Marketing Your Volunteer Opportunities: The Nonprofit Guide (2025)

Effectively marketing your volunteer opportunities is key to growing your volunteer program and ultimately, making more impact. But building a volunteer program marketing strategy can be overwhelming.

To help, we’ve broken down the five fundamental steps for advertising your opportunities and converting prospects into engaged volunteers. Let’s dive in!

Marketing volunteer opportunities is the process of promoting and communicating available volunteer roles at your nonprofit organization. An essential part of a volunteer recruitment strategy, this process usually involves writing descriptions, using multiple outreach channels, and more.

Marketing volunteer opportunities is crucial because it helps the right people find, understand, and connect with your mission in a way that motivates action.

The right volunteer marketing will create:

• Visibility: Strategic marketing ensures your roles reach a wide and relevant audience.
  
  
• Understanding and Connection: Well-crafted outreach educates more people about your mission and explains how their involvement can make an impact.
  
  
• Action: Clear, inspiring calls to action—paired with easy next steps—motivate people to sign up, show up, and stay engaged.

How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Volunteer Program in 5 Steps

1. Identify What (and Who) You Really Need

Before marketing your volunteer opportunities, it's essential to have a clear understanding of the roles you’re recruiting for and the ideal candidate (or target audiences) you’re trying to reach. 

To do that, consider these questions:

• What are your current program gaps? 
• How can volunteers help to fill these gaps? 
• What volunteer roles will have the most impact? 
• Who is your ideal volunteer candidate? What characteristics are you looking for in a volunteer?
• What skills do you need your volunteers to have? 
• Where are these volunteers most likely to exist (i.e., university campuses, special interest groups, local businesses)?

2. Get The Right Technology

Even the best marketing strategy for volunteer recruitment can fall flat without the right tools to support it. Streamlining how you create, publish, and track your volunteer opportunities makes a big difference in how many people see—and respond to—your calls to action.

A dedicated volunteer management platform like Get Connected helps you promote opportunities and boost your marketing efforts—and streamline the entire volunteer lifecycle—by giving you one central place to:

• Promote with Purpose: Create custom landing pages and engaging posts that speak directly to the volunteers you want to reach.
  
  
• Expand Your Reach: Automatically share opportunities across your website, local volunteer hubs, and referral networks.
  
  
• Get the Right Fit: Collect important details like skills, interests, and availability to match volunteers with the right roles.
  
  
• Stay in Touch: Send personalized messages, updates, and automatic reminders to keep volunteers informed and involved.
  
  
• Measure What Matters: Use real-time insights to see what’s working and improve your outreach strategy.

Not sure which tools are right for you? Get a free tech audit to discover what technology you need to simplify and amplify all your outreach efforts.

3. Master The Volunteer Opportunity Description

Your volunteer job description has the power to inspire prospective volunteers to take action. When used effectively, you’ll not only help volunteers identify the right opportunity for them, but you’re also more likely to attract the best volunteers for the job.

To create a volunteer opportunity description that’s succinct but informative, be sure to include information like:

• Job Title: A vague job title like “Volunteers Needed” won’t inspire. Instead, think of a snappy, engaging title like “Calling All Superheroes: Youth Mentor.” 
  
  
• Position Summary: Summarize the purpose or desired outcome of the volunteer position to inspire prospects and acquaint them with the cause before getting into the details.
  
  
• Duties and Responsibilities: Include a bulleted list of specific requirements and responsibilities for the job. List each action or task separately.
  
  
• Time Requirements: Include the length of the time commitment, as well as an expected start date.
  
  
• Location: Indicate whether the opportunity is in-person or virtual.
  
  
• Skill Requirements: List only the must-have skills to attract the right volunteers, without discouraging eager supporters. Save extra screening for the interview.

 Download FREE recruitment email templates >>

4. Choose Your Volunteer Marketing Channels

A diverse and passionate volunteer base is essential to advancing your mission. That’s why many successful volunteer programs use a multi-channel marketing approach to spread the word about their opportunities.

Multi-channel marketing means sharing your message across several communication platforms to reach people where they already are. Different people prefer different ways of connecting—so the more strategic variety you use, the more likely you are to find the right fit for your roles.

You might take advantage of both online volunteer communication channels and in-person opportunities like:

Digital

• Websites and Blogs: Make it easy to get involved with a clear volunteer page. Blog posts featuring success stories or volunteer spotlights can improve SEO (and show up on Google for searches like "marketing for volunteers near me") and deepen connection.
  
