Volunteer Retention: How to Foster Long-Term Loyalty

It’s no secret that volunteers provide immense value to your organization through their contributions of time and talent. In fact, the average equivalent monetary value of just one volunteer hour was $34.79 as of 2024. And the longer a volunteer sticks with your organization, the more valuable their service becomes as they develop their skills and grow their passion for your mission.

However, keeping volunteers engaged long-term is among the top five challenges today’s volunteer managers face. To help your organization overcome this obstacle, this guide will cover everything you need to know about volunteer retention, including:

• Volunteer Retention FAQ
• How to Calculate Volunteer Retention Rate
• Top Volunteer Retention Strategies

Let’s get started by ensuring we’re on the same page about what volunteer retention is and why it matters.

Volunteer Retention: Frequently Asked Questions

What is volunteer retention?

Volunteer retention describes your organization’s ability to keep volunteers actively involved in your work long-term. The term can also refer to the strategic process of encouraging this repeated, lasting engagement in your program.

Volunteer retention is the final step in the volunteer management lifecycle, meaning every other aspect of volunteers’ journeys and experiences with your organization builds toward it as follows:

• Recruitment: Volunteer management experts frequently state that retention begins at recruitment, since you need to make a positive first impression to secure a volunteer’s support for any amount of time.
• Onboarding: A thorough orientation and initial training procedure sets the stage for volunteers to perform effectively in their roles and make their desired impact throughout their entire involvement in your program.
• Engagement: Efficient logistical processes, open communication, enjoyable activities during and outside of shifts, and community-building among volunteers all foster stronger connections with your organization.
• Appreciation: Volunteers need to know that you’re grateful for their contributions and value them as individuals—not just sources of free labor—if they’re going to stay motivated to perform their tasks to the best of their ability.

Retention may be the end goal of the volunteer journey, but it’s also an ongoing process that requires continuous effort and monitoring.

Why is volunteer retention important?

Retaining volunteers provides several benefits for your organization, including:

• Saving time and resources. Constantly recruiting and onboarding volunteers can drain resources and take up a large amount of staff bandwidth. Retention is typically less intensive in both of these areas.
• Improving operational efficiency. More experienced volunteers can perform at a higher level in their roles with less guidance, meaning that fundraising campaigns, administration, and service delivery can all run more smoothly.
• Increasing organizational loyalty. Besides being motivated to keep serving, longtime volunteers are more likely to advocate for your program and mission. They may also want to get involved with your organization in other ways, such as donating or participating in events.
• Strengthening program culture. Over time, repeat volunteers get to know each other and build a closer community of peers who are all enthusiastic about making an impact for a cause they care about.

Your volunteer retention strategy shouldn’t replace your efforts to attract new volunteers when possible—recruitment is still essential for your program to grow. However, retaining volunteers allows your program to be successful and sustainable for years to come.

Why might my organization’s volunteers lapse?

The opposite of volunteer retention is volunteer attrition or churn, which occurs when a volunteer terminates their involvement with your organization. Volunteers who haven’t engaged with your program for a defined period of time (often a year or six months) are known as lapsed volunteers.

Some common reasons for volunteer churn include:

• Changes in personal circumstances—e.g., getting too busy with other commitments or moving farther away from your facilities.
• Feeling unappreciated or undervalued due to a lack of recognition and individualized attention.
• Not understanding their impact because volunteers don’t see the tangible results of their efforts.
• Poor communication, which could mean your messages are unclear, don’t reach volunteers frequently enough to be noticeable, or come so often that it’s overwhelming.
• Burnout or stagnation when volunteers don’t see a path forward in their current roles.

Knowing why your organization’s volunteers might disengage allows you to develop strategies that proactively prevent attrition. For example, if you discover that volunteers are dissatisfied with your current approach to communication, you could experiment with different cadences until you find the right messaging frequency. Or, if volunteers are leaving due to shifts in their personal lives, you might offer more flexible shift options and pilot virtual roles so it’s easier to fit volunteering into a busy schedule.

How to Calculate Volunteer Retention Rate

Volunteer retention rate is one of the most important metrics to track and analyze to determine your program’s overall success. It shows the percentage of volunteers who stay involved with your organization from one defined time period (year, quarter, event, etc.) to the next.

To calculate your volunteer retention rate, use the following equation:

For example, if your organization had 200 total volunteers last year and 120 served again this year, your year-over-year volunteer retention rate would be (120/200) x 100 = 60%. 

