Using Your Employer Brand to Engage Volunteers Online
Your nonprofit’s employer brand encapsulates how you communicate about your organization to potential job seekers. It influences how prospective job candidates perceive your nonprofit — and can make a big difference in determining whether or not they want to work with you. In today’s highly competitive hiring environment, employer branding has become core to any nonprofit’s recruitment strategy, with 49% of recruiting professionals saying employer branding will shape recruiting over the next five years.
Attracting and engaging with future employees isn’t the only value your employer brand offers – it can also be one of your most valuable tools for attracting and retaining a healthy volunteer base. If you’re interested in finding a way to engage your volunteers online more consistently, consider evaluating and refreshing your employer brand to directly speak to potential new volunteers. Get started by taking each of the following actions to reach new supporters and keep current volunteers engaged and excited to share their time skills with your organization.
Expand on your employee value proposition to include volunteers
Your employee value proposition (EVP) is central to your employer brand. It refers to the unique combination of tangible and intangible rewards your employees receive in return for working with you. In the simplest terms, your EVP is a summation of why someone would want to work for your nonprofit.
Consider what motivates your volunteers
As you refine your EVP, consider the ways it changes (or remains the same) for volunteers. You could even create a “volunteer value proposition,” or VVP. Whatever method you choose, think of the reasons why volunteers might choose to support your organization and create a list. These reasons could include opportunities to:
Meaningfully contribute toward a cause they care about
Participate in activities that help their community
Meet people and make professional contacts
Practice skills they want to develop
Strengthen their resume and professional history
Gain access to professional development resources
- Affirm their values
Then, ask current and past volunteers why they decided to volunteer with your organization, and add these to your list.
Weave volunteer value propositions to your employer branding
Once you’ve refined your list, begin proactively incorporating these value propositions into your employer brand and external-facing channels to speak directly to your volunteer base. Your organization’s LinkedIn Page is a great place to begin putting this into action.
Start by reviewing your About page, ensuring that it showcases your mission statement and speaks to both volunteers and employees. Consider adding information about why volunteers might want to work with your organization and leverage the "Commitments" feature to showcase values that speak to potential employees and volunteers.
You can also add featured content to your Page to highlight past posts that speak to volunteer value propositions. For example, if you learn that volunteers enjoy working with your organization because it allows them to help their local community, consider featuring a past post that had pictures of community members with volunteers and text talking about the volunteers’ impact.
Incorporate employer branding into your volunteer recruitment posts
When you post about a volunteer opportunity on LinkedIn, take the opportunity to explain your VVP to potential applicants.
This could be as simple as including a small section in the application post on “why you should volunteer with us.” Here, you can list out the value propositions you previously identified. Demonstrating what your potential volunteers will get out of working with you will help set your volunteer opportunities apart.
For best results, tailor how you talk about your VVP to the position itself and the type of volunteer you want to attract. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to emphasize the community outreach opportunities of a role that will not be interacting with your community, but you could focus on the professional resources that the role offers instead.
Feature volunteers in your on-going content
To continuously grow and enhance your employer brand to speak to volunteers, make it a point to share VVP-focused content on your external-facing channels, including LinkedIn.
Try scheduling employer branding content on LinkedIn around once per week. This content could take the form of blog posts, single image posts, image carousel posts, or even videos. The purpose of this content is to show your followers (i.e. potential volunteers!) how your nonprofit “lives” its employer brand on an ongoing basis.
Employer branding-related content is at its most authentic and impactful when it features your actual employees and volunteers. Just make sure you have full permission to feature anyone in your posts.
For example, if you are chatting with a volunteer who has a compelling story, ask if you can post about them (and tag them, of course) in a LinkedIn post. If they say yes, get a picture or a video of them and use it to create a volunteer appreciation post. In this post, explain who they are, how they helped you, the impact their work had on your cause, and why you appreciate it so much.
Try to create a wide variety of different content that celebrates your volunteers. This could include interview-style videos where you ask volunteers why they like helping your nonprofit, photo posts introducing your current volunteers, or an article post about recent work a volunteer team completed together. Encourage your staff and volunteers to share these posts with their own following to increase their visibility and draw new potential volunteers to your Page. You could even gamify or incentivize these actions to motivate sharing!
If you want to further enhance your employer and volunteer brand online, consider investing in LinkedIn Career Pages. This extension of your LinkedIn Page allows you to highlight your organization’s culture, values, and day-to-day work life, making it the perfect way to showcase your employer brand to potential volunteers.
