Lending a Hand in Hard Times

Judy Scanlon volunteers in order to make other people’s lives easier — even though hers is very difficult.

“I lost my husband in October, and my financial situation is extremely stressful,” says Ms. Scanlon, a resident of Kimball, Mich. A few years ago, after being diagnosed with leukemia, she underwent a bone-marrow transplant that saved her life, yet nearly depleted her retirement nest egg. Today, she has health complications from the transplant and works a night shift to pay the bills. And, once a week, she volunteers for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and the American Cancer Society.

“I had only a 10-percent chance of living when I went through my transplant, and I made it,” says Ms. Scanlon. “I want to give something back. If I can give people hope, that in turn helps me. It helps to think about others and not my own situation.”

These days, many people are fearful of losing jobs, savings, and even homes. It can be difficult to find available and willing volunteers among people who are busy coping with their own troubles.

These times challenge charities trying to start or build volunteer programs, too. But taking creative approaches to attracting new volunteers — and retaining people they already have — can help organizations weather the storm.

In addition to battling the current economic downturn, nonprofit groups are fighting a discouraging trend in volunteering. A July report from the Corporation for National & Community Service showed that the number of American adults who volunteered in 2007 dropped for the second year in a row, to 60.8 million people from 61.2 million the previous year. According to the report, more than one out of every three people who had volunteered in 2006 didn’t do so in 2007.

Feeling the Crunch

Today’s dismal financial trend has drastically affected volunteerism in areas of the country that are feeling the crunch most severely.

For example, the auto industry’s steep decline has made Michigan one of the states most affected by job loss and home foreclosures, which in turn makes it difficult to find volunteers for fund-raising tasks. Responding to the bleak situation, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Michigan chapter, in Madison Heights — which counts Ms. Scanlon among its volunteers — conducted studies to discover the ways in which the struggling economy has affected volunteering.

“The findings show that people are volunteering their time more often than their money,” says Peggy Shriver, executive director of the Michigan affiliate.

Some tasks are easier to recruit volunteers for than others in the current economic climate, she says. “People who are asked to volunteer to raise money for a special event, for example, are more difficult to recruit because they know that when they sign on as a volunteer, they’re agreeing to ask people for money, which is difficult to do when your friends and co-workers have lost their jobs or are struggling financially,” she says.

In New York, which is still reeling from the turmoil on Wall Street, it is not enough for volunteers to know that their efforts are doing good — they want to know the specifics of how their donations of time and money are bolstering their community.

“We’ve found that for volunteers in our area, which is the epicenter of the financial crisis, it’s important that we communicate very concretely the impact of their time and effort,” says Bertina Ceccarelli, senior vice president for institutional advancement of the United Way of New York City. “More and more, we see people who want to contribute their time and expertise toward a stated, specific goal.

“For example, we invite people with financial expertise to become trained to help low-income families with their taxes and to serve as year-round financial coaches,” Ms. Ceccarelli says. “These prospective volunteers want to know in detail how their work will help our organization achieve a specific goal. We’ve worked hard to articulate exactly what their work means for families and our economic environment. We make the impact of their efforts very clear and measurable.”

Attracting Women

Jean Wynn, a managing director at the Bank of New York Mellon, became involved with the United Way of New York City through a women’s group at her company.

“One of the things that our group wants to champion for the company is community outreach, because a growing number of women here wanted to volunteer,” she says. This interest, she says, led the group to focus on the United Way, and on the cause of early-childhood education.

The company’s volunteers went to work for charities that the United Way supports. They helped with fund raising, reviewed grant proposals, and used their business expertise to help fledgling day care centers improve their marketing and business planning.

“The difficult economic environment is actually compelling some of our employees to become involved in volunteering,” says Ms. Wynn.

“They’re aware that volunteering is very rewarding from a personal standpoint,” she says, “and there’s a feeling of giving back to people who are struggling.”

Ms. Wynn says it helps that the United Way’s staff members consistently remind volunteers that their efforts are important: “They’re constantly telling us that we’re valuable to them and how much we’re appreciated. It’s fulfilling for all of us to know that we’re helping United Way make a difference.”

A Variety of Opportunities

Many charities use another approach to attract and keep quality volunteers whose time and money are limited — they offer many opportunities to choose from and include volunteer jobs that are easy to fit into a tight schedule.

