What are the Biggest Challenges in Getting (and Keeping) Your Nonprofit’s Staff and Volunteers?

Grants lead to paid interns and a full-time volunteer coordinator.

It has been increasingly difficult to not only recruit and retain skilled staff, but just to get them to the interview process! Last year, we received a grant which has allowed us to pay BA- and MA-level interns $25 per hour for their internships — as well as for the staff supervision.

To date, we have hired seven of these wonderful young adults into our various programs, most of whom have already gone through specific trainings while they were interns. We are looking forward to a second round and, although we may not have as many open positions, we can refer them to colleagues who do!

For our ever-dwindling volunteer pool, we have redirected funds into a full-time volunteer coordinator position in the hopes of rebuilding that program.

— Patricia Kelleher Parker from Family and Community Resources, Inc.

Finding serious and dedicated long-term volunteers is difficult.

Our organization has an experience of more than 30 years working with the rural-based communities to empower them improve their standards and conditions of living through self-help initiatives.

However, we don’t have established paid staff to implement our priority activities and programs. Instead, we utilize the services of volunteers — both local and international, as well as online and on-site.

Our greatest challenge is to recruit serious volunteers — especially from the international community — that may be willing to come to Uganda to share with us their skills, knowledge, experience, expertise, ideas, and resources.

— Mulindwa William from the Mmanze Centre for Rural Development and Training

Challenges can include burnout and being unable to compete with the pay and benefits for-profits can offer.

One of the biggest challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled staff or volunteers for charitable organizations, including scholarship programs like ours, often revolves around a few key issues:

Competing with other opportunities: Skilled individuals, whether paid staff or volunteers, often have multiple opportunities available to them — especially in the for-profit sector — which can offer higher salaries or better career growth prospects. It can be tough to attract people when nonprofits might not be able to provide similar financial rewards or benefits.

Maintaining long-term commitment: Even when you successfully recruit volunteers or staff, retaining them can be challenging. People may start with enthusiasm but become overwhelmed by the workload, or their personal situations may change, affecting their availability. A lack of clear growth opportunities, burnout, or mismatched expectations can lead to higher turnover.

— Ronald Lumunye from KACODE

Competing for nonprofit staff and volunteers with older, larger, and better-funded organizations.

As a nonprofit with limited revenue, our biggest challenge is offering a fair market salary and benefits. Another challenge is competing with other older and larger nonprofit organizations that can offer staff or volunteers with a broader range of experiences.

— Clarmundo from Golden Rule Services

In a community with many nonprofits, competition for talent can be very tough.

One of the biggest challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled volunteers for us is often the competition for talent.

We live in a city with the largest number of nonprofits. Many organizations like ours vie for the same skilled individuals, making it crucial to offer appealing incentives, which attract volunteers.

— Paul Marengo from Anacostia Playhouse

No matter the mission, nonprofit volunteers aren’t usually interested in a long commute.

It can be difficult to incentivize volunteers to stay and do the good work with inspiring students each day here in South Brooklyn. We are a long commute from Manhattan, so we don’t always get a lot of volunteers with specialized experience who want to travel to South Brooklyn.

— Nancy Woods from John Dewey High School

Once you’ve got your nonprofit volunteers, now you’ve got to keep them engaged.

My biggest challenge in recruiting and retaining volunteers is continuous engagement. Whether they are skilled staff or volunteers, my challenge is retaining their importance to the organization’s mission.

— Kathy Hickman from PGM Community Development