Speed Dating Meets Volunteer Recruitment!
Here’s an idea: why not have a volunteer recruiting event for singles on Valentine’s Day? It’s fun, unique, and – trust me – it’ll be more interesting than what most of us singletons end up doing on February 14th. Check out this excerpt from A Toolkit for Volunteer Speed Matching to spur your thinking. The Toolkit was developed in England for volunteer centers who want to help a number of organizations showcase their volunteer opportunities; it could work equally well for one organization anywhere with a number of different volunteer roles. I’m sure there’s lots of other great ways to play off this concept to design a fun, memorable, and effective recruitment event. If you’ve done an event like this before, or you’re going to try it this year, leave a comment and let us know!
Excerpt from A Toolkit for Volunteer Speed Matching by Volunteer Centre Dacorum, ©2005.
Why Speed Matching?
- It offers a new way of recruiting volunteers, which is fun & upbeat. Not all volunteering could be described as fun, but there is no reason why the recruitment process has to be too heavy, especially at the first “date” stage.
- It makes a change from Volunteer Fairs, where often the most positive outcome is networking with organisations on other stalls.
- It focuses organisations’ minds on the way they portray their activities to the general public. It’s much easier to talk at length about what they do than to distil it down into 3 or 4 minutes.
- It makes organisations realise the competition they have from other local organisations. Why would a volunteer join them rather than another group?
- It can be used as a PR opportunity for organisations — a chance to describe what they do to a variety of people regardless of any potential volunteering relationship.
- It creates a lot of interest, especially from the media.
- The Speed Matching model can be adapted to various situations.
Adapting the Speed Matching model:
- Volunteer daters need a choice of opportunities. Volunteer Speed Matching can be run with a variety of organisations, or by one large organisation that has a variety of opportunities.
- Themed sessions can be run:
- organisations with something in common e.g. disability / elderly
- volunteer “dates” all from one source e.g. hold the event at the premises of a local company as part of an employee volunteering initiative. We currently have Epson interested!
- hold an event just for potential trustees
- run an information event using the speed matching model e.g. for personnel &/or politicians from a local authority
