For years, nonprofits have often treated volunteers as an extra pair of hands, a resource to extend capacity when budgets run thin. A recent gathering of Pinellas County nonprofit leaders from the St. Pete Catalyst’s Impact Council examined a more deliberate approach: organizations can recruit, train, deploy and recognize volunteers with the same rigor they apply to paid staff. Done well, that expands how much an organization can accomplish and how deeply it can reach into the community.
The conversation, hosted as part of a quarterly meeting among local nonprofit leaders, centered on Seniors in Service, a Tampa Bay organization that engages volunteers age 55 and older across Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Last year, the organization mobilized more than 1,300 volunteers. Its leaders described a system built around matching people with work they actually want to do.
“We want to make sure that our volunteers align with our goal and our mission,” said Natalie Salas, education programs manager at Seniors in Service, describing efforts that address food insecurity, support isolated seniors and help children catch up in the classroom.
Recruiters ask new volunteers what makes them happy and what they are passionate about, then use those answers to find an appropriate role. One volunteer with a customer service background said she wanted nothing to do with people. She now handles the organization’s data entry.
Kim Skrovanek, who coordinates the foster grandparent program for Seniors in Service, said that planning begins before a volunteer walks in the door. Job descriptions should be written with the same clarity as those for paid positions, spelling out expectations, time commitment and required skills. A retired professional looking for a long-term, high-responsibility role may fit a very different opportunity than a college student who wants a single afternoon of service.
Retention depends heavily on whether volunteers feel useful.
“They want to show impact,” Kim said. “They want to know that they’re having an impact on your organization. They want to be used. They want to be valued.”
Seniors in Service reinforces that connection through two volunteer appreciation events each year and a newsletter highlighting individual volunteers and the outcomes they helped produce. The organization has also built an ambassador program that trains its most engaged volunteers to represent Seniors in Service at community events and recruit other volunteers. About 30 people now serve in that role.
The investment produces measurable results. Volunteers in the foster grandparent program reached more than 1,100 students across Hillsborough and Pinellas counties last year, with teachers reporting gains in literacy and social-emotional development. April Fujalon, strategic communications director at the Juvenile Welfare Board, connected the program with Pinellas County’s broader work on childhood literacy, noting that grade-level reading rates have climbed from under 50% to more than 70% since the community launched its reading campaign roughly a decade ago.
Other organizations in the room described similar approaches. Ken Morales, public relations and marketing manager for Habitat for Humanity of Tampa Bay-Gulfside, said the organization places volunteers according to their comfort level and interests. More outgoing volunteers might work a public-facing event such as a backpack giveaway, while others prefer working quietly on a build site.
He described a longtime volunteer who spends every event picking up litter and has repeatedly declined offers to do something else.
“Everybody has a niche,” Morales said.
Reliability creates additional value. A volunteer crew that consistently shows up protects staff time and makes programs easier to plan. Morales described teams from Habitat’s homeowner pipeline that now anchor recurring community events in the Lealman neighborhood, including an annual Christmas tree lighting that has grown to draw as many as 50 volunteers in a single day.
Several participants connected volunteer strategy to isolation among older adults. Fujalon pointed to Tampa Bay Thrives’ Tampa Bay Connections campaign as a resource for organizations building companionship-based volunteer programs and highlighted Seniors in Service’s senior companion program as one approach to the problem.
Sam Jenkins, interim executive director of the Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions, described another effect of long-term service. Volunteers who remain engaged build relationships and standing within their communities, allowing an organization’s work to travel through neighborhoods and personal networks beyond the reach of its staff.
“The money gives the food out,” Jenkins said, “but the person giving the food out, as they do that over years, becomes valuable themselves in the community.”
That progression gives “service as strategy” practical meaning. A volunteer can provide labor on day one, develop expertise over time and eventually become a trusted representative of the organization in the community. Nonprofits that build systems around that progression gain capacity, relationships and a larger group of people capable of carrying the mission forward.
