Volunteer Management Communication Resources

Communicating with your volunteers is such an important part of supporting their work in GC Volunteer Management. Whether you're rolling out GC VM for the first time, relaunching to a new sub-set of your volunteers, or getting your existing volunteers more active, top-notch communication is key. Check out the resources below for some best practices and ideas for communicating with your volunteers! 

Have a volunteer communications plan you're particularly proud of? Let us know! We'd love to see it.

Initial Rollout Communication Plan [click link to access!]

Your initial rollout of GC Volunteer Management (or whatever you choose to call it with your volunteers) is so important! Whether you’re launching GC VM for the first time, or re-launching to subsets of your community, below is a sample communications outline to support your work! We encourage you to put your own creative spin on it. Consider doing this rollout to a pilot group first (who can have early access and give you feedback on their initial experience) before launching to your entire community.

Volunteer Activation Communication Plan [click link to access!]

In addition to your initial rollout of GC VM, there will be many times throughout the year that you’ll ask your volunteers to spring to action. Remember that while you may eat, sleep, and breathe GC VM, your volunteers likely do not (if they do, tell us your secrets!). Each time you want to re-activate your volunteers, it’s important to give them plenty of heads up, send extra reminders and be clear and prescriptive in what you’re asking them to do.

Volunteer Guide to Doing More in GC Volunteer Management [click link to access, create a copy and customize!]

For your active volunteers, there is more they can be doing! Customize this guide to point them in the direction of additional tools and functionality in the system that will help them make even more of an impact on behalf of your institution. 

Spring Volunteer Templates & Activation Emails [click link to access and customize!] 

Looking for inspiration for how to activate volunteers? Check out these templates for your volunteers, along with sample announcements, tasks, emails, and texts to send your volunteers to encourage them to do their work! 

General Best Practices

✅ Constantly remind them this will be easy and fast. 

• Starting with a new technology can be scary for some volunteers and the best way to fight against that is to constantly remind them that this will be EASY, fast, and that you’re there to help. Avoid language like "This is a little bit scary, but we'll learn along the way," and stick with language that is positive and encouraging: “This is so easy! You got this! Let me know how I can help you get started!”

🤖🚫Don’t be a robot, speak like a human:

• Your volunteers are your nearest and dearest community members – engage with them as the folks you know and care about. This may give you the opportunity to have a little fun, be slightly less formal; communicate in a tone that’s more person to person, instead of institution to alumni or robot to random person on the interwebs.

📣Write Templates in a Volunteer Voice & Differentiate from Your Marketing:

• When writing templates for volunteers to send, take your institutional hat off and put your human hat on! Write templates that give volunteers the permission and confidence to have some fun, be themselves, and engage with their classmates in a tone they normally would. Create templates that encourage customization, use emojis, play with capitalization, etc. They’ll be more likely to customize and make these their own if they feel fun and personable to begin with.
• Be sure to differentiate your volunteer email templates from what you may be sending out from your mass marketing tool. If your mass emails and volunteer emails have the same subject line, you will decrease the potential impact of your volunteer outreach. Your marketing team likely won't let you send a mass email with a subject line saying "OMG I'M SO EXCITED IT'S OUR 50 YEAR REUNION!!!! 🎉🍻😎" but your volunteers can and should!  

📋 Be prescriptive: 

• Take the guesswork and thinking out of volunteer work if you can! 
• Instead of saying “Time to volunteer for reunion” give them more specific instructions, check lists, and timelines: “Login, select your assignments, send this reunion registration email template by this date."

🍡🥤Make action items bite sized, with option to super size. 

• Your volunteers will be varying levels of busy throughout the year. Constantly remind them how little time their asks will take: “It’s GivingTuesday tomorrow! There’s a new email template available. Login to email your assignments who have not given. Est. time commitment: 5 minutes.” 
• Give folks with time the option to do more: “Have more time? Let us know, and we’ll assign you additional classmates!”

🎉Name your VMS something fun: 

• Just because we refer to it as the “GC Volunteer Management” doesn’t mean you need to name it that publicly! Think of a fun name for your unique system, and head to your settings > branding to infuse the fun throughout!