How on earth do you encourage people to volunteer?

Debt_Free_Chick

Primrose wrote: »

Wherever you look it's the same willing faces time and time again ...

Exactly the situation in the Parish I live in - I call them "the usual suspects"

Savvy Sue hit the nail on the head - target someone whose help/involvement you want and ask them outright "could you help with delivering these flyers for the Jumble Sale" or whatever.

The difficulty with the "usual suspects" is that they are often perceived to be cliquey. They may well be, but even if they're not, they will know eachother, be friendly towards eachother and look as though they know what they're doing as a group. To an outsider, that can be quite offputting as many people will feel that they have nothing to offer or that they can't do anything as well as the established group. Fear of embarrassing oneself is amazingly powerful!

Also, many people have no idea what's involved and will overestimate the skills they think they need to be able to contribute.

How about asking each member of the current group to try and enlist the help of just one person - it could be their neighbour or anyone else they know locally. Sometimes, people are dying to be asked and are quite flattered when you do just that!

I used to think that those who open our village church each day had to be Churchwardens - not so, anyone can be on the rota as I found out when the volunteers were running low and someone asked me if I'd do it. Well, I do live closer to the church than anyone else in the village!!

HTH

Savvy_Sue

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Savvy Sue hit the nail on the head - target someone whose help/involvement you want and ask them outright "could you help with delivering these flyers for the Jumble Sale" or whatever.

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How about asking each member of the current group to try and enlist the help of just one person - it could be their neighbour or anyone else they know locally. Sometimes, people are dying to be asked and are quite flattered when you do just that!

Actually, sometimes an even better way to approach it can be "Could you help ME deliver these leaflets / serve the coffee / run the tombola ..." Then the new person needn't feel 'lumbered', because they are helping you, not doing it themselves.

And it is always worth thinking 'outside the box'. The second time I helped set up a new out of school club, I casually mentioned the first planning meeting to an unmarried, childless, older woman friend, who said "Would you like me to come along?" Needless to say, I almost bit her hand off, and then she brought along another friend in similar circumstances. They both had experience of working with children, and were absolutely invaluable, not least because they didn't need to arrange childcare every time something needed to be done!

As I say, it was a casual mention, the obvious group to target was the parents at the schools we wanted to have children from, and even though these two ladies got no direct benefit from the club, they could see that we needed one in the area, and because they cared about the area, they wanted to help!

BTW, if the OP comes back and says what kind of thing it is she wants volunteers for, we may be even more creative!