How to Engage Volunteers in Your Association's Work

A man uses a walkie-talkie to communicate at volunteer event

How to Engage Volunteers in Your Association's Work

Finding and retaining dedicated volunteers is a tough challenge that associations face today. You likely have a membership base full of talented, passionate individuals, yet your committees may remain understaffed and your event team rosters might have empty slots.

The issue is rarely a lack of desire to help. More often, it’s a mismatch between how associations traditionally ask for help and how modern members live their lives. People are busier than ever. The idea of committing to a two-year term on a committee can feel impossible for a working professional balancing a career and family responsibilities.

To meet members where they are, you need to evolve your strategy. By lowering barriers to entry and using modern digital tools, you can transform passive members into active contributors. Let’s explore several ways to motivate your members to tackle volunteer roles at your association.

Provide a Variety of Volunteer Roles

If your only volunteer opportunities are to join a committee or the board, you’re missing out on many possibilities for engagement within your association. Not everyone wants to lead or govern in a long-term position. Some members are excellent writers, others are data wizards, and some have broad social networks to leverage.

This is where your association’s member engagement tools prove invaluable—they allow you to identify these hidden talents and match them to the right opportunities. By diversifying opportunities, you allow members to contribute in ways that align with their professional strengths and goals.

Audit your current operational needs and connect them to potential volunteer roles. Consider offering a mix of positions that vary in time commitment and skill requirements, such as:

Helping out at conferences by manning the registration desk, setting up the venue, or operating lighting and videography
Mentoring students or new members one-on-one
Reviewing presentation abstracts for your annual conference
Moderating an educational webinar
Writing an article for your association’s newsletter or member portal
Serving as a task force member for a short-term project

You don’t have to strictly offer roles within your association, either. Clowder’s member engagement guide recommends partnering with nonprofits to provide volunteer opportunities to your members. For instance, an association of accountants could partner with a local community center to provide free tax preparation services or financial literacy workshops for low-income families.

No matter what route you choose, diversifying association volunteer opportunities makes the work feel less like a chore and more like an opportunity for members to showcase their expertise. It changes the dynamic from “we need help” to “we value your specific skills.”

Embrace the Power of Micro-Volunteering

As you plan the different roles you’ll offer, be sure to address the time constraints that typically hold members back. Traditional volunteer roles often require a heavy time commitment. This automatically excludes a significant portion of your members who might be interested in helping out but have low availability. Micro-volunteering solves this by breaking down large projects into small, manageable tasks that can be completed in short bursts.

‍This approach respects your members’ time while giving them a taste of what volunteering is like at your association. Instead of asking someone to help plan an entire conference, request that they review three session proposals. Instead of requesting they join a mentorship board, ask them to spend thirty minutes reading and providing feedback on a young professional’s resume. When the ask is small and clearly defined, saying yes becomes easy.

Additionally, a member who has a positive, low-stress experience with a micro-task is much more likely to step up for larger roles in the future. Starting small builds confidence and habit without the fear of burnout.

Use Gamification to Elevate the Volunteer Experience

More people will volunteer when doing so feels rewarding. Gamifying volunteering lets you tap into the psychological triggers that drive human motivation, such as achievement, status, and progress.

Consider how you can visually represent volunteer contributions to make them feel tangible. For example, you might implement these low-cost strategies to drive motivation:

Digital badges on member profiles for reaching milestones, such as hitting a certain number of volunteer hours
Leaderboards for member recruitment or fundraising drives
Progress bars showing collective goals, such as a certain number of volunteer hours reached or revenue earned through corporate volunteer grants
Public recognition during annual meetings, in newsletters, or within your online community (with the volunteer’s permission, of course)

The goal is to make the volunteer experience feel satisfying, visible, and impactful. When members see their progress and status recognized, they’re more likely to return for future opportunities.

Streamline Engagement With Modern Technology

Even the best volunteer programs will fail if finding opportunities, signing up, and engaging with your team is difficult. For instance, if a member has to navigate a complex desktop website, download a PDF waiver, sign it, and email it back just to sign up, you’ll lose them in the process. Convenience is the key to modern engagement.

This is where a mobile-first approach becomes essential. Many association members are accustomed to managing their lives from their phones, including everything from banking to communicating. Your association’s volunteer opportunities should be just as accessible!

A dedicated mobile app for associations can act as a private social network for members, simplifying the volunteer experience by providing:

Instant Notifications: Keep members updated about their volunteer roles and send tailored opportunities directly to them
A Centralized Hub: Create a single, accessible location where members can view all available positions and sign up in minutes.
Community Connection: Provide a dedicated space for members to communicate with your team and other volunteers during events without clogging their email inboxes.

When you put connectivity in the palms of members’ hands, you’ll naturally boost volunteer retention and participation.

Wrapping Up

You don’t need to overhaul your entire volunteer program to increase engagement. Instead, start by finding out exactly which barriers are blocking your members. Send a quick poll asking non-volunteers what holds them back. Is it the time commitment (need for micro-volunteering)? The complexity of signing up (need for better tech)? Or a lack of relevant roles (need for variety)? Use their answers to determine which of these strategies you should prioritize to set your association’s volunteer program up to thrive long-term.