Garnering support from volunteers can be tough. Your supporters are busy, and sometimes asking them to donate their time is a harder sell than asking them for monetary donations. The recent shift to all-virtual events has probably made catching their attention online even more difficult. 

Getting enough volunteers can be tricky!  You'll want to ensure you’re doing everything you can to maximize your odds of winning volunteers over. We’ve all heard about the importance of volunteer recruitment and appreciation, but have you ever thought about how your actual website is impacting your volunteer management strategy? 

We’re constantly looking to improve nonprofits’ strategies to attract, engage, and retain volunteers, so we’ve looked closely at the role that web design can play in the process. It’s possible that you’re making some simple, fixable mistakes that are discouraging potential volunteers from showing up for your cause. In this article, we’ll explore how to optimize your website for increasing volunteer engagement. Our 5 tips include: 

1. Effective calls-to-action 
2. Intuitive navigation 
3. Smart & easy registration 
4. Shareability 
5. Mobile-friendly design

With a volunteer-friendly website, you’re sure to capture more volunteer conversions and keep your current volunteers engaged. Let’s get started.

1. Effective Calls-to-Action 

Calls-to-Action, or CTAs, are links or buttons on your website that ask your audience to take an action. Donation CTAs might read “Donate Now!” or “Click here to give,” while volunteer CTAs can say a variety of things. Some popular choices include: 

• Get Involved 
• Join Us
• Sign Up to Volunteer 
• Register to Volunteer 
• Become a Volunteer 
• Volunteer with Us

We recommend being as clear as possible in your CTA, preferably using one of the options that includes the word “volunteer” to reduce confusion about where the CTA leads. Link it directly to the relevant sign-up location, either a form on your website or a listing on a volunteer opportunity platform.

If you are actively trying to drive users to your volunteer signup page, you need to consider the placement and quality of your CTAs.

Where are your CTAs located on your website? 

It’s common practice to include a permanent “Donate” button on every page of your website. If prioritizing volunteer signups is a goal of your organization, consider anchoring down a volunteer CTA in the top bar of your website as well, so that it’s always visible and accessible to your audience. It may seem trivial, but just the extra couple of clicks it takes to navigate to a volunteer signup page nested below another page can be enough to turn away some potential volunteers. 

To make the volunteer page even more accessible, consider adding a lightbox to your website. A lightbox is a pop-up that immediately appears when a user navigates to a particular part of your website, like a page all about your volunteer program and opportunities. It appears in the foreground, while the main page in the background is dimmed, so it literally “lights the way” to your preferred action, in this case your volunteer signup form. Lightboxes can be an effective way to capture your audience’s attention and present a clear call to action on some pages.

Are your CTAs clear and eye-catching? 

If you start looking around at other nonprofits’ websites, you’ll likely notice that the “Donate” button is often red, orange, or another vibrant color. Assuming your website doesn’t have a red/orange theme, these colors are ideal for drawing attention to the CTA. A larger font size will also make sure your volunteer CTA is highly visible. 

Additionally, the phrase on your volunteer call-to-action should be simple and short, not a long sentence that leaves room for vagueness about what is being asked of the reader. 

If you ensure your CTAs are well-placed, clear, and attention-getting, you’ll garner more engagement from your audience on your website, opening up a critical source to support your broader recruitment goals. To find out how else you can catch potential volunteers’ attention, check out this complete guide to volunteer recruitment.

2. Intuitive Navigation

We all know that feeling of exasperation when you’re trying to find something on a website that should be obvious, but isn’t. Don’t let your website be one of these sources of exasperation for potential volunteers—they probably won’t make it to your signup form. Here are some recommendations to optimize your website’s navigation so your volunteers can easily find all of the information they need to sign up for your next event or opportunity:

• An obvious navigation bar on the top or left side, with logical headings and subheadings that lead to the appropriate pages. There shouldn’t be any ambiguity about which heading likely contains volunteer information; it should be obvious, so potential volunteers know just where to click. 

