Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi there,

I am the VP and Volunteer Coordinator for WAGS Animal Rescue in Ocala Florida. Our organization is 100% volunteer-based and 100% foster-based. I've only been officially in animal rescue for 1 year, but have been independently rescuing off and on for about 9 years.

I am looking for new ideas to recruit volunteers? We have a very active following on facebook, but we have a small core volunteer team of about 11 that I would like to at least double by the year end.  We post in many community groups, we have events weekly where we tell people that we would love to have volunteers, but nothing has come off it yet.

Are there some marketing/recruitment practices that have proven useful for other organizations that could help us?

For our volunteer policy, we do not have an age restriction, but we require parents with anyone under 16 at all times. We have a volunteer waiver for photo rights, liability and general needs. Our main needs are for break down and set up at events, dog walking, booth help at events and of course, more fosters.

Thank you for your help!

My org is also volunteer-run and foster-based, and I love VolunteerMatch! It's a great online "job board" for volunteer jobs. It's really helped widen our 'net' for volunteers in admin roles, especially, since some of those can be done remotely. 

I've also had a lot of luck this year recruiting volunteers from recent adopters actually! I've been pushing this year for meet and greets to include a short conversation about our mission, why our group exists (what gaps do we fill in the community that no one else does?) versus 100% focusing on the animal being adopted the whole time. I realized that many people aren't even thinking about the organization because they're excited about a new pet (which I get) and never follow up if you don't encourage it.

We've found volunteers  on VolunteerMatch, Idealist, Craigslist and by doing social media posts asking for volunteers for specific areas, and then boosting the post to a new audience. We've found some of the most dedicated volunteers through word of mouth. Someone knows someone who's interested in helping more, or who's been on a board in the past-- having that personal connection with someone can be a great motivator. We learned quickly that new volunteers often need a lot of hand-holding in the beginning, and even if it takes longer, meeting them in person as soon as possible can be really helpful. Their job needs to be clear and providing them with a written job description is ideal.

We put together an amateur video for recruitment. We used a regular DSLR camera with a Rode microphone for sound improvement. It was edited with imovie. We post it periodically. 

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