How to Suggest Volunteer Roles without Overwhelming Options

Non-profits thrive and survive on the contributions of volunteers. Engagement is only the beginning of what keeps your non-profit serving your cause. Volunteer efforts are the best way to get good works done with the manpower and the passion you need. However, helping eager volunteers find the right place to put their efforts is harder than it sounds. Each person who visits your website and investigates your cause may be willing to donate a few hours a week or even months out of the year, but only if they find a role they are able and happy to do.

 The challenge is helping your volunteers find that role without overwhelming them with options. The roles available through one non-profit alone can be incredible, as any one cause can have dozens to hundreds of ways that one person could contribute. You want to help your volunteers find the right role without offering so many options at once that your volunteers get overwhelmed.

 I am here to offer a few helpful methods to strategically present these roles to your volunteers and help them make an expedient, satisfactory, and contributive choice. 

  Define All Volunteering Roles

The first step is to define what your volunteers are choosing from. Most people want to do something specific or, if they don't know what to do, they can narrow it down with the right options. This means giving them options to choose from, but not role-by-role. The best way to help your volunteers find their path is to first define each role so that it can be presented in an organized and sortable fashion. The key to not overwhelming your volunteers is to help them narrow their choices. So start by defining what those choices are. Each role can be defined in a few different ways:

Cause

●     Define each role by the cause it serves. If your non-profit contributes to more than one cause, or sub-causes, then mark each role based on the cause it serves. This can help your volunteers search by what they want to accomplish.

Location

●     Each role requires your volunteers to be in a specific location, from building on-site to working from home, define your roles based on where volunteers need to be in order to contribute. This is especially important if you have distant locations that might excite your volunteers to visit.

 Activity Type

●     Naturally, your volunteers may want to choose their role based on what is to be done and what they can do. Separate your roles based on what your volunteers will be personally doing to help, from stuffing envelopes to organizing, to wielding a hammer.

Difficulty Level

●     This one is more subtle. Consider a ranking system for how difficult, physically challenging or mentally challenging, a task may be.

Time Commitment

●     Lastly, define how much time each role requires, or give each role a potential range of committed hours for those who select them.

 Separate Roles into 3-5 Categories

Once your volunteer roles and available activities are defined, consider how to present them on your home page or volunteer page of the non-profit's website. This is where many of your volunteers will start looking, and you need to keep the initial selection simple and easy to make. People tend to choose best when they have about three to five choices to start with. 

 To this end, consider how to separate your many volunteer roles into three to five categories that can be presented together in a group and/or in a drop-down from your navigation bar.

 You might present your selection of causes, locations, or activity types, but choose one designation and categorize from there.

Grouping Categories

If you have too many categories to designate for 3-5 categories, separate your categories into two or maybe three groups. Use visual arrangement to simplify the choice, separating your category groups in a practical way, like time commitment, as a secondary condition. Using visual grouping can ease the impact of many choices by keeping individual choices simple. Volunteers will pick the grouped categories, then the sub-categories within.

 Provide Search Filter Selection

An alternative (not mutually exclusive) option is to learn from e-commerce. The best way to provide a truly vast selection is to also provide a sorting and filtering mechanism, as seen with VolunteerMatch. Consider presenting your volunteer roles the same way that Amazon and other e-commerce leaders provide a well-organized selection when there are hundreds of products to choose from.

Search filters allow your volunteers to check boxes or pick their categories to quickly narrow down the opportunity they are looking for. We strongly suggest using both methods, simplified categories and a search filter interface depending on how each individual volunteer likes to make their decisions. Those who want a quick and easy choice will take the graphical route, while those who like to be specific will appreciate the ability to clearly narrow down their options from the collection.

  Use Images to Display Each Volunteer Role or Category

Speaking of graphical interface, our final word of advice is to use compelling images to represent each category or role. Show your volunteers what they're choosing at a glance, like PAWS does, when they are browsing for how to contribute. People seek out volunteer work both to make a difference and to gain a unique, rewarding experience from making that difference.

 Images are the best way to show what your volunteers will be doing and the kind of joy they can gain from each role. Keep your images simple, not big group shots but a close-up on one or two people doing the task. You might even use a photo of a completed or partially completed project instead to best represent what each option has to offer.

 Helping your volunteers find the right role, activity, or path to make their difference is not always easy. But you can make it easy for the volunteers by guiding their online journey. Start with easy-to-select categories and then help your volunteers narrow down their choice. Use web page layout and vivid, heartwarming, or fulfilling images to guide emotional choices and a search filter to guide more precise decision-makers.

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