Mobilizing Volunteers for MLK Day

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Volunteers are at the heart of every community service effort, and whether you have a volunteer base to draw from or are building your team from scratch, it’s always helpful to implement both tried and true ideas along with a few new ones  Here are some suggestions: 

• Ask colleagues and friends
• Use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to get the word out
• Have information tables at community events
• Make presentations to community groups
• Put an article or a press release in local or community newspapers
• Write a guest blog post about your project
• Host a presentation on your local cable television channel
• Add a volunteer sign up page on your website. 
• Register your project at MLKDay.gov

Basic Volunteer Recruitment Tips  and the ABC’s of Volunteer Recruitment will provide some additional tips for successfully recruiting volunteers

Inclusive Volunteer Recruitment

Engaging a broad cross-section of your community in your MLK Day of Service project is a great way to increase your volunteer pool:

• Recruiting Diverse Volunteers – A diverse team of volunteers may mean you have people of different genders, races, languages and/or socioeconomic groups.  Having a diverse team of volunteers will help ensure that you have an array of skills and experiences to draw from.
• Choosing Appropriate Outreach Techniques for Different Generations – Some recruitment strategies work better for different age groups.  Take a look at these suggestions to target youth, college students, boomers, etc. 
• Identify Barriers to Volunteering – Take a moment to analyze how your recruitment efforts might be limiting your volunteer base and take steps to make it as inclusive as possible.

The Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley is your “go to” agency for MLK volunteer opportunities representing 93 nonprofit agencies with over 160 opportunities. Call 272-2087 for more information.

Thanks to the Corporation for National and Community Service for this information.