The functions that might be performed by a volunteer are varied, and can include direct assistance to clients, administrative and other office assistance, direct assistance to staff, and outreach to the community. Volunteer work should be meaningful for the organization, challenging for the volunteer, and consistent with the organization's mission and objectives. The qualifications necessary to perform the job and the time commitment needed from the volunteer should be included in the volunteer job description. Staff time will be required to manage volunteers, so the number of positions created may be limited by the resources that can be expended on supervision.

Recruitment messages should focus on the unique benefit to the community provided by that organization. These messages should also be tailored to the volunteer sought. Appeal to young persons may focus on the job experience that may be gained by volunteering, while an appeal to former clients may focus on the opportunity to help others obtain the benefit they received.

The recruitment campaign should be defined by the job descriptions. When a large number of volunteers is needed to perform easily learned tasks, wide publication may be appropriate. Individual volunteers can also be recruited through word of mouth on an as-needed basis. Finally, an organization can conduct a targeted campaign to locate a few volunteers to undertake skilled activities. For example, recruiting students to provide research assistance to staff may involve notifying a career department at a university that volunteers are needed. Recruiting people with substantial experience in a particular field to participate in a speaker's bureau may involve advertising in an industry publication. Appropriate questions to ask in designing a recruitment strategy include:  Who could do the job and who would enjoy it? Where can those people be found and located? What are those individuals' motivations?

Interviewing volunteers is an essential step in matching the volunteer's skills, desires and motivations with the organization's needs and capacity. Interviewing may be open-ended or specific—the interview may focus on evaluating the person's ability to contribute to the organization or, if a specific job placement has been determined, for a particular position. The interview can be used to explain job expectations, time commitments, and confidentiality policies. Finally, the interview is also a recruitment tool. The interviewer can answer the volunteer's questions about the organization and explain why each job is important.

As a final step, the volunteer and manager should review and revise the job description together, to ensure that both the volunteer and the organization share a common understanding of the goals to be achieved through the volunteer's work. Because the process of matching a volunteer to the correct position is difficult, it may be useful to designate a certain period of time as a probationary period, at the end of which time the volunteer and manager can discuss the suitability of the assignment.

Adapted from Stehen McCurley, Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers, The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management 511 (1994).