  
• Volunteer-Specific Platforms: Share your roles on sites like VolunteerMatch, Idealist, or Catchafire to connect with people actively searching for ways to give back.
  
  
• Texting: Texting is ideal for quick updates, reminders, and time-sensitive asks. Since most people open texts within minutes, it’s a great way to reach volunteers pretty immediately.

• Email: Reach out directly to current or past volunteers with targeted recruitment messages. Use email marketing to share urgent needs, upcoming events, or inspiring stories to drive action and re-engagement.
  
  
• Social Media: Use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok to highlight your impact, recognize volunteers, and promote opportunities. Some volunteer management software platforms have these sharing capabilities to make marketing your opportunities even easier.
  
  

  Learn more about Get Connected's Social Media Integrations

Physical and in person

• Phone calls: Personal outreach, especially to previous volunteers or high-value prospects, can be a powerful way to re-engage or invite people into new roles.
  
  
• Flyers: Recruitment flyers are a low-cost, high-visibility marketing channel that can be especially effective for reaching people who may not be active online.
  
  
• Mail: Physical mail can still be effective, especially for community events or older audiences. It's actually a type of marketing for volunteer programs that can add a thoughtful touch.
  
  
• Word of Mouth: Communicate consistently with your volunteers, keep them informed, express appreciation, and invite them to share their enthusiasm for your cause!  
  
  
• Partnerships: Develop strategic partnerships with special interest groups and for-profit companies in your community to attract new, skilled volunteers.
  
  
• Current Volunteers: Invite your most dedicated volunteers to serve as ambassadors for your program. Offer opportunities for leading information sessions, encourage them to share on social media, invite them to bring a friend to events, and more.

5. Craft a Compelling Volunteer Recruitment Message

Unlike a volunteer opportunity description, your recruitment message “sells” your cause and your volunteer opportunities—it’s what you’ll write when you market your volunteer opportunities on social media, in your newsletter, or on your website.

Here’s a simple formula for writing a volunteer recruitment message that stands out:

• Start with a Question: Every recruitment message should start with an eye-catching statement that forces readers to pause. Take this example: “Are you looking to make a difference in your community by helping children?”
  
  
• State What You’re Looking For: Get to the who, what, when, and where quickly. Keep it short and sweet!
  
  
• Touch on the Benefits: Describe the benefits of the opportunity for both the volunteer and your organization. How does this opportunity add value to their lives, to your organization, and to your community?
  
  
• Share Your Impact: A simple (factual) statement like, “Our volunteers delivered 20,000 meals to Chicago residents last year,” is enough to encourage interested individuals to respond.
  
  
• Tell a Story: If you have space, share a success story or quote a volunteer who had a positive experience with your organization.
  
  
• End with a Call to Action: End each recruitment message with a call to action that communicates the next steps. Keep your call to action direct, for example, “Make a real difference today. Click here to apply.” 

Best Practices for Marketing Your Volunteer Opportunities

After following the above steps, you’re ready to put your marketing plan for your volunteer program into action.

To really ensure success, be sure to follow these best practices, too:

• Use Inclusive, Welcoming Language: The best marketing for volunteer programs makes everyone feel like they belong. Avoid jargon, acronyms, or assumptions about someone’s background, experience, age, or ability.
  
  
• Use Visuals Strategically: Choose authentic images that feature real volunteers and the people you serve to help potential volunteers see themselves in your work.
  
  
• Make It Easy to Take the First Step: Don’t let clunky sign-up processes turn people away. Remove unnecessary barriers like long forms or resume uploads, especially for entry-level or one-time opportunities.
  
  
• Create a Sense of Urgency (When Appropriate): If your opportunity is time-sensitive or spots are limited, let people know! A clear deadline can motivate people to take action.

Make Marketing Your Volunteer Opportunities Simple and Effective

Marketing your volunteer program isn’t just about filling slots—it’s about inspiring action, building community, and creating lasting connections. By using inclusive language, strategic visuals, simple sign-up processes, and a multi-channel approach, you’ll reach more people and make it easier for them to say “yes” to helping out.

But none of this works without the right tools.

That’s where Get Connected comes in.

With Get Connected, you can centralize your volunteer opportunities, automate personalized emails and text messages, track what’s working, and make sign-ups effortless. Whether you're recruiting for a one-day event or growing a long-term program, Get Connected gives you the power to market smarter and engage more volunteers—without adding more to your plate.

Ready to turn interest into action? Book a free demo to learn more about how Get Connected's volunteer management software can help you promote every opportunity and grow a thriving volunteer community.