According to recent volunteer retention statistics, the national average volunteer retention rate is about 65%—meaning roughly one out of every three volunteers do not return.
But, despite how much nonprofits struggle with retention, many volunteer programs shy away from formalizing volunteer retention strategies simply because they’re not sure where to start or even what successful volunteer retention looks like.
The good news is that volunteer retention doesn’t have to be rocket science. In this blog, we‘ll cover what volunteer retention is, why it matters, how you can measure your own retention rate, and offer nine proven strategies to improve it.
Key Takeaways
- Focus on volunteer retention over recruitment: With nonprofits losing roughly one in three volunteers each year, keeping existing volunteers engaged is more efficient than constant recruitment—and a key driver of program efficiency and community impact.
- Measure your volunteer retention rate to improve: Track active volunteers over a set period, identify patterns in volunteer turnover, and uncover opportunities to strengthen engagement—so your nonprofit can make data-driven decisions that boost long-term participation.
- Implement nine proven strategies to keep volunteers coming back: Get to know your volunteers, understand why they leave, provide accurate training, target your communications, leverage volunteer skills and interests, offer flexibility, invest in our volunteers, master volunteer appreciation, and get the right volunteer retention tools.
- Leverage technology for success: Volunteer management software simplifies communication, scheduling, tracking, and reporting, making it easier to retain and grow a dedicated volunteer base.
What is Volunteer Retention?
Volunteer retention is an organization’s ability to keep and engage active volunteers for a given period of time.
Think of volunteer retention as the opposing factor of volunteer turnover (how quickly a volunteer stops participating in volunteer activities after joining your organization). High turnover rates directly impact retention.
But how long is a “given period of time” exactly? And what is considered “quick volunteer turnover?” Every volunteer program will have their own answer; your definition of volunteer turnover will depend on your organization’s goals and the types of volunteer opportunities you promote.
Why is Volunteer Retention Important?
Keeping volunteers engaged and coming back is one of the most powerful ways to strengthen your programs, reduce workload, and build a truly connected community.
Great volunteer retention helps you:
- Save time and energy: Recruiting and training new volunteers takes a lot of effort. When volunteers stick around, you spend less time starting from scratch and more time focusing on the work that moves your mission forward.
- Improve the capabilities of volunteers: The longer someone volunteers with you, the better they understand your programs, participants, and processes. They become more skilled, more reliable, and more impactful—helping your organization run smoothly.
- Strengthen relationships and community: Volunteers stay where they feel valued and connected. Building strong relationships—not just with staff, but with other volunteers—creates a sense of belonging that encourages people to remain involved and become ambassadors for your mission.
- Boost program quality and consistency: Retaining volunteers helps create stability, so your programs can grow and deliver consistent, high-quality support to the community. In fact, according to Double the Donation, 77% of nonprofits report that having qualified volunteers on staff might improve their organization’s practices.
How Can Nonprofits Calculate Volunteer Retention?
Ready to measure your volunteer retention—but don’t know where to start? Use this step-by-step process and formula to calculate your retention rate and identify trends in volunteer engagement.
- Determine the date range: Decide the timeframe you want to measure—commonly one year, but you could also track quarterly or biannually.
- Update your volunteer list: To get the most accurate reading, you’ll only want to count active volunteers. Inactive volunteers should not be included in your volunteer retention rate calculation.
- Record the number of active volunteers at the start date: Write down how many active volunteers you had at the beginning of the period.
- Record the number of volunteers at the end date: Identify how many of those same volunteers continued volunteering through the end of the period.
- Calculate retention rate: Divide the number of volunteers you recorded at the end of the year (or your end date) by the number of volunteers at the beginning of the year (or start date). Then, multiply by 100 to get your volunteer retention rate percentage. Use this volunteer retention rate formula:
% retention rate = ( # of retained volunteers / # of volunteers on start date ) x 100
For example:
Let’s say you record 1,200 active volunteers on January 1st and 1,100 active volunteers on December 31st of the same year (remember, do not include volunteers recruited during the set time period). Plug these values into the retention rate formula:
(1,100 / 1,200) x 100 = 92%
Therefore, your organization retained 92% of its volunteers throughout the year.
9 Best Strategies for Retaining Volunteers
Now that you’ve calculated your current retention rate, you can develop a retention strategy to keep volunteers coming back. Here are nine proven strategies that will do just that.
1. Get to Know Your Volunteers
Today’s volunteers want a more personalized experience. They want to know directly how their efforts directly impact your organizations and the communities you serve.
To create a more personalized experience and to keep them engaged with your organization, you’ll need to get to know your volunteers. Your goal is to understand:
- Who they are: Volunteer leaders should collect basic data on their volunteers, like contact info, age, residence, hobbies, skills, and time commitment preferences.
