more responsibilities or less and adapt accordingly.

• Provide adequate training, resources, and tools for volunteers to reference when completing their tasks.

• Regularly reiterate how volunteer efforts are impacting your organization and community, adding in how integral their commitment and time are to your organization.

• Adapt and be flexible with youth volunteers' schedules and utilize their flexibility to your advantage and theirs.

In short, investing in your volunteer retention strategy is just as important as the time and energy you put into your recruitment strategy. Putting in the effort to recruit youth volunteers is critical for your organization, but what is the point of those efforts if youth volunteers do not feel like they can stay in your organization?

Creating opportunities to keep them engaged and establish clear expectations of them are two components of ensuring you have a low youth volunteer turnover rate.