Facebook and Volunteerism: What Are Some Tricks of the Trade?

In this column, The Unexpected Value of Volunteers, author Jan Masaoka takes on the underappreciated topic of volunteerism and provides some unexpected ideas about the role that volunteers can play in building nonprofit reach, impact, and capacity.

Facebook, by social media standards, is old; it was founded in 2004. These days, it gets less attention than other platforms like TikTok. However, it is still hugely important and remains, other than YouTube, the single most used social media platform in the United States: according to Pew Research Center, it’s used by an estimated seven in 10 US adults. Talk about mass media!

NPQ readers are often skeptical about using Facebook, and for good reason. After all, its algorithms tend to favor conservative causes; its use has been shown to contribute to mental health issues; and Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO and controlling owner of parent company Meta, is a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump.

Facebook provides an enormous and geographically widespread reach with great potential for many nonprofits.

Moreover, there is credible evidence that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used Facebook data to identify targets based on immigration status, connection to controversial causes, and “anti-American ideologies.”

Nonetheless, despite myriad problems, a remarkable 96 percent of nonprofits have Facebook pages, and many nonprofits even forego a website and use Facebook and Instagram instead.

Facebook remains an important tool for progressive organizers. The number of Facebook followers at many organizations remains quite large. Here are a few examples:

• Jewish Voice for Peace: 749,000 followers
• Movement for Black Lives: 94,000 followers
• NPQ: 33,000 followers
• New York City Democratic Socialists of America: 31,000 followers

Facebook provides an enormous and geographically widespread reach with great potential for many nonprofits. Here, I want to look at Facebook’s potential to serve as a powerful tool for recruiting and celebrating volunteers, even as it is also one that demands cautionary measures.

How to Use Your Organization’s Facebook Page to Recruit Volunteers

There are many steps nonprofits can take to leverage the Facebook platform to recruit volunteers. The first is to ensure that posting to your organization’s Facebook page is in the job description of one or more staff. It is far too easy to overlook this task unless there is an explicit designation.

Some ways to leverage Facebook’s platform to recruit volunteers include the following:

• Post volunteer opportunities to your Facebook page, framed with your organization’s cause. Be sure to frame volunteering as standing up for your cause in addition to helping your organization. For example, a post might say: “Support immigrant families and volunteer in our senior program!”
• It is also a good idea, when possible, to include a deadline date to respond. For example: “We’re driving people to the polls on election day. Volunteer by Friday to ‘drive democracy.’”
• If a volunteer opportunity is ongoing, still find a way to make it timely. For example: “Sign up by December 1 and get a free welcome kit,” and “Get trained now to be a hospice volunteer next year.”
• Post opportunities to the Facebook page of VolunteerMatch, in addition to the VolunteerMatch website.
• Ask staff who work with volunteers to post on your organizational page using their own names and to personalize their posts. For example: “I’m going to be at the protest Saturday morning wearing my green t-shirt….Join me!”
• Use Facebook to announce an event, and—rather than recruit volunteers directly on Facebook—include a link to your organization’s Volunteer Here page.

Acknowledging and Encouraging Volunteers

Recruiting volunteers of course is only the first step. The next priority is keeping the volunteers you have recruited. Online tools such as Facebook can help with that too.

One strategy for retaining volunteers concerns work with affinity teams. Affinity teams are when you work in tandem with partner organizations. When you do this, it’s important to have ongoing engagement via social media with your affinity group partners.

For example, if you recruit affinity teams through Rotary, alumni associations, churches or corporations (and so on), follow those organizations on Facebook. When you post volunteer efforts, be sure to tag the supplying organizations, not just individual volunteers.

Social media is a double-edged sword. It allows for easy connection [but it] is notorious for its lack of privacy protection.

Furthermore, affinity group volunteers are especially valuable in posting to their affinity group. For example, if some of your volunteers participate in an event or program your nonprofit sponsors through their congregation, encourage them to post to their congregation’s website with a photo and information to join next time.

Other online retention strategies involve individualized follow-up with volunteers through social media posts. This can include the following:

• Ask volunteers to use their cell phones to take photos of them—maybe helping in a food line or in a community fair booth. That way they have the photos on their phones and it’s easy for them to post to their own Facebook pages or simply send to their family members and friends.
• Post and tag photos of volunteers—with their permission, preferably with your organization’s logo in view (such as on a T-shirt, cap, or large pin).
• If they’ve given you permission, post happy birthday wishes to volunteers.
• Follow them on Facebook and when appropriate, “Like” their posts.

Keeping Facebook Safe: How to Maintain Volunteer Privacy

As noted above, social media is a double-edged sword. It allows for easy connection, which can facilitate nonprofit volunteer recruitment and retention. But social media is also notorious for its lack of privacy protection.

There’s no perfect solution for this. But there are some basic steps that nonprofits can take to help protect volunteers’ privacy:

• Don’t collect information through Facebook Messenger or directly on your Facebook page. Instead, direct Facebook volunteers to a Volunteer Here page that lives on your organization’s own website.
• Remind staff not to post volunteers’ personal information, and to get written permission to post photos that include them.
• Add social media permissions to your volunteer application. A standard form might say something like “We love to honor the work volunteers do with meal delivery! With your permission, we may share or tag your name, and occasionally your photo, in our newsletters, on our website, and on social media (such as Facebook and Instagram)”—and then give a few options for varying levels of permissions.

Using practices such as these will not fully protect participants’ privacy, but they do go a long way to making Facebook a safer platform for organization volunteers.

Looking Forward

The world of nonprofit volunteering recruitment and retention is constantly evolving. When I was a high school student, I volunteered with the Japanese American Citizens League, developing their mailing list by reading through phone books and writing down the Japanese names.

That is surely not how anyone would build a list today!

At the same time, even as social media is regularly developing new platforms, there are some fundamental volunteer practices that remain tried and true. The ways mailing lists are built may change, building those lists is still important!

Similarly, these days, Facebook may seem passé. Even so, the platform remains an important part of the nonprofit volunteer recruitment and retention playbook, and knowing the ins and outs can help organizations expand their reach.