- What they’re interested in: Keep track of the types of causes your volunteers care about and the projects they tend to get involved in. Their passions and preferences will help you make more informed recommendations about the opportunities they’ll love (more on volunteer matching later).
- How and when they participate: Get to know more about how your volunteers choose to take part. Do your volunteers like to get involved in larger events? Are they more likely to participate every week or several times per year? Do they prefer virtual events over in-person volunteering?
- What motivates them: Keeping volunteers motivated is an essential step in retaining long-term volunteers. That’s why you need to know what your volunteers hope to glean from volunteering—whether it's to meet friends, stay active, gain work experience, or something else entirely
2. Understand Why Volunteers Leave
The goal of retention is to reduce turnover. And to reduce turnover, you’ll need insight into what factors lead to volunteers quitting, particularly your newer volunteers.
Often, volunteers stop contributing because they feel:
- Burnt out: Volunteer burnout is usually caused by a lack of role clarity and unmanageable volunteer schedules.
- Frustrated: A disorganized, poorly-planned, or otherwise negative volunteering experience can dishearten volunteers and discourage them from participating with your organization again.
- Disinterested or disconnected: Volunteers can lose interest in an activity over time. They can also become disconnected from your organization’s core mission, causing them to lose sight of the volunteer activity’s value or purpose.
- Too busy: Life events, such as busy schedules or moving home, can cause volunteers to quit. These events are usually out of your organization’s control (but you can take steps to provide a supportive environment).
- Under-appreciated: Volunteers like to know their work is making a difference. If volunteers feel unappreciated or undervalued, they may feel like their efforts don’t matter.
Pro tip: To collect this volunteer data, we recommend either conducting periodic volunteer surveys to learn about their experiences with your organization or using volunteer management software can automate the data and feedback collection process.
3. Provide Adequate Training
Did you know that volunteer training is associated with higher performance and long-term involvement? Training provides volunteers with the knowledge and resources to complete work independently and effectively and empowers them to have a measurable impact in your community.
In general, your volunteer training program should:
- Provide a deeper understanding of the organization’s mission and the causes addressed
- Outline role expectations, responsibilities, tasks, and a clear volunteer protocol
- Establish volunteer objectives
- Acquaint volunteers with tools and procedures they’ll encounter on the job
- Assess any knowledge and skills gaps, then work to fill these gaps
- Create a framework for further evaluation
4. Target Your Communication
Today’s charity supporters respond better to personalized experiences, which means generic mass mailings aren’t as effective as they used to be. But personalized correspondence is no easy task when you have hundreds or thousands of volunteers.
With the right tools, you can create targeted communication to demonstrate that you value each supporter. But what strategies can you implement to create more personalized, strategic volunteer outreach?
Here’s what you need to know about effective volunteer communication:
- Segment your volunteer list by engagement level: Group volunteers by how often they participate (regular, occasional, seasonal, first-time) and tailor your messaging to each segment. Regular volunteers want program updates and upcoming opportunities, while occasional volunteers need re-engagement messages that remind them why their contribution matters.
- Match communication frequency to participation patterns: Send weekly updates to active volunteers who want to stay in the loop, monthly newsletters to occasional participants, and quarterly touch points to seasonal volunteers. Let volunteers set their own communication preferences when they sign up to reduce unsubscribes and increase engagement.
- Personalize beyond first names: Use your volunteer management software to reference specific contributions volunteers have made—mention the event they helped with, the hours they've logged, or the impact they've created. This shows you're paying attention and reinforces that their individual effort matters.
Learn more about personalizing volunteer communications with Get Connected >>
5. Leverage Volunteer Interests and Skills
Engaged volunteers like to feel both passionate about a cause and beneficial to the cause. One of the best ways to do both is to match them with opportunities that are suited to both their skills and interests.
“When you match a volunteer to the activity they’re passionate about, interested in, and able to do successfully, they are more likely to feel satisfied with their experience and to continue to contribute to your program and cause," says Elisabeth Donovan in Get Connected’s Matching Volunteers webinar.
For example, if a volunteer signs up with marketing experience and expresses interest in animal welfare, don't assign them to manual labor at a food distribution event. Instead, match them with opportunities to create social media content for your pet adoption program or design promotional materials for your spay/neuter clinic.
6. Offer Flexibility
Like you, volunteers lead busy lives. And one of the primary reasons volunteers quit is because they can no longer fit volunteering into their schedules.
The solution here is simple: be flexible.
For example, if you want to appeal to working families, offer more evening, weekend, school holiday shifts, or even virtual opportunities. Or, offer family-friendly opportunities or childcare solutions and create hour-long shifts (some volunteers simply cannot manage those longer 4-hour shifts).
7. Invest in Your Volunteers
According to the Independent Sector, the value of a volunteer hour in the U.S. is estimated at $34.79—almost just as much as some staff get paid—so why not invest in them just as you would an employee?