You can also use this calculation to determine retention rates for individual volunteer activities. For instance, if 40 volunteers helped with your last 5K fundraiser and 28 come back to work your next 5K, your volunteer retention rate for this event would be (28/40) x 100 = 70%.

Reports vary on the average volunteer retention rate across the nonprofit sector—65% is a common figure, although some studies claim numbers as high as 75% or as low as 45%. The 65% benchmark is typically a solid target to aim for year-over-year.

Although many organizations focus heavily on retention rate as an indicator of volunteer program success, remember that tracking other metrics can provide deeper insights and a more holistic picture of how your efforts are going. These may include total active volunteers, total volunteer hours tracked, participant satisfaction ratings, average volunteer lifetime value, and return on investment (ROI) for your program.

Top Volunteer Retention Strategies

Now that you’ve gotten the lay of the land, let’s dive into how to practically encourage lasting engagement at your organization by reviewing some of the best volunteer retention strategies.

Show Consistent Appreciation

Although appreciation and retention are often considered separate steps in the volunteer management lifecycle, they actually overlap significantly. Expressing gratitude is the most effective way to demonstrate that you value your volunteers, which is critical for retaining them.

Depending on your volunteers’ unique preferences, you might recognize them by:

• Sending physical or digital greeting cards
• Giving tangible gifts like branded merchandise or discount cards
• Shouting out volunteers on social media or in your annual report
• Hosting appreciation events
• Presenting awards to volunteers who go above and beyond

Formally thank volunteers using these methods to commemorate notable occasions, such as the first time they serve or a milestone in their journey. Other customary annual occasions, like the end of the year and National Volunteer Week, are also great opportunities to express your gratitude. 

Don’t underestimate the value of informal appreciation, either—a quick “Thanks for your help!” or “Great work today!” from a supervisor at the end of a shift can leave a lasting impression that motivates a volunteer to sign up again.

Establish a Clear Communication Cadence

As mentioned previously, effective volunteer communication is a delicate balance. Not contacting volunteers often enough can make your messages get lost in the shuffle, but reaching out too frequently can lead to fatigue and burnout. And of course, all of your communications need to be well-written and highlight the action you want recipients to take (if there is one).

Play around with your communication cadences until you find a schedule that gets as many volunteers as possible to open your messages and take the intended next step. Different groups of volunteers will likely appreciate different communication frequencies—for example, you’ll need to contact volunteers who serve monthly or semimonthly much more often than those who only help out with one event a year. You might also contact volunteers through various channels (email, text, social media, etc.) to keep your approach fresh and your messages visible.

Personalize Volunteer Interactions

Nothing says to volunteers, “We care about you as an individual,” more than personalization. Whenever possible, your communications should be tailored to each recipient, meaning they:

• Address the volunteer by the correct name. “Dear Volunteer,” or even “Dear Valued Volunteer,” won’t convey the same value as a greeting that includes a volunteer’s first name. However, getting the volunteer’s name right is critical—if you greet a volunteer named Jacqueline with “Dear Jackie,” when she never goes by Jackie, it would likely cause her to stop reading.
• Mention their past involvement where relevant. Discussing the areas of your work a volunteer has supported, the number of hours they’ve logged, or the goals they’ve achieved reinforces your appreciation of their individual contributions, regardless of the message’s main point.
• Connect asks to the volunteer’s history and interests. Use volunteers’ past engagement and other tidbits you know about them to make relevant requests for further involvement. For example, if Jacqueline is usually an event volunteer, she’ll be more likely to respond to a message asking whether she wants to help with your upcoming gala than if she’d like to assist with back-office tasks.

All of these communication tactics demonstrate that your organization knows each of its individual volunteers. This personal knowledge should extend to interactions between staff members and the volunteers they supervise, too. Remembering volunteers’ names and expressing an interest in their lives will strengthen relationships within your program.

Demonstrate Program Impact

Of the reasons people choose to volunteer, the most common one is (unsurprisingly) wanting to make a difference for a cause they care about. Regularly let volunteers know their contributions are having their desired impact by sharing:

• Relevant statistics about volunteers’ achievements for your mission.
• Photos of volunteers hard at work or interacting with beneficiaries (with all subjects’ consent, of course).
• Testimonials from individuals who were affected by volunteers’ service, such as participants in a community program or fundraising event attendees.

Additionally, consider creating periodic impact reports for your volunteer program. Impact data not only shows volunteers that they’re continuing to make a difference, but it also encourages them to stay engaged. Not to mention, these reports are an easy way to demonstrate the value of your volunteer efforts to other stakeholders and potential new recruits.

