Animal Welfare Professionals

Question about posting volunteer opportunities — we currently send out an every-other-week email to EVERYONE who has filled out an application that lists what's coming up, and we also post these things in a private Facebook group that only has our core volunteers.

The open rate for the email is abysmal as is the response (more often than not, core volunteers just end up taking these tasks on anyways), and honestly, rather than putting a great deal of effort into revamping the newsletter, I'd like to consider something else.

Another less-private Facebook group would be perfect IMO because it would notify anyone who was a member that something was posted, but my sister did raise the issue of "what if they don't have Facebook." Any programs you're aware of out there that would do the trick? I do plan to try to survey these volunteers to see how many have Facebook but I'm not optimistic about a high response rate there either.

Background: We have no dedicated volunteer coordinator so the more hands-off and cheap, the better. Doesn't need to track volunteer hours.

Would it be possible to look into "text alerts" for mobile phones? not sure how much info it could/should contain, but it might be possible to include a link to more info too

Are you guys using any kind of volunteer management software? Cheetah has an app that gives notifications and Volgistics has some great features too. 

We aren't using any software except MailChimp's free account. I'll look into the options you mentioned; our budget is basically zero, which is always a fun challenge

You may want to take a look at Mail Chimp. It is free to use for up to 2000 people on your distribution list and for up to 12,000 email messages a month so it can be a low/no cost way to get started. You could keep your distribution lists targeted at a particular audience. The format of the emails looks very professional once you learn how to format them through the online tools and can include a link to a sign up page or application. Good luck, I hope this is helpful. 

We've been using MailChimp - anyone who fills out the application is automatically subscribed, which I think contributes to the very low open rate (like, if you don't even attend orientation afterwards, you sure as heck aren't going to read this email). But I'll dig into what other resources it offers. Thanks!

Hi Sadye,

May I ask what your open rate is? I ask because a "good" open rate by industry standards is around 20%, give or take a few, and a good click through rate is around 3%, both of which seem low to many people.

At any rate, how targeted is your email list? Did everyone specifically opt-in to receive volunteer opportunity updates? If not, this might be why. Research shows email is still the best way to reach people but if they're not responding, it could be a number of reasons, such as: subject line isn't compelling enough, it's going to spam, they aren't available for volunteer opportunities right now, they don't remember signing up, they're just busy, etc. 

I love your idea of doing a survey but I would simply do it to ask all of your volunteers how they'd like to hear about opportunities. (Not just specifically a survey to see if they use facebook. They may, but email still might be the best way to reach them, if done correctly.) Another option is instead of creating a new facebook group, have more people join the Core one? Also, if you're not already, you could post a link to your volunteer opportunities weekly on your organization page, and make sure you're reminding people to like your pages in emails.

Testing different days/times of day that you send your email is always smart, too.

Here's a blog post that might be of interest to you: http://chewonthis.maddiesfund.org/2017/05/are-your-emails-to-supporters-getting-deleted-or-ignored-heres-how-to-fix-that/ 

Best of luck to you!