• Clean design. It’s also recommended not to overload your website with images, photos, or embedded videos. While using media to engage your audience is wise, too many prompts, links, and photos lacking context will just serve to confuse and overwhelm your audience. Information should be presented cleanly, with visual interest in the form of infographics and images thoughtfully placed so they don’t distract from your CTAs. 

• Relevant information close by. Contained on the page just prior to your volunteer signup form should be an up-to-date list of ways to get involved with your organization. You can even include a calendar widget to make clear when the opportunities are and to facilitate volunteer signups. List a “job description” under each type of volunteer opportunity to spark potential volunteers’ interest and provide needed information about the requirements of the work you request. 

Intuitive navigation ensures your volunteers can easily find necessary information about your volunteer opportunities and your volunteer signup form. Don’t let a confusing layout lead potential volunteers down the wrong path.

3. Smart & Easy Registration

Once volunteers get to your registration form, they are so close to becoming supporters for your cause. The last thing that stands in the way is your form, so it’s in your best interest to pay careful attention to yours and make sure it’s the best it can be. 

Even if you use a dedicated volunteer recruitment and management platform, be sure to customize your registration form to best suit your needs and to prioritize the user experience. Ideally, your platform would also integrate with your other tools to automatically report data into your volunteer management system so you can make use of it without a manual transfer. 

So what do you prioritize on the form itself? If you’re familiar with donation form best practices, the recommendations for a registration form are similar: first, make sure your registration form is as concise as possible. Excessively detailed, long, or complicated forms discourage completion, and if the form isn’t completed, you don’t get that volunteer! 

Only the most essential information should be included as “required fields.” If you’d like to have some additional questions on your form asking about skills, interests, experience, and eligibility for corporate funding, just make sure they’re optional—some of your supporters will be signing up in a hurry. Remember that once you’ve acquired the volunteer through the signup process, you’ll have plenty of time to follow up and get to know them. 

Next, be sure to include your organization’s brand, brand images, and/or logo on your registration form. It’s possible that some potential volunteers will stumble upon your registration link from a friend’s post on Facebook or other outside domains, so they need to know where they are when they get there. 

Once your volunteers are all signed up, all that’s left is for them to actually make it to the event or volunteering opportunity. To make the path to your volunteering experience as smooth as possible, consider using a volunteer management system to manage signup confirmations and reminders—automated volunteer reminders bring no-show rates down by as much as 30%.

4. Shareability

Often, volunteers will want to attend an event or support your cause with their friends and/or family. This is an ideal scenario for your nonprofit, because you get more support, your volunteers have a more enjoyable experience, and you can spread the word more easily. 

Make your volunteer opportunities on your website shareable to social media sites (like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) and via text, so they can easily send the link to just one person or to all of their social media followers. If you’re using a recruitment platform to post listings, ensure that it includes easy social media, email, and text sharing tools. 

If your volunteers want to do recruitment work for you, the least you can do is make it easy on them!

5. Mobile-friendly design

With so many supporters engaging with nonprofits from mobile devices these days, it’s vital that your website functions correctly when viewed on a smaller screen. You’ll want to make sure of several aspects of your website’s functionality before sending it live to potential volunteers. 

First, every page on your website should be mobile responsive—not just your engagement forms. It’s vital that potential volunteers be able to easily access all of the information on your website so they can understand your mission, see photos from events, and learn about your impact. Such information goes into their decision about whether or not to volunteer, so you should have that available to them regardless of the type of device they’re using to browse. 

Don’t forget to check page load speeds from a mobile device, as you don’t want your audience waiting too long for your forms to load. Making such mobile-optimized changes will not only increase engagement but also improve your website’s rankings and SEO, so don’t neglect them! 

According to these statistics at Mobilize, the largest portion of volunteers is in the 25-34 age bracket, a demographic famous for their smartphone use. Don’t miss out on their engagement because your site isn’t mobile-friendly.

About the Author

Allen Kramer

Allen Kramer is the Co-Founder and President of Mobilize. Before starting Mobilize with Alfred Johnson, he worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, in management consulting at Bain & Company, and helped grow a great social enterprise called Assured Labor. Allen was born and raised in NYC, loves a wide range of music and—on his better days—running.