46 Nonprofit Blog Post Ideas About Volunteering

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.

7. Discuss how you envision your volunteers will make a difference in the future
8. Share specific goals when it comes to quantity and impact of growing volunteerism
9. Highlight upcoming volunteer opportunities
10. Tell volunteers what they need to do to prepare for a volunteer event
11. Explain the role that volunteers play in your organization
12. Tell volunteers other ways they can help even when not volunteering
13. Provide ways children can be involved in giving to your organization
14. Ask volunteers how you can make your volunteer activities better (share some ideas and ask for their feedback)
15. Ask volunteers for opportunities they’d be interested in supporting
16. Q&A with one of your volunteers
17. Publish “a year in volunteering” and post photos from volunteer events throughout the year
18. Describe an introduction or orientation process you use to get volunteers involved in your organization
19. Write about the steps needed to become a volunteer with your organization
20. Promote a new volunteer season or application process
21. Describe the different volunteering opportunities available through your organization
22. Post photos of your volunteers on the job and describe the work they are doing
23. Interview a volunteer and a person in the community they have helped side by side
24. Promote your most popular volunteering opportunities
25. Promote your least popular volunteering opportunities, focusing on why they matter and what you’re doing to make them more desirable to volunteers
26. Write bios of some of your newest volunteers describing why they have decided to help your cause
27. Write bios of some of your longest standing volunteers describing the impact they have had
28. Talk about some volunteers who have gone on to support your cause outside of your organization (ex. a tutor that became a teacher)
29. Collect a group of short testimonials by volunteers describing their favorite part of your organization
30. Give potential volunteers questions to ask an organization when deciding which nonprofit to support
31. Outline ways to choose the right nonprofit to volunteer with
32. Post frequently asked questions you always get about volunteering
33. 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.

34. Why I give my time to help this organization
35. Why volunteers matter in the community we serve
36. My favorite volunteer event I’ve attended
37. How I plan to support this cause in the future
38. A particularly powerful moment I’ve had while volunteering
39. When I realized I cared about this cause
40. What I’ve learned by volunteering
41. How volunteering has changed my life in various ways
42. What this organization does well and what they could do better
43. My day volunteering (the entire post in photos they took)
44. Unique challenges and benefits to being a volunteer with this organization
45. What I look forward to each time I volunteer (ex. when patients’ families visit)
46. What I look forward to each year (ex. holiday donation drive)

Image courtesy of Derek Gavey