Tap Into Corporate Volunteering Programs

To help your volunteers increase their impact even more, you can turn to their employers. Many businesses offer volunteer programs to give back to organizations and causes their employees care about, which often boosts their retention rates and their reputations as socially responsible companies.

Research companies in your area to see if they offer any corporate volunteer initiatives, such as:

• Volunteer grants
• Paid volunteer time off (VTO)
• Team volunteer days

Then, promote these opportunities to supporters so they can check their eligibility and use the perks they have access to as they continue volunteering with you. Over time, tapping into these programs can foster mutually beneficial, lasting relationships between your organization and local companies.

Collect Volunteer Feedback

Longtime volunteers often want to improve the organizations they contribute to and have a say in their future. Actively collecting feedback lets volunteers know you welcome their input and always want them to have the best possible experience in your program.

Send out periodic surveys (e.g., quarterly or semiannually) that include a variety of multiple-choice and open-ended questions about different aspects of volunteering. You might also check in with a few individual volunteers one-on-one to see how they’re feeling about your program and gather any suggestions they may have for the future.

Then, review your collected feedback, choose the best ideas to implement, and communicate about the changes you’re making. You probably won’t be able to use every suggestion, and you should also let volunteers know why you didn’t choose to move forward with certain ideas to ensure they know you still took their thoughts into consideration.

Provide Ongoing Training & Resources

Too often, volunteers’ training ends when they’re fully onboarded into a program, even though many volunteers want to continue building their skills past that point. To fulfill this desire, your organization may offer:

• An on-demand resource library of documents, videos, and slide decks that volunteers can browse as they have time and interest in certain topics.
• Optional online courses, webinars, and workshops for a more in-depth dive into specific skill-building activities.
• Access to external training materials, such as recommendations for books to read or conferences to attend.

In addition to preventing volunteers from feeling bored or stagnating in their roles, ongoing training can lead to a more skilled volunteer pool overall, meaning your program can run more efficiently and make a bigger impact.

Offer Advancement Opportunities

Another way to reduce the risk of stagnation and recognize volunteers’ achievements is to empower them through higher-level opportunities. These may include:

• Self-scheduling permissions so experienced volunteers are more likely to get their preferred positions and time slots, plus it shows that you trust them.
• Higher-visibility or more advanced positions—for example, you might ask a volunteer who is great at selling merchandise during fundraising events if they’d like to work the checkout counter during the grand opening of your new thrift store.
• Leadership opportunities, such as mentoring newer volunteers or being the go-to person for volunteers to shadow during their first shifts.

Don’t pressure volunteers to take on these new responsibilities if they don’t want to. However, letting them know that these options are open to them demonstrates that you’ve noticed their dedication and want them to keep up the good work.

Leverage Volunteer Management Software

Like most operations in the modern nonprofit world, volunteer retention becomes much easier when you have the right tools on your side. Your organization’s volunteer management software should help you consolidate and streamline every stage of the volunteer lifecycle, but here are a few features to look for that will specifically help you execute the other retention strategies we’ve discussed:

• A secure volunteer database to store information about each volunteer that you can use for personalization, engagement tracking, and appreciation.
• Ongoing training material creation capabilities, including a digital resource library and eLearning modules for online courses.
• Flexible scheduling tools so you can offer shifts that fit into volunteers’ schedules and enable self-scheduling for experienced volunteers.
• Communication features for email and one-way SMS, as well as website integrations to unify your retention cadence.
• Reporting and analytics that help you track program impact, volunteer retention rates, and other essential success metrics.

For a platform that includes all of these features and more in a unified, user-friendly system, look no further than Better Impact! Our volunteer management solution, Volunteer Impact, makes it easy to retain volunteers without letting other essential aspects of your program fall through the cracks. Plus, we offer personalized customer support and a robust library of training videos to help you make the most of your software and your organization’s volunteer efforts.

But don’t just take our word for it—check out our client case studies to see how real organizations of all sizes and missions have used Better Impact’s tools to improve their volunteer retention strategies and much more!

Wrapping Up: Additional Resources on Volunteer Management

Volunteer retention is the key to building a program that thrives long-term and supports your organization’s mission for years to come. Use the strategies in this guide to get started, and make sure you have the right technology on your side (i.e., a comprehensive volunteer management platform like Volunteer Impact) to help you adapt your approach to your unique needs, goals, and supporter preferences.

For more information on various aspects of volunteer management, check out these resources:

• Volunteer Appreciation: Getting Started + 10 Top Ideas
• Nonprofit Volunteer Recruitment: Overview + Strategies
• Volunteer Management Training: An Overview & Top Resources