“We offer a smorgasbord of volunteer opportunities, with regard to the specific task and the time frames that a volunteer can volunteer,” says Ms. Shriver. “People who are working two jobs typically have one job during the week and one on the weekend, so the only time they have to volunteer is in the evening. It’s best to consider people’s hectic daily lives and offer volunteer opportunities at different times throughout the week and on weekends.”

Marketing volunteer opportunities to a broad assortment of people gets results, says Desiree Adaway, senior director of volunteer mobilization at Habitat for Humanity International, in Americus, Ga. “A main strength of our volunteer efforts is that we pull from a diverse group of people — we get volunteers from every demographic possible,” she says. “That means that our volunteer jobs must appeal to a broad range of people who are at many different points of their lives. We focus on providing clearly defined, consistent, high-quality programs for our volunteers.”

Habitat for Humanity doesn’t rely heavily on paid advertising to recruit volunteers, says Ms. Adaway. Instead, the charity’s staff spreads its message via school groups, churches, corporate boards, sports organizations, and civic associations.

According to Claudia Keller, executive director of the American Heart Association’s Los Angeles County chapter, ensuring that a charity’s marketing efforts hit the right targets can mean the difference between attracting new volunteers and having them sign on elsewhere.

“One of our best methods is to evaluate our needs for volunteers and the opportunities we have available and then determining if we’re marketing these opportunities to the right people,” Ms. Keller says. “For example, many people who are unemployed are interested in volunteer opportunities that let them network with local businesspeople to discuss job openings.” Also, she says, “people with specific skills often want to use those skills to help a worthy cause.”

Short-Term Options

Simone Mitchell-Peterson, executive director of Little Brothers-Friends of the Elderly, in Chicago, faces a tough challenge in seeking volunteers. Her charity specializes in providing companionship and social services for nearly 1,000 elderly people who live independently, which means that volunteers are asked to make longer-term commitments to the organization.

For her group, Ms. Mitchell-Peterson says, flexibility has been the answer: “These days, many people are looking for short-term volunteer opportunities, so we asked ourselves how we can turn that into an opportunity for our organization. The answer is to spend less time trying to recruit volunteers for long-term assignments, such as visiting with elders, and considering the volunteers’ situation.

“If volunteers can commit only a couple of hours a week, we find something for them to do that is within their time limit and skill set,” she says, noting that such tasks might include delivering food to an elderly client or playing host for a luncheon or birthday party at a client’s home. “We think that if we can help them have a great, enjoyable experience volunteering for us — we call it ‘surprising and delighting our volunteers’ — they might be interested in longer-term opportunities in the future.”

So far, she says, this approach is working out for the charity. “Many of the first-time volunteers who helped out for Thanksgiving are inquiring about more substantive long-term assignments,” Ms. Mitchell-Peterson says. “We’re in the process of finding the right assignments for those volunteers.”

Get Assignments Ready

Susan Ellis, president of Energize, a Philadelphia organization that consults with charities on managing volunteers, advises nonprofit groups that are trying to obtain new volunteers to designate a staff member to lead the recruitment effort.

She also cautions organizations to avoid a common recruiting mistake.

“Don’t recruit until you have work ready for volunteers to do,” she says. “All evidence suggests that more people drop away from volunteering because they’re underutilized rather than overworked. When a volunteer is kept productively busy, he or she knows that their time is being well spent. But when organizations recruit volunteers and don’t have work for them to do, people tend to stop volunteering.”

Of course, one of the most effective steps that a nonprofit organization can take in times of trouble is to hang on to the volunteers it already has. Ms. Ellis says that to achieve this goal, it is best to keep volunteers’ personal situations in mind.

“It’s important for the organization to pay attention to what is going on in their volunteers’ lives,” Ms. Ellis says. “It goes back to never taking people for granted.”

As volunteers or their family members suffer job layoffs or other hard times, she says, it is important for charities to offer understanding and support.

Among the ways a charity can help recession-battered employees, Ms. Ellis says: Be flexible in the volunteering schedule; host a brown-bag lunch to give volunteers a chance to share their situations and vent about their frustrations with others in the same boat; and provide a bulletin board at the organization where volunteers can post the types of jobs they are seeking, so staff or board members can pass on any employment leads

“If these things are done in a low-key, tactful manner, volunteers will appreciate that you’re trying to help them,” says Ms. Ellis.

Perhaps most important, she says: “Always add an extra thank-you that tells them that you appreciate them sticking with you during these hard times.”