To invest in volunteers, offer opportunities for career development, skills development, and networking. For example, you might offer volunteers:
- Leadership opportunities: Volunteers can serve as consultants or lead training and orientation to help shape the direction of your program—making them more invested in its outcomes.
- Community ambassador roles: Volunteers are representatives of your organization and your community. So, send them to site visits, fairs, and anywhere else you want to promote your organization. Volunteers are exceptionally skilled in recruiting other volunteers, and they’ll appreciate the opportunity to help grow your program.
- Career training: Align volunteer roles with career development by pairing students with industry-relevant opportunities, and tap professionals or retirees to lead workshops, mentor others, or consult on projects.
- Feedback and Recommendations: Provide constructive feedback that helps volunteers grow professionally, write strong letters of recommendation, and assist with academic service documentation.
- Better Tools: Investing in user-friendly volunteer management software, mobile-friendly scheduling, and clear communication platforms demonstrates that you value volunteers' time as much as their service.
8. Master Volunteer Appreciation
Does your organization invest enough time in volunteer appreciation and recognition? Regularly thanking your volunteers significantly improves your chances of retaining them. That’s because doing good feels good, and a little appreciation feels good, too!
But volunteer recognition should go beyond just saying “thank you” (although that helps, too). Successful organizations find creative volunteer ways like these to show volunteers that they’re valued, like:
- Tracking and communicating volunteer impact: Track each volunteer’s hours and participation. This way, you can demonstrate their impact accurately and award them specifically and appropriately.
- Awarding volunteers: Recognize your most active volunteers each month with a “Volunteer of the Month” award. You’ll acknowledge their dedication and even invite a bit of light-hearted competition.
- Getting creative: There are plenty of more thoughtful, creative volunteer appreciation ideas to the usual (yet admittedly practical) mug or pen. Ask community members to create homemade thank-you cards. Or invite staff, volunteers, and your community to submit their favorite family recipes. Compile them into a book for a warm, meaningful favor that everyone will enjoy.
- Hosting an appreciation event: Whether you’re celebrating volunteer week or hosting your annual volunteer gala, a special occasion gives your volunteers something to look forward to. Opt for a trendy venue (think favorite local brewery or café) or host smaller social gatherings like pizza parties, book clubs, or free childcare nights.
9. Invest in Volunteer Retention Tools
From efficient communication to tracking volunteer data, your organization needs time-saving technology to retain volunteers effectively. Dedicated volunteer management software can streamline these processes:
- Communication: Personalize your communication while streamlining the process (no more individual emails and text messages here!). Using your system’s communication tool, you can filter volunteers based on a range of criteria (like whether they attended a specific event or their favorite causes) for quick email and text lists.
- Scheduling: Volunteer management software should empower volunteers to self-schedule and manage their own calendars. Easy, flexible scheduling creates a positive volunteering experience and goes a long way to improving retention.
- Volunteer matching: The system should collect data on each volunteers’ skills and interests and automate opportunity recommendations according to this data. A robust software option can even send automated emails and notifications featuring recommended opportunities based on a volunteers’ skills and interests. Think of all the time you can save on engaging (and retaining) your volunteers!
- Track volunteer data: Without the right tools, some volunteer leaders simply don’t have the time to track each volunteers’ hours manually. A volunteer management system, on the other hand, automates volunteer data tracking and reporting, so volunteer professionals have the live data they need to measure retention and communicate impact.
Improve your Volunteer Retention Rate for Good
If you want to take your nonprofit volunteer program to the next level, you’ll need to think about volunteer retention. Now that you know how to calculate volunteer retention rate and how to retain current volunteers, you’re on track for growing a sustainable, efficient, and effective program.
If you’re ready to take the next step, Get Connected can help you centralize your volunteer data, streamline scheduling, match volunteers to the right opportunities, and strengthen every touchpoint of the volunteer journey. With the right technology and a thoughtful strategy, you’ll not only retain more volunteers—you’ll deepen relationships, strengthen community, and build a program people are excited to return to.
Ready to find out how Get Connected can help you save time and make more impact? Schedule a free demo today.
Volunteer Retention FAQs
What is a good volunteer retention rate?
A good volunteer retention rate is 65% or higher, though top-performing nonprofit organizations achieve rates between 70-80%.
Your target retention rate depends on your volunteer program structure. Organizations with long-term, skills-based opportunities typically see higher retention than those relying primarily on one-time event volunteers.
How do you retain volunteers?
You retain volunteers by creating positive experiences that make people want to return. The most effective retention strategies include getting to know volunteers and why they quit, providing training, targeting communications, leveraging their unique skills, and consistently showing appreciation.
Why do volunteers quit?
Volunteers often quit because they’re burned out, have an unpleasant experience, feel disconnected or disinterested, are too busy, or feel underappreciated.