Exploring the Volunteer Lifecycle: Unlocking the Power of Engagement
Volunteering is a transformative human experience that can profoundly impact both the individual volunteer and the community they serve. In this series, Lineup will walk through the essential stages of a dynamic and effective volunteer lifecycle.
You’ve recruited amazing volunteers. You’ve matched the right person to the right role. Now what?
Now, it’s time to engage.
In the first part of this series, we dove into recruitment. Then, we looked at the power in role matching. Now, we turn our attention to engagement – the heartbeat behind what turns one-time contributors into loyal advocates of your organization. The goal of engagement isn’t to keep your people busy; it’s about nurturing their sense of belonging and purpose.
Let’s take a look at the five reasons engagement is critical to any organization that relies on volunteers, and more importantly, what steps you can take to make it happen.
1. Boost Retention
This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Volunteers who feel valued stay longer. And one of the easiest ways to do this is through proactive communication. This has to be more than sending a “welcome” email. Instead, effective communication must be ongoing, personalized, and multifaceted. Most importantly, it must make volunteers feel seen and valued at every touchpoint.
How to do it with Lineup Teams:
Communicate consistently and personally using built-in messaging tools.
Ask for feedback and recommendations through engagement surveys.
Send tailored updates or share role-specific tips.
Use volunteer profiles to remember preferences, previous roles, or interests for more meaningful interactions.
2. Increase Impact
Engaged volunteers don’t just show up, they go all in. When they’re invested, they’re more likely to contribute their time, skills, and energy at a higher level. This can exponentially boost your outcomes and impact.
How to do it with Lineup:
Track and recognize contributions with flexible, customizable fields that capture more than just hours.
Log hours or skills used to better understand involvement and unique strengths.
Generate reports to visualize impact.
3. Build Community
Remember, volunteers are people, which means they naturally crave connection. Meaningful engagement builds camaraderie, motivation, and a sense of belonging – all of which are especially vital in today’s increasingly remote and fast-paced world.
How to do it with Lineup:
Design collaborative opportunities or cross-role projects.
Filter profiles based on skills, abilities, and interests to create dynamic teams.
Highlight shared interests or experiences using volunteer profiles to spark stronger connections.
Rotate roles within teams to keep volunteers engaged while making new connections.
4. Uncover Insights for Growth
Analyzing the data from engagement can reveal powerful patterns about your volunteers. For example, early-career professionals may prefer short-term, skill-based projects, while more experienced volunteers may be drawn to mentorship roles.
These kinds of insights help you build a dynamic profile for each person so you’re better able to support them and, in turn, support your organization’s mission.
How to do it with Lineup:
Track participation trends across different roles, projects, and commitment levels to spot preferences and engagement gaps.
Analyze feedback from evaluations to identify what motivates or frustrates different volunteer segments
Filter and compare volunteers to see how different segments engage over time.
Visualize data for clear, actionable insights to guide programming, team composition, and strategy.
5. Empower Your Volunteers as Leaders
One of the ultimate goals of engagement is identifying volunteers with leadership potential – and then nurturing them to reach that leadership role.
How to do it with Lineup Teams:
The Board of Certified Athletic Trainers (BOC) listed growing engagement as one of their primary goals. In early 2025, BOC started building out pathways to help get volunteers into desirable roles where they could thrive.
“We created a team called ‘high-potential volunteer,’” Miranda Newell, Volunteer Programs Manager of BOC, explained. “So, when we have a staff liaison working with a volunteer who’s been very responsive or are really engaged with the work they’re doing, we have a form we can use that places them on this high-potential volunteer team.”
When bigger roles like committee chair positions open up, BOC can refer to this special team in Lineup. They can pull information from volunteer profiles and see what their historical volunteerism looks like, including what’s on their resume, and whether they filled out a feedback survey that specified their goals. BOC can then figure out how to fit the right volunteer into the right opening.
>>Read more about BOC’s work with Lineup
Make Engagement Work For You with Lineup Teams
Whether you’re a small nonprofit or a large organization, engagement is a critical component of the volunteer lifecycle. But that doesn’t mean it’s a one-size-fits-all formula. It should be a dynamic process that can adjust to your organization’s needs.
That’s where Lineup Teams can help.
No matter your team’s size or reach, Lineup can support you as you engage your talent, track their skills and qualifications, and build high-impact teams. Our goal isn’t to tell you how to engage your volunteers – it’s to make engagement easier and more impactful than ever before.
