For many nonprofits, volunteerism plays a central role in the organization’s success.  Many amazing volunteers give their time and their talent to support your mission.  Most of the nonprofits we talk to are thinking of ways to use their websites to not only drive new volunteers to reach out, but also to better maintain relationships with past volunteers.  Maintaining these relationships can further invest past volunteers in your mission and reenergize them to volunteer again.

Your nonprofit’s blog can play a central role in your effort to both recruit new volunteers and sustain your relationships with past volunteers.  You likely won’t want your blog to solely be about volunteering, but strategically incorporating some of the following posts into your blog strategy can help boost the role your website is playing in your volunteering efforts.

Here are 46 blog post ideas specifically aimed at helping your nonprofit get more from your website when it comes to volunteerism.

Posts Showcasing Volunteer Impact

Use your blog to show the impact your volunteers are having in the community you serve.

  1. Highlight an individual past event and focus on the difference your volunteers made
  2. Share the story of one member of your community who’s been helped by volunteers
  3. Share short thank you messages to volunteers from those that have been helped in the community
  4. Thank individual volunteers
  5. Thank your volunteers as a whole for all they’ve done
  6. Calculate total volunteer hours throughout the year

Posts Highlighting Info about Volunteering with Your Organization

Answer common questions a new volunteer may have before committing their time to your nonprofit.  Give them a behind-the-scenes look at your approach to volunteerism.

  1. Discuss how you envision your volunteers will make a difference in the future
  2. Share specific goals when it comes to quantity and impact of growing volunteerism
  3. Highlight upcoming volunteer opportunities
  4. Tell volunteers what they need to do to prepare for a volunteer event
  5. Explain the role that volunteers play in your organization
  6. Tell volunteers other ways they can help even when not volunteering
  7. Provide ways children can be involved in giving to your organization
  8. Ask volunteers how you can make your volunteer activities better (share some ideas and ask for their feedback)
  9. Ask volunteers for opportunities they’d be interested in supporting
  10. Q&A with one of your volunteers
  11. Publish “a year in volunteering” and post photos from volunteer events throughout the year
  12. Describe an introduction or orientation process you use to get volunteers involved in your organization
  13. Write about the steps needed to become a volunteer with your organization
  14. Promote a new volunteer season or application process
  15. Describe the different volunteering opportunities available through your organization
  16. Post photos of your volunteers on the job and describe the work they are doing
  17. Interview a volunteer and a person in the community they have helped side by side
  18. Promote your most popular volunteering opportunities
  19. Promote your least popular volunteering opportunities, focusing on why they matter and what you’re doing to make them more desirable to volunteers
  20. Write bios of some of your newest volunteers describing why they have decided to help your cause
  21. Write bios of some of your longest standing volunteers describing the impact they have had
  22. Talk about some volunteers who have gone on to support your cause outside of your organization (ex. a tutor that became a teacher)
  23. Collect a group of short testimonials by volunteers describing their favorite part of your organization
  24. Give potential volunteers questions to ask an organization when deciding which nonprofit to support
  25. Outline ways to choose the right nonprofit to volunteer with
  26. Post frequently asked questions you always get about volunteering
  27. Honor a Volunteer of the Year

Posts Written by Your Volunteers

Share the voices of your volunteers directly on your blog.  This will not only be valuable content for potential volunteers, but it’s also a great way to show you care about your individual volunteers while potentially driving traffic from their professional and personal networks.

  1. Why I give my time to help this organization
  2. Why volunteers matter in the community we serve
  3. My favorite volunteer event I’ve attended
  4. How I plan to support this cause in the future
  5. A particularly powerful moment I’ve had while volunteering
  6. When I realized I cared about this cause
  7. What I’ve learned by volunteering
  8. How volunteering has changed my life in various ways
  9. What this organization does well and what they could do better
  10. My day volunteering (the entire post in photos they took)
  11. Unique challenges and benefits to being a volunteer with this organization
  12. What I look forward to each time I volunteer (ex. when patients’ families visit)
  13. What I look forward to each year (ex. holiday donation drive)

Image courtesy of Derek Gavey

Comments

  1. Thanks David for posting such a valuable and informative blog about Nonprofit Blog Post Ideas About Volunteering.

  2. Such a brilliant article! Full of truthful, strong and motivational thoughts about Volunteering, self- growth and progress, motivation, persistence and the meaning of taking the right decisions which will only lead you forward. Thanks for sharing.

  3. Thank you for posting all of these nonprofits to volunteer at! I have been researching ways that I can help volunteer but from home because it’s not easy for me to get out much due to my schedule and stuff. I did some reading about volunteering online here, https://www.ez.insure/landing/2021/03/how-to-virtually-volunteer/ and they had some cool organizations and places to volunteer from home, so that is pretty cool. Wat do you think? I mean, volunteering, even if it is virtually is better than not volunteering!

    • Thanks for sharing that resource, Berry. We’re all for virtual volunteer opportunities! You can accomplish lots of good work online, and virtual opportunities are often more flexible for those with busy schedules.