Marketing Initiatives and Campaigns to promote Volunteering - a ...

Key points:• Understanding of volunteers will improve recruiting and retaining strategy• Description of volunteer profile, tasks undertaken by volunteers, definition of avolunteer, motivation of volunteers• Findings: volunteers are extremely diverse group, active in a wide variety of contextCountry of Publication: Canada199135. Source: ‘Promoting Volunteerism’ by Janet Lautenschlager, Voluntary ActionDirectorate, Multiculturalism and Citizenship Canada, 1991Key points:• Promotion strategy must include a planning stage and formulating promotionobjectives (short-term & longer-term goals)• Target audience of the communication must be categorized and promotionmaterial and approach must be customized to the target audience• Approaches to promotion:o Direct promotion: organisational literature, personal presentations, specialevents, displays and exhibits, promotional materialso Using the media: choice of media (newspapers, magazines, radio,television), implication of using differing medias, and type of message(eg. public service announcements, advertisement, columns, news stories,editorials)• The basic requirement for the promotion is further explained200136. Source: ‘An Environmental Scan on Volunteering and Improving Volunteering’,by Michael Hall, A-J McKechnie, Katie Davidman & Fleur Leslie, CanadianCentre for Philanthropy, Toronto, June 2001.Key points:• The use of mandatory volunteering: considered as providing negative experience bymany volunteers because it often requires volunteers to do work that is unfulfillingand has potential to undermine the future of volunteering; also regarded as a valuableapproach to encouraging volunteering (p.7)• Many people initially get involved in volunteering because someone approached themfrom an organisation, suggesting that the recruitment activities (=promotionactivities??) of voluntary organisations are an important determinant of rates ofvolunteering (p.8)• Any effort of recruiting volunteers would be assisted by researched that showed,among other things: how volunteering is perceived by different segments of the45