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NGOs and Social Enterprises · Volunteer organisations

HR for Volunteer Organisations: Recruiting, Training and Keeping Volunteers

A volunteer organisation gets its work done by people who are not paid. Here is how to recruit, brief, supervise and thank volunteers, and how to treat the few paid staff who coordinate them.

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NGO coordinators planning project staffing and volunteer deployment in a programme office
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A volunteer organisation, such as a youth corps, disaster response group, community kitchen, tutoring network or hospital visiting group, depends mainly on people who give time without pay. A small paid team of a coordinator, programme officer and administrator manages many volunteers: students, retired professionals, homemakers, working youth and corporate groups. Volunteers join with energy and leave quickly if the work is unclear, unsupervised or unappreciated. Availability changes with exams, jobs and family. Some do sensitive tasks such as helping children, visiting the ill or handling donations, which needs care. Unlike staff, volunteers cannot be directed through pay, so motivation, purpose and respect carry the weight. Paid coordinators may supervise people older and more experienced than themselves. Without records, nobody knows how many active volunteers there are or what they have done. Certificates and letters are often requested later. See also HR for NGOs and social enterprises.

  1. Plan
  2. Hire
  3. Onboard
  4. Manage
  5. Develop
  6. Perform
  7. Engage
  8. Retain
  9. Exit
  10. Improve

When HR is weak in volunteer organisations, you may see

  • Joining is easy, staying is not
  • Roles are vague
  • Sensitive tasks without checks
  • Young coordinators, senior volunteers
  • Corporate groups come and go
  • No records of hours or work
  • Burnout among the keenest
  • Conflicts with paid staff

These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.

Who does the work in volunteer organisations

HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.

  • Volunteer coordinators
  • Programme officers
  • Team leaders and captains
  • Trainers and induction facilitators
  • Administration and records staff
  • Student and corporate volunteers
  • Retired professionals and mentors

Roles we help you hire in volunteer organisations

GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in volunteer organisations. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.

Job descriptions for this sector

Share a hiring requirementTalent acquisition services →Role design and job descriptions →

We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.

We set up the interview and hiring process for volunteer organisations

Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.

  1. 1. Role brief and scorecard

    We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.

  2. 2. Stages and sequence

    Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.

  3. 3. Question bank and scoring

    Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.

  4. 4. Interviewer readiness

    A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.

  5. 5. Offer and follow-up

    Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.

Set up our interview processRecruitment process consulting →Structured interviewing →Interviewer training →Recruitment software →

Where HR strains in volunteer organisations

  • Joining is easy, staying is not

    Many sign up for an event and disappear because the first experience was disorganised or unclear.

  • Roles are vague

    Volunteers are told to help, but not given a task, a guide or a way to see the effect of their work.

  • Sensitive tasks without checks

    Volunteers handle children, patients or cash after minimal briefing, and nobody has checked references or set boundaries.

  • Young coordinators, senior volunteers

    A coordinator in her twenties manages retired executives, and both sides are unsure how to give or take direction.

  • Corporate groups come and go

    Employee volunteering days bring crowds who want photographs and a quick activity, and the organisation struggles to give them meaningful work.

  • No records of hours or work

    Volunteers ask for certificates and references, but nobody has written down what they did.

  • Burnout among the keenest

    A few dedicated volunteers take on too much, and quietly disappear after a strong run.

  • Conflicts with paid staff

    Volunteers feel paid staff are unappreciative, and staff feel volunteers are unreliable.

HR topics for volunteer organisations

Start with the topics that matter most here: Employee Engagement and Experience; Onboarding and Probation; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for ngos and social enterprises, not in general.

Employee Engagement and Experience

Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.

Onboarding and Probation

A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.

Retention and Attrition Management

Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.

HR Strategy and Workforce Planning

How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.

Organisation Design

Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.

Recruitment and Talent Acquisition

Requisition to joining, the same way every time.

Employee Administration

Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.

Compensation, Payroll and Benefits

Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.

Performance Management

Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.

Learning and Development

Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.

Career and Succession Management

Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.

Employee Relations

Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.

Policies, Compliance and Governance

Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.

Health, Safety and Wellbeing

Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.

Exit and Alumni Management

Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.

HR Technology and Automation

Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.

HR Analytics and Management Reporting

A short monthly pack management actually reads.

HR Operations and Governance

An HR function that runs the same way every month.

What a working HR set-up looks like

The pieces a volunteer organisations business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.

Write a role description for each volunteer type

Task, time, training, supervisor, limits and what to do if a concern arises.

What this covers

Task, time, training, supervisor, limits and what to do if a concern arises. See the employee onboarding process for an induction pattern.

Brief on the first day

A short, friendly induction covering purpose, safety, conduct and who to ask, then a buddy for the first shifts.

What this covers

A short, friendly induction covering purpose, safety, conduct and who to ask, then a buddy for the first shifts.

Set checks for sensitive roles

Reference checks, conduct code and supervision for work with children or vulnerable people, reviewed by a qualified professional.

What this covers

Reference checks, conduct code and supervision for work with children or vulnerable people, reviewed by a qualified professional.

Keep a volunteer record

Name, contact, role, hours and training in a simple register.

What this covers

Name, contact, role, hours and training in a simple register. The employee information management guidance gives structure.

Thank people well

Regular recognition, feedback and a path from helper to leader.

What this covers

Regular recognition, feedback and a path from helper to leader. The employee engagement process helps.

Define paid and unpaid roles

A short statement on who directs volunteers, how disagreements are handled and what volunteers can expect from staff.

What this covers

A short statement on who directs volunteers, how disagreements are handled and what volunteers can expect from staff.

Start by checking where you stand

Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.

Share your requirements
  • Count how many volunteers were active in the last three months and what each did.
  • Read a role description for one volunteer role, or notice that none exists.
  • List volunteer tasks that involve children, cash or sensitive data.
  • Ask five volunteers what made them stay or leave.
  • Check that certificates and references can be issued from your records.
  • Ask a coordinator what they find hardest about managing volunteers.
  • Confirm with a qualified professional the volunteer, safeguarding and insurance rules that apply to your organisation.

Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.

How GullyHR helps

The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.

Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.

Our HR transformation approach

  1. 1

    Assess

    Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.

  2. 2

    Identify gaps

    Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.

  3. 3

    Design

    Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.

  4. 4

    Implement

    Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.

  5. 5

    Automate

    Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.

  6. 6

    Measure

    Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.

  7. 7

    Improve

    Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.

Blogs worth reading first

From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in ngos and social enterprises, and one on each of the topics this page points to.

HR Management

The engagement survey that made things worse

Eighty per cent responded, the report was thorough, and six months later trust was lower than before. What went wrong between the survey and the silence.

8 min readRead article

More on the GullyHR blog.

Questions owners ask

A short volunteer agreement setting out role, time, conduct and limits is good practice. A qualified professional can confirm what suits your situation.

More on HR for ngos and social enterprises

All 43 business types in ngos and social enterprises · Find another business type

Alumni associationsCommunity development organisationsResident welfare associationsChurches and faith-based organisationsGrant-making foundationsHealth and nutrition NGOsEmployee Engagement and Experience in ngos and social enterprisesOnboarding and Probation in ngos and social enterprisesRetention and Attrition Management in ngos and social enterprises

See all HR topics for ngos and social enterprises, or another industry.

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