There’s no doubt about it — running a booster club takes a lot of effort from dedicated volunteers. Booster club parents can be some of the most generous volunteers with their time, effort, and money. However, there will be times, for a variety of reasons, when you just can’t seem to get the volunteers you need to cover the events you have planned. There can be times when it seems that no one is hearing your requests for volunteers. When booster club parents become disengaged, it can bring the organization to a screeching halt.
It can be a lot to ask of parents to take time out of their busy days to volunteer, and sometimes there will simply be lulls where volunteers are in short supply. If your current practices aren’t working to increase engagement, you may have to change up your strategy and think outside of the box.
Here are a few ways you can encourage booster club engagement and get your volunteer numbers up.
Communicate
One of the most common reasons parents don’t volunteer for booster club events is simple: they don’t know about them! Emails and newsletters often get lost in the shuffle. In fact, as email as a technology has matured, more and more people, especially of younger generations, don’t check their inboxes often or at all. If your communications are all via email, you may have to take a more active role in spreading the word to booster club volunteers.
Try sending individual texts. It could be that those members not seeing the email, feel more comfortable communicating via text. Try phone calls. Call volunteers to ask if they’ve heard about the volunteering opportunity. A personal request is very likely going to be a more successful way of connecting with someone and getting them to say yes. Sometimes all it takes is an extra reminder to get booster club members to sign up.
If you have just a couple of engaged parents, it may be a good idea to assign one of them the role of contacting individual volunteers. If one person’s efforts can lead to three or four volunteers, the benefit may be worthwhile. You may also want to try a phone tree approach where parents are responsible for passing along the message of the volunteer opportunity to one or two other people. This also helps members feel some personal connection with at least one other family engaged with the club’s activities.
One of the best reasons to use a software platform such as BoosterHub is that all of the functions of the club are on one screen. In other words, when a parent goes to check the sports game calendar or musical performance calendar, they are already in the app that delivers email, text, SMS, and announcements to them. The volunteer button is right next to it and in their line of sight. Such a simple all-in-one system can reap big results for volunteering, as sometimes parents just need to be reminded of volunteer requests at the moment they are thinking about the club. The screen layout of the BoosterHub app itself is specifically designed to boost engagement: the Volunteer button is right next to where members are looking when they check the Calendar for events and when they answer chat and email messages.
Make It Fun!
Taking time out of busy schedules can already be difficult for some club members. Don’t make it worse by planning boring, time-consuming, or laborious fundraisers. Try to get creative with your events and make them something that people will look forward to. A few fun ideas include:
Events that incorporate kids can be particularly effective for increasing volunteer engagement. If parents can find an activity that their kids want to enjoy and the parents can volunteer for the club at the same time, that’s a win-win for everyone. The main reason parents are not available to volunteer is because they don’t have someone to watch their children. If the whole family is included in the activity, participation rates rise.
Aside from events, it can be a challenge to get parents to volunteer for the organizational element of the booster club. Try to make meetings and planning sessions a bit more tolerable by providing modest catering or some drinks, and make sure to plan the sessions at convenient times. Ask them for times that work for them.
Crowdsource
Another effective way to get club members more involved is to crowdsource planning or fundraiser ideas. One person does not always have to be the decision-maker and planner. If you are having difficulty getting members to show up to meetings at a specific time, send a group calendar poll to see what time works better.
You can also crowdsource ideas for fundraisers so that the parents and members feel like they are more involved and have something at stake. Even the simple act of voting for an idea in a poll tends to get volunteers more active.
Getting booster club members more engaged is not always easy, but persistence pays, and with a few creative ideas, you can make your club a success.
