Most nonprofits don’t realize that some of their most valuable prospective volunteers are already in their ecosystem: donors.
Donors have already demonstrated a financial and emotional commitment to your cause. They understand your mission, trust your organization, and are statistically more likely to invest their time if invited thoughtfully. In fact, according to recent studies, approximately 67% of donors were also nonprofit volunteers, underscoring a powerful overlap between financial and time-based contributions.
Many organizations treat donor and volunteer communications separately, creating missed opportunities for stronger engagement. By weaving together your donor marketing and volunteer communication strategies, nonprofits can unlock a dual-role supporter base that amplifies impact while deepening donor loyalty.
Let’s explore four innovative, data-backed strategies to bridge this gap.
1. Add Interactive Content to the Strategy
To encourage deeper engagement, move beyond passive donor communication and create interactive content that invites participation. Rather than simply informing your donors, interactive content allows them to experience your volunteer opportunities firsthand. Here are a few ideas to consider:
- Volunteer role quizzes: Add a quiz to your newsletter or donor-facing communications, like “Which Volunteer Role Matches Your Skills?” Afterward, use Golden’s volunteer management software to automate role suggestions based on the results.
- Impact trackers: Display a live volunteer-hour tracker on your website, letting donors visually see progress towards shared goals. This fosters a sense of community and shared responsibility.
- Virtual volunteer-a-thons: Host livestreams where volunteers share real-time experiences (e.g., packing meals or mentoring). This not only showcases volunteer work but also makes the experience more relatable and engaging.
The key benefit of these interactive tools isn’t just engagement—they provide a clear path for users to get more involved. For example, after someone takes a quiz to find out how they can contribute, don’t just show them a result; prompt them with the next step:
“Based on your results, your strength in storytelling could help us enhance our outreach. Would you like to learn more? Join our upcoming virtual info session.”
Similarly, during live events or webinars, incorporate real-time polls to segment participants effectively. For example, you might provide a survey with the options “I’m ready to volunteer now” and “I’m interested, but would like more information first.” These responses can be fed directly into your CRM, enabling tailored follow-up strategies based on participants’ readiness levels.
2. Gamify the Experience for Donors
Gamification is a powerful psychological motivator that taps into competition, achievement, and community. Turning volunteerism into a challenge or game increases motivation, drives retention, and transforms passive supporters into active participants. Here’s how to implement gamification into your efforts:
- Create an impact points system. Develop a points-based system where volunteers earn “impact points” for actions like logging volunteer hours or referring new volunteers. These points can be redeemed for meaningful rewards, such as a shoutout on social media, a digital badge, or a behind-the-scenes tour of your operations.
- Introduce recognition challenges and badges. Celebrate volunteer-related milestones publicly to fuel motivation and retention. Whether it's a “100-Hour Hero” badge or recognition in your newsletter for those who refer three new donor volunteers, visible appreciation reinforces their value to the mission.
- Add team challenges. Form volunteer teams to foster collaboration and healthy competition. Let teams track collective hours via a real-time dashboard, compete for team-based rewards (e.g., a virtual coffee chat with your founder), celebrate shared progress, and motivate one another.
To maintain interest in gamification campaigns, it’s important to keep the momentum strong. Use your newsletter or social channels to keep excitement high and publicly acknowledge achievements. When people see others making an impact and getting recognized, they're more likely to step up themselves.
3. Provide Personalized Marketing Funnels
Tailored messaging resonates deeper than generic appeals for donors, and the same is true for volunteers. To convert donors into volunteers, you need to understand and reflect their individual characteristics at every step of the journey. Keep these personalization tactics in mind:
- Trigger relevant follow-ups: After a donation, send an email thanking the donor for the contribution and highlighting what the contribution could have looked like when converted to volunteer hours.
- Publish dynamic social ads: Retarget donors with ads for volunteer roles matching their interests (e.g., animal lovers see shelter care opportunities).
- Offer role suggestions: Use donor history (e.g., event attendance) to recommend relevant roles on a project-by-project or event-by-event basis. You could even reach out personally with a custom email if you find a great volunteer opportunity for a donor.
To keep your marketing efforts on track, consider trying a behavior-based drip email campaign. For instance, a donor-to-volunteer funnel marketing campaign might look like this:
- Day 1: “Thank you” email with impact report
- Day 2: Invitation to take a 30-second quiz (“How would you like to contribute?”)
- Day 5: Story-based email featuring a donor-turned-volunteer
- Day 10: Personalized volunteering opportunity based on quiz results
- Day 14: Reminder with new testimonials and a quick action CTA
4. Create Human-First Content
Donors already care about your mission—what they often lack is a visceral understanding of the human impact of volunteering. With that in mind, you need a way to convey the impact of volunteering—and ultimately, people are moved by stories, not statistics. In fact, stories are 22 times more memorable than facts. Let’s say your nonprofit provides scholarships for underprivileged high school students. Here’s how they might tell volunteering stories:
- Beneficiary testimonials: Share a video of a scholarship recipient speaking about the scholarship’s impact on their life and invite donors to mentor students like them.
- Donor spotlights: Ask a donor-turned-volunteer to provide insights on their volunteering journey. Then, publish a blog post titled, “Why I Became a Volunteer After 5 Years as a Donor” and promote it to your donors.
- Volunteer recognition: Post “Volunteer of the Month” features on Instagram with hashtags like #DonorsWhoDoMore.
While storytelling should take the main focus, data is still important to contextualize impact. Use impact equivalencies in appeals. For instance, an example for a food kitchen might be: “Your $100 donation buys 50 meals. Volunteering 4 hours distributes 200 meals.”
Getting Started
Transitioning donors into volunteers doesn’t require building a new audience; instead, you must deepen the relationship with the one you already have. First, audit your donor communications and branding for missed volunteer opportunities. Then, pilot one tactic (e.g., a gamified challenge) within 30 days and measure results.
About the Author
Javan Van Gronigen
Creative Director | Founder
As Founder and Creative Director of Fifty & Fifty, Javan is the tip of the proverbial spear. Javan started his digital design career 20 years ago as Art Director for what is now one of the world’s largest digital agencies (Mirum, a JWT Company).
He then moved on to Invisible Children where he was responsible for managing the team and all digital assets through the entire historic Kony 2012 campaign.
At Fifty & Fifty, Javan has participated in and led every project, including 300+ websites, campaigns, and brands.
