5 Essential Components of Volunteer engagement -
an age-friendly lens

Courtesy of Anna Guest, Founder and CEO, Rising Tide Volunteer Solutions

Effective volunteer engagement hinges on fundamental skills such as intentional leadership, proactive communication, and relationship building. To ensure success, it's crucial to tailor these skills to your community's unique needs, all while leveraging your distinctive leadership style. In grassroots efforts like lifelong community initiatives, resources that larger organizations leverage to build robust volunteer programs – like volunteer management staff, budgets for appreciation events, and software to automate some volunteer management tasks – may be scarce, yet the core components of volunteer engagement can still used with an “age-friendly lens” to get creative, keep things simple and use the "essence" of each of these elements.

1. Vision and Values

A powerful tool for rallying people around a shared cause, a clear vision goes beyond motivation; it offers guidance during challenging times and continuity through change. Defining values is equally vital, establishing culture and setting expectations, particularly in non-traditional leadership structures. Crafting a brief yet impactful statement of the vision and values of your age-friendly community and how volunteers are critical to its success is a tool that can be used repeatedly in a variety of ways.

Questions for reflection:

• What is your vision for your age-friendly community? What are you working toward together?

• What are your values as an age-friendly community?  How do these apply to volunteers?

• How do your vision and values inspire people to get involved?

2. Outreach and Recruitment 

Crafting a strong, consistent, and team-oriented approach to volunteer recruitment ensures that your community has the support and involvement to achieve its goals. Embrace a multipronged strategy, utilizing low-investment methods like social media and easy to find information about volunteering on your website alongside more time-intensive approaches such as personal outreach or events. Encourage a team approach by involving members in brainstorming and reaching out to their networks, fostering personal conversations and invitations to get involved in your work.

Effective strategies:

• Make individual, personal asks to engage existing and potential volunteers, rather than sending a blanket email to multiple people.

• Consider local partnerships with libraries, schools, and other organizations that support people in your community.

• Utilize intentional and creative language in your recruitment messaging. Try “get involved in your community” or “inviting” people to participate, rather than volunteer recruitment. 

3. Welcoming and Training

The initial welcome sets the tone for a positive volunteer experience. While a formal onboarding process might be too structured for many lifelong communities, a simple checklist covering vision, values, key contacts, and role-specific guidance is invaluable. Consistency in information shared during onboarding helps build a strong, united team and a common understanding of goals.

Key considerations:

• What essential information should be included in welcoming new team members?

• How can you ensure consistency in information shared with all volunteers?

4. Teamwork and Support

The dynamics of teamwork and the support provided to volunteers significantly impact retention. Clearly defining and communicating values around collaboration, decision-making, and support sets expectations and fosters a shared sense of responsibility. Open communication and support create a positive experience, preventing volunteers from feeling isolated.

Building a positive culture:

• Model honest conversations about what's sustainable for you and for your community initiative.

• Work with your team to define what “teamwork” looks like using your vision and values.

• Cultivate a culture of teamwork, flexibility, and a willingness to ask for and receive help.

5. Recognition & Celebration

Expressing gratitude and celebrating your team's impact is more than a formality; it builds community, reinforces individuals' value, and strengthens commitment to the team. Starting with authentic, heartfelt appreciation, highlight achievements, acknowledge individual contributions, and speak to future goals. A template that works well for this is "look what we accomplished, you were a part of it, thank you!, and here's where we're going together next..." This approach can be used in a variety of ways from welcoming remarks at a meeting, celebratory words at a party or gathering, even in email updates. There’s no “right way” to celebrate your team, tailor recognition activities to resonate with your community's unique culture.

Considerations for appreciation:

• How can you authentically express appreciation in various settings?

• What celebratory activities align with and uplift your community's culture?

As a leader of your lifelong community initiative, the messages your share and actions you take establish the culture around each of these components. There's no need to do everything all at once, there may be just one or two areas that make sense to focus on as low hanging fruit or priority areas. Most importantly, wherever you choose to focus, think about what will be realistic to do consistently! What simple and doable strategies or systems can you put in place that weave these essential components of volunteer engagement into your approach?

Further Resource from Anna: 

• Unleashing the Power of Stories in Lifelong Community Work

• Master Class, Finding and Mobilizing Volunteers

• Master Class, Age-Friendly Volunteers - Around for the Long Haul

• Master Class, Sustaining the Energy as a Community Leader

We are deeply grateful to Anna Guest and Rising Tides Volunteer Solutions for working with Lifelong Maine to develop these training materials. Special thanks to Sharon Kelley, Berwick for a Lifetime, Candy Eaton, Age-Friendly Sullivan, and Jean Saunders, Age-Friendly Saco, for meeting with Anna to share their wisdom, experiences and challenges working with volunteers
We also want to thank AARP Maine for their thought leadership designing these modules.