Volunteer recruitment and retention

Changes in population demographics, motivations of volunteers, competition for individuals’ time make recruitment and retention a constant area of attention for charities and nonprofits. This guide of selected resources is designed to help you recruit, set program strategy and evaluate volunteer programs working with current social trends in volunteerism.

General Resources

Volunteer Canada is the leading voice of volunteerism and their website has many resources, like the Adapt Your Volunteer Program page
Volunteers in arts and culture organizations in Canada in 2004 (Hill Strategies Research , 2007) [available online]
Guideline for volunteer recruitment and retention : strategies and tools for a successful program (Office of the Fire Marshal, Ontario Ministry Of Community Safety and Correctional Services, 2006) [available online]

Employer supported volunteering

Volunteer Canada’s Centre for Excellence in Corporate Community Involvement
The Municipal Toolkit (2nd edition) from PAVRO has checklists and practical strategies to raise awareness and understanding of municipal staff and elected officials of the importance of volunteers to municipalities

Demographic studies

Motivations of volunteers in youth-oriented programs (Riemer & Dorsch, 2004) [available online]
The temple and the tavern : a case study of family volunteering at Santropol Roulant (Paddock et al. 2007) [available online]
Attracting and keeping youth volunteers : creating a governance culture that nurtures and values youth (Imagine Canada, 2005) [available online]

Network of volunteer centres and volunteer opportunities

Volunteer Canada's 'Find a Volunteer Centre' page

Volunteerism Search Tips

To do more research on this topic, either browse our pre-selected list on Volunteerism (link) OR search by keyword or phrase (in quotation marks). Here are a selection of keywords to use:

policies, polic*	guide* / manuals
Specify a demographic group: youth, seniors, immigrants, etc.	toolkit
evaluation / assess*	Corporate / "employee volunteerism"

Adding an asterisk * on the end or in the middle of the word allows a search for alternate spellings.Volunteer, Voluntarism, Volunteering, etc., can all be captured using the string Volunt*

To search our full collection of resources, visit our catalogue page

You can do further research on this and more topics at our full library catalogue. The best subject search terms for this topic are

Voluntarism
Volunteer workers

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