Community Engagment and Volunteerism Resources for K-12 Schools
Sample Volunteer Recruitment Strategy<

 
George I. Sanchez Elementary School in East Austin works with many volunteers. Curtis Montague was placed by the Charles A. Dana Center through the VISTA program to help Sanchez Elementary school improve its involvement of the community in the school, including how the school involved volunteers in a variety of settings.

Only after Curtis had outlined all of the ways the school already involved volunteers and developed detailed task descriptions for new volunteer opportunities did he engage in recruiting volunteers. Asking for volunteers but not having a method to immediately place them is like advertising a product you don't really have, and it can cause hard feelings about your agency on the part of potential supporters.

 
Using the Internet to recruit volunteers

Because Curtis had regular access to email and had volunteers ready to help with Internet-related projects, recruitment of volunteers began with using various Internet resources:

• Internet discussion groups
  Following the guidelines outlined in Marketing Volunteer Opportunities Online, http://www.serviceleader.org/vv/vmarket.html, local newsgroups and list serves were identified to post information about a particular opportunity, or a summary of all opportunities. The summary was posted to the newsgroups austin.announce and utexas.general. Information about the gardening-related opportunity was also posted to austin.gardening, and information about Internet-related opportunities were posted to austin.internet

• Online Volunteer Centers
  There are numerous Web sites that promote volunteer opportunities. The three largest of such sites were chosen on which tto post Sanchez opportunities. An online volunteer posted most of these opportunities for Curtis. These sites used were:
  • Volunteer Match, http://www.volunteermatch.org
    
  • ServeNet, http://www.servenet.org
    
  • Action Without Borders, http://www.idealist.org

• Direct Emails
  The summary of all opportunities at Sanchez Elementary School was forwarded via email to student volunteer clubs and career placement offices at all Austin metropolitan-area colleges and universities as well.

The resources listed on this page were used to identify all area volunteer centers and RSVP programs. Requests were made by phone to these organizations for their paper applications so that information about Sanchez Elementary's volunteer opportunities could be submitted.

A resource that proved quite helpful initially was the AmeriCorps for Community Engagement in Education Survey of Community Involvement in Allison and Sanchez Elementary Schools, a document by Allison Bradley produced in 1997 for the Charles A. Dana Center. This binder has an overview of the demographics of Allison and Sanchez Elementary Schools, a categorical inventory of involvement at both schools during the 1996-97 school year, an inventory of businesses and groups that were geographically-near both schools, and an extensive contact glossary of area organizations, churches, groups, etc. that wanted to receive information about volunteering at these two schools.

Curtis spoke at a Second Language Acquisition Class at the University of Texas at Austin, to highlight volunteering opportunities with the English as a Second Language classes at Sanchez, and to employees of a large public utility company in Austin during their lunch break, about Sanchez volunteer opportunities in general. Both of these organizations had existing relationships with the school already through past volunteering/partnership endeavors.

 
Results -- WHAT WORKED?

The results for the Fall 1998 recruitment campaign are here on our web site.

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