Volunteer toolkit to support brigades with finding new members of their crew

Published: 08/09/2021 | Volunteer | National

Volunteers currently make up nearly 12,000 of our people at more than 600 stations nationwide. They give up a lot to serve our communities and play a big role in keeping our communities safe.

We need to successfully attract and recruit volunteers who can develop the mix of skills required to meet the needs of their local communities.

A Volunteer Attraction questionnaire of brigade leaders in 2020 found that:

32% always need to attract new volunteers
52% occasionally need to attract new volunteers
45% want to attract a wider range of people
37% say having the time and energy to attract new volunteers is a challenge

To ensure brigades have everything they need to help with their volunteer attraction, we have a comprehensive range of useful information and resources to assist with recruitment of new volunteers in the toolkit on the Portal(external link). The toolkit includes ideas that have worked for other brigades, planning your own promotion, holding open nights, photographing your brigade, tips for social media, engaging with local employers and of course – signing up new volunteers.

We also have many handy resources to help with attracting new volunteers and brigades are able to order printed versions of these from the Portal(external link).

In the long term, our Volunteer Attraction team has embarked on a Sustainable Volunteer Attraction Pilot until 31 January 2022 to test and establish a sustainable approach to supporting our brigades with finding volunteers.

While the Pilot is running our Volunteer Attraction team will be focusing their efforts on supporting the brigades involved, which may mean less one-on-one support for brigades not involved in the project. However, once the Pilot is complete, we will be able to better prioritise brigades most in need of attraction support, plan local engagement, create scheduled campaigns, support brigades throughout the recruitment process and better understand the volunteer lifecycle.

We look forward to reporting the results of the Sustainable Volunteer Attraction Pilot early next year.