Do You Have an Ideal Volunteer?

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Matt Hugg
August 25, 2025

“We’ll take anybody.”
Have you said that when asked about volunteers? Did you mean it? How’d that work for you?

If you were lucky, then fine. But do you want to rely on luck to find good volunteers?

Ooooo… wait a minute. You want good volunteers, not just any volunteers, right?

So, define “good.”

Someone who shows up on time? A person who has a car or who can walk or ride a bike to your location? How about showing up at specific hours?

Consider this: If you ran a business, would you want 1,000 browsers in your store, or 10 people who really want what you offer? The people who want what you offer, of course, because your chances are much higher in getting a sale. But how do you get those 10 people? In business they call it “target marketing.” Think of it as a superpower that you’re going to use for a righteous cause, your mission!

But you may be thinking, “If I put too many conditions on what I need, I’ll never find anyone.”

Actually, you might start seeing the right ones. Let’s take a lesson from the business sector.

A business looks for “good customers” by defining exactly who that customer is. The closer they get to matching the customer to their product, the higher their chance of selling that product to the customer. Something else happens, too. When they know what their ideal customer looks like, their chances increase of seeing that customer in their database, on the street, and ultimately, in their store.

There’s some brain science behind this, but suffice to say that it’s how our ancestors were able to find food and keep out of harm’s way. Once they could describe (mentally at least, and maybe verbally) what was good to eat and what was bad, they lived longer.

Start with what your ideal volunteer might “look” like. I put “look” in quotes because it’s not really about appearance. It’s about personal attributes.

You might be thinking, “This feels like I’m profiling people. And I’ve been taught that profiling is bad.” That’s true when it comes to activities like policing, for example. Prejudging negative and positive attributes can be risky, especially when the consequences can be so dire. Humans don’t fall neatly into categories, except that sometimes they do.

The key is getting deeper than the superficial attributes like race, ethnicity and clothing, and identifying the attributes that will make a real difference for your mission. It’s also important to identify attributes that are essential versus those that are nice to have but optional.

For example, let’s say that you are running an after-school program for neighborhood kids.
The “must haves” might include an 8th grade reading level, being comfortable reading aloud, at least one Monday through Friday availability from 3 PM to 6 PM or Saturday from 8 AM to Noon, and the ability to get themselves to and from your location at those times. An ideal candidate would have experience working with children and have already passed child safety clearances for your state.

Where would you find these people?

Retirees, high school kids, traditional-age college kids and teachers may all make good places to look. Maybe people between jobs, too. How about someone who works 9 to 5, Monday through Friday? Sure, but that’s only likely to get you the Saturday people, and you want to “fish where the fish are,” so to speak, and start with the obvious ones who have the required availability to increase your chances of filling your need.

Let’s focus on the college and high school kids. Just by identifying these people, you’ve done some demographic profiling: age and where they live (within a school district, or on or near campus) and a certain education level (at least 9th grade). High school and college kids who might like to do this are probably some of the active kids on campus, and they tend to have better grades, and thus higher reading levels. That reduces your pool a bit, but increases your chances of finding motivated students. While the athletes may check the “active” box, practices may take them out, at least seasonally. Your better pools may be service clubs, future teacher organizations or education majors. Now, a bit of reality. Most young people interested in careers in education identify as female. Just take that into account as you recruit. Is that okay? Do you need more boys or men to pair with the boys in your program? Does it matter? This is a demographic decision to make.

What attributes disqualify after-school reading helpers? Do they have disciplinary issues? Is transportation a problem? How about parental approval for the high school kids? Are they just doing this to meet any service hour requirements? Are there laws, like those against operating motorized machinery?

Now that you have defined who you want and their attributes, you need to put yourself where the local, active, student-aged people are. No, you’re not going to be the creeper hanging out near campus. You are going to use your network to contact teachers, professors or staff at the schools, and sell your opportunity to them. Yes, sell. (Need a confidence builder? Read To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink.)

Besides your worthy mission, your preparedness from the steps above will really help you make connections with “people who know people,” in this case the teachers. You are giving them a profile of either the students you think are best, or a good idea of which colleagues would know, like club advisors. And one more thing: like I said in [ASPA article edition] earlier, when you identify the right people, ask them one-to-one. That greatly increases the chances for a “yes.”

In the end you have two choices. The most popular is to cast a wide net and ask for anyone’s help. It’s easy and a minimal investment of your time. And you’re likely to get what you invested in. Chances are everyone will sit on their hands, but if you get high numbers, the number of “keepers” will be low. You’ll waste your time and energy training people who won’t stay or if they do, could be ineffective.

Or, you can put in upfront time finding a smaller number, ones who match your needs, and be really happy.

Personally, I’ll put in the time.

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Author: Matt Hugg is president of Nonprofit.Courses, and mentor at the John S. Watson School of Public Service at Thomas Edison State University. He can be reached at [email protected].

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