Volunteer Recruitment & Support

Finding other committed leaders is the key to a successful group. Below are a range of resources to help.

The Woodcraft Folk Volunteer Toolkit contains advice, information and templates for recruiting, inducting and supporting volunteers.

Our page for prospective volunteers will help you understand the benefits of volunteering. 

When recruiting volunteers, you may find the following documents helpful. They were produced by the new groups project in 2015 to support the team's volunteer recruitment process. 

• Volunteer enrolment form - Using a volunteer enrolment form is useful for making sure no questions are forgotten. It gives potential volunteers the chance to think about their role properly before committing, and gives you some idea of what they might be like as a volunteer. If you prefer, go through the questions on the form during a meeting with them.
• Volunteer journey - track the aimed for journey of a new volunteer. You may find this useful when planning recruitment activity. 
• Volunteer 121 induction meeting notes
• Induction checklist
• Volunteer advert examples: Children's group helper, outreach assistant

Your local volunteer centre, or student volunteering hub

• You will get more responses to adverts if you have a face-to-face meeting with co-ordinators, or at least a phone call, so they have you in their mind when signposting people to volunteer roles.
• Many volunteering bureaux have their own online system. These can sometimes be difficult to navigate. The website do-it.org.uk is an easy to use volunteering recruitment site that many bureaux use instead of or as well as their own, but you can upload adverts straight there.
• Volunteers who come to Woodcraft Folk through a volunteer advert are likely to have different expectations, motivations and support needs than those who get involved as parents and carers. They will likely need more support, and more time explaining how Woodcraft works. They are likely to feel nervous about their position in the group if most of the others are parents. In this case, give them clear tasks to do and check in regularly with them.
• When writing a role advert, make the title of your volunteer advert descriptive - ‘Kids group helper’ will get more hits than ‘group helper’.

Posters and leaflets

• Visit the publicity guidance page for editable flyers.
• Contact folk office for copies of our volunteer recruitment poster
• Download a certificate that you can use locally to recognise the contribution of volunteers

See also: Outreach guidance

Parents of children in the group, or wishing to join 

Often the most common way to recruit volunteers. If you are hoping to recruit more volunteers this way, you may find these resources useful:

• Example plans for open meetings for parents 
• Meeter and greeter case study

Contact organisations with students who need to work with children

e.g. childcare, teacher training, psychology, Duke of Edinburgh

Contact like minded groups

such as co-operative societies, university societies, trade unions and environmental campaigning organisations

At Annual Gathering 2011, members took part in a workshop to share experiences of successfully recruiting new members. Download the session plan and report. 

For more support in growing your group, visit the Growing & Sustaining your group.