Nearly half of nonprofit leaders say recruiting enough volunteers is a major headache, a sharp contrast to the situation two decades ago, when less than a third said it was a problem.
That comes as nonprofit leaders are ever more interested in getting volunteers: Nearly 70 percent said volunteers were a very worthy investment for nonprofits in 2022 versus 43 percent in a related survey in 2019.
That finding comes from a study of 1,200 nonprofit chief executives, which was jointly conducted by the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and the Initiative for Strategic Volunteer Engagement, a group of grant makers and nonprofits focused on volunteerism.
The report also found that nonprofits were struggling to cope with a combination of increased workloads, shortages of funding, and the continued drop in volunteer activity caused by the pandemic.
The survey results, which include insights into the challenges of maintaining volunteer programs, complement a qualitative report released last month on how grant makers perceive volunteer programs and what’s needed to help them thrive.
“The pandemic has profoundly changed the market for the services delivered by nonprofit organizations and the demand for volunteers — which makes nonprofit leaders more convinced of the benefits of volunteer engagement but also more aware of the challenges of this work, especially when they are confronting shortfalls of people who can serve,” says the report.
Other insights from the report, titled “The State of Volunteer Engagement: Insights From Nonprofit Leaders and Funders,” include:
- In the past year, 64 percent of nonprofits reported an increase in demand for their services and nearly half said their staff workload had grown. However, 29 percent reported operating with less funding and paid staff than before the pandemic, while 42 percent were operating with about the same level of financial support and staff.
- While 48 percent of nonprofit CEOs believe that a lack of volunteers is a “big problem” for their organization, only 18 percent of 100 grant makers who were separately surveyed agree. Most grant makers who award dollars to support volunteerism say they get very few inquiries from nonprofits about getting more funding.
- Nearly 40 percent of nonprofits reported difficulty finding volunteers who are available during the traditional workday in 2022 versus 21 percent in 2019, and 35.4 percent struggled to find volunteers with the necessary skills versus 18 percent in 2019.
- The majority of nonprofits reported that the Covid pandemic had continued to disrupt their volunteer programs significantly two years after its onset, with nearly 70 percent reporting that they were still using fewer volunteers than normal in 2022.
