Engaging volunteers to become advocates for nonprofits

Ask most organizations about how their volunteer strategy is doing, and they’ll tell you about numbers: How many volunteers they have, how many hours were logged, and how many shifts were filled. While those are important metrics to track, they don’t deliver the information needed to build a solid volunteer strategy.

The more useful question to ask is: How many volunteers have become advocates for the organization?

Advocates are volunteers who move beyond participation to actively promote the organization, contribute in meaningful ways, and encourage others to get involved. This distinction matters because advocates extend an organization’s reach, deepen its impact, and create a more durable foundation for long-term support.

In my work supporting volunteer professionals through technology, I’ve begun to see consistent patterns emerge in what leads volunteers to become advocates.

What is an advocate vs. a volunteer?

There’s a distinction between a volunteer who shows up to complete a task and a volunteer-turned-advocate who has internalized your mission as part of their identity.

Advocates go beyond the task and recruit others to join the cause. They step up when something needs doing, defend the organization when it’s challenged, and stay when things get hard. When their employer looks for community partnerships, they lobby for their chosen organization.

Research on volunteer motivation shows that a desire to make a difference remains one of the strongest drivers of both starting and continuing to volunteer. NCVO’s Time Well Spent 2023 study found that the top reason people started volunteering was “to improve things or help people” (40%), followed by “the cause being important to them” (34%). The same study also found that “making a difference” was one of the top reasons people were likely to continue volunteering.

The takeaway is clear: volunteers who are more deeply connected to an organization’s purpose and impact are more likely to continue their involvement over time.

How do volunteers become advocates for nonprofits?

Volunteers become advocates through a certain kind of experience, built over time.

They are the ones who can see the measurable impact of their contributions. They have a relationship with at least one person in the organization who treated them as someone whose presence mattered. They had a moment, usually early on in their volunteer work, where they felt a deep connection to the organization they showed up for.

How can nonprofits encourage volunteers to become advocates?

It doesn’t require a big budget or an entirely new program, but it does require clarity about what the volunteer experience is meant to produce. Organizations need to ask themselves: Are we building a base of volunteers to do specific tasks, or are we growing our volunteers into a team of strong advocates who believe in our core mission and will provide strategic impact over the long term?

In practice, that also means organizations need underlying systems and technology in place to track participation, communicate clearly, and understand and recognize volunteer contributions over time.

When a nonprofit shifts from a focus on volunteer numbers to building an ecosystem that encourages volunteers to become advocates, the entire organization benefits.

Improved volunteer experiences—from the basic (easy sign-up for shifts, timely communications, and simple hours tracking) to the powerful (a feeling of importance, leadership opportunities, and recognition of value)—have been shown to translate into stronger overall engagement.

How does a strong base of advocates benefit the entire organization?

Organizations with a strong base of advocates operate differently, with a focus on engagement, experience, and impact. The difference shows up in ways that matter well beyond the day-to-day of volunteer management.

Volunteer recruitment and retention. When advocates become a core part of an organization, volunteer recruitment shifts from an ongoing operational challenge to something that largely takes care of itself. Advocates actively promote the organization and inspire casual volunteers to become advocates themselves. This has a measurable effect on lessening the cost and effort of finding new volunteers.

An advocate who has served for several years carries institutional knowledge, relationships, and credibility that no onboarding process can replicate. That depth of engagement raises the quality of the work and the reliability of the program in ways that help when things get difficult. Volunteer retention rates in organizations with advocates increase steadily over time.

Volunteer giving. Research has consistently shown that volunteers are more likely to donate and often give more than those who do not volunteer. Volunteers who become advocates have already answered the question every donor asks: Does this organization deserve my investment? And they arrive at that answer through direct experience.

Corporate partnerships. Additionally, when corporate partners come looking for employee volunteer opportunities, organizations with strong advocate bases can offer genuinely meaningful experiences that employees will talk about afterward and return to.

As the volunteer engagement landscape continues to evolve, advocates can help organizations build resilience and stability. Cultivating volunteers-turned-advocates is not only a more effective version of volunteer management—it’s ultimately a more meaningful one—for the volunteer, the organization, and their shared community.

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