In this blog, we hear from Maria McEvoy, currently the Head of Volunteering at The Kids Network. She has been working in volunteering for over a decade and has worked at children’s charities, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline and even the Fire Brigade. Having supported many service users who have experienced trauma she is now working to find ways to better support volunteers with lived experience of trauma. You can read Maria’s first piece in this series on how we might introduce trauma-informed practice into volunteer management. 

Welcome to the second instalment of this series on bringing trauma-informed practice into volunteer management. This week I’m looking into trauma-informed recruitment, this series is about volunteering, however you might find some of it interesting for hiring staff.

The advert

We spend a lot of time in recruitment trying to get the advert right, selling our roles to the community hoping to catch the right volunteers for us, but it’s just as important to show if it’s the right role and right organisation for them.

• Be honest!

I’ve even seen articles claiming that a volunteer advert is like a first date and you don’t want to dump all your baggage, or launch into your plans for marriage straight away. But I massively disagree, (maybe that’s because I’ve had to tackle dating in my 30s) If you hide your baggage and mislead your date then the relationship is doomed to fail, with both sides just adding to their list of Hinge horror stories.

It’s the same for creating a role advert. Be honest, share the right number of hours required, the level of skills needed. The alternative is onboarding this person, only for them to drop out once they know the realities, leaving them turned off from volunteering and you having put time and resource into a new starter that never started.

You may also accidentally create a situation where someone feels obliged to carry out a commitment that they didn’t sign up for, leading to additional stress or guilt for the volunteer.

• Be strengths based

Keep to the positivity in the role, don’t dig into the trauma that could trigger people, don’t say “look how bad this is”, but instead “look at how good the impact is”. Applicants know about the causes they care about they don’t need to see suffering to make the decision to help. Inspire with the hope of the changes they can make.

• Offer different forms of volunteering

Consider offering more flexible roles in your organisation, can you offer micro-volunteering, or virtual volunteering? Making your roles more accessible and creating opportunities with less of a strain on volunteer time may open your doors to more volunteers with lived experience.

The application

• Keep it short and values based

Keeping the application simple is welcoming and reduces stress and triggers. If you are targeting people who are traditional underrepresented in the workplace, they may feel put off by extensive application processes.

I was once told that an application should be short enough to complete on the loo, and it stuck with me, one because it’s funny, and two because it’s true. At application you just want to get to know the important stuff, basic logistical stuff like name, email and location. Then the important stuff of why they want to volunteer, what they hope to gain from the experience. Then finally is there anything you can do to support them whether in terms of disability, neurodiversity or lived experience. You can always follow up with the other stuff with a joining agreement form.

• Listen to your existing volunteers

We all carry out feedback surveys, or volunteer satisfaction quizzes. Ask about onboarding, how could you have made it easier or more welcoming. Our volunteers who have been through the process know best how it feels and how they want to be treated.

I hope you’ve found something that might help in your search for volunteers, below is some other stuff I read along the way that you might find interesting.

What if marketing was trauma-informed – Love146

Empathy in action: An introduction to trauma-informed marketing for businesses – The Marketing Wife