Running a summer camp comes with many responsibilities, from planning activities to marketing your camp experience to ensuring that all campers have a safe experience. With so many duties, it’s only natural that you’ll need extra help—and that help can come in the form of volunteers!

However, recruiting volunteers for a summer camp can be challenging. You need to determine your volunteer needs, write volunteer job descriptions, promote your opportunities, and then onboard and train your volunteers, all before summer camp starts.

This guide will cover the top strategies for recruiting camp volunteers so you can enlist the help you need to improve the camp experience, increase enrollments, and have the best summer ever.

1. Determine Your Volunteer Needs

Before you begin recruiting volunteers, determine what you will need from them. Ask yourself:

• What are the key areas of our summer camp where volunteers can make a difference?
• What specific tasks can volunteers help with?
• How many volunteers do I need to support my summer camp?
• How much supervision and support can we provide volunteers?
• Who will manage the volunteers?

After you’ve answered these questions, write volunteer job descriptions that include the following information:

• Title. This is the name for the volunteer role. It should summarize what’s expected of them, such as “Social Media Manager” or “Activities Setup Staff.”
• Role description. This should include the volunteer’s expected duties and responsibilities, as well as your expectations and requirements. If the role requires a qualification or certification, you should list that here too.
• Time commitment. Let potential applicants know what time commitment is expected of them from their role. For example, they might be expected to help once a week for two hours.

Let’s say that you need help with administrative tasks such as sorting camp registration forms, printing out wristbands for campers, and drawing up schedules for camp counselors. You’ll create a volunteer job description for a “camp administrative assistant.” In the description, you’ll say that this individual will be needed three full days a week to help handle administrative affairs.

2. Start with Your Camp’s Community

Once you have a clear idea of what you need from volunteers and have created your volunteer job listings, start the recruitment process by promoting the opportunity in your camp’s community. In particular, target these groups:

• Previous volunteers. Since these individuals have given their aid to your camp before, they may be willing to do so again.
• Camp alumni. Previous campers will remember the great experience they had and may be happy to volunteer their time to help new campers have a memorable summer.
• Parents. For day camps and sports camps especially, parents make great volunteers. You’ll have their contact information through their registration forms, so don’t be scared to reach out through email, text messages, or even phone call, and ask them if they’d be willing to volunteer.
• Partnered organizations. If your camp is partnered with other businesses, you may be able to recruit corporate volunteers. Since some employers incentivize their employees to volunteer, these individuals may be interested in flexible volunteering opportunities outside of usual work hours.

To streamline volunteer recruitment within your existing community, CIRCUITREE recommends investing in robust camp management software. The right solution will keep track of your community members’ data in a single, centralized database, allowing you to identify the information of previous volunteers, camp alumni, parents, and more. Plus, they’ll have segmentation features that allow you to personalize and send communications to specific groups.

3. Promote Your Volunteer Opportunities

If you’ve contacted your camp’s community members and still need more volunteers, it’s time to promote your opportunities to a broader audience. To optimize your outreach, promote the volunteer roles through various marketing channels, such as:

• Your website. Many businesses and nonprofits have a dedicated careers page where they post job openings and volunteer opportunities. Follow in their footsteps to create a page where you can direct all potential volunteers.
• Email newsletters. Include a section about volunteer opportunities in your email newsletters. Frame it as a way for interested individuals to help campers have the best summer ever to garner interest!
• Social media. With the number of social media users reaching over 5 billion, it’s clear that this marketing channel presents a great opportunity for promoting your volunteer listings. Create posts on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram highlighting your volunteer openings. Include the link to your careers page so viewers can easily apply.
• SMS or text message. Aside from using SMS marketing to promote your volunteer opportunities, you can also leverage it to remind potential volunteers about any upcoming deadlines. Plus, you may be able to send texts to individuals who have partially filled out their applications to encourage them to complete it!

There are many other ways you can promote your camp volunteer roles. For instance, Getting Attention recommends leveraging Google’s search ads to increase traffic to your careers page. Or, you can host a dedicated recruitment event and invite members of your local community to attend. Regardless of which marketing tactic you choose, make sure that it works for your camp’s unique audience and attracts individuals who want to help create a great camp experience.

4. Set Up a System for Managing your Volunteers

Your work doesn’t end after you’ve recruited the right number of volunteers—you also need a system to manage them. This includes:

• Training volunteers. Most volunteer training will occur during the onboarding phase. You’ll need to prepare training materials, including guidelines for general camp operations and rules for specific volunteer roles.
• Supervising volunteers. Schedule your volunteers in a way that ensures your camp always has the help they need while also respecting their preferences for the amount of time they spend volunteering. You’ll also need to monitor them to ensure they’re handling their responsibilities properly.
• Retaining volunteers. Volunteers are extremely valuable—after all, the value of volunteer time is currently estimated at over $30 an hour. Since it’s easier and more cost-effective to retain volunteers than recruit new ones, focus on fostering good relationships with your volunteers through a good work culture, fun events, and gestures of appreciation.

Dedicated volunteer management software can make this process much easier. The right solution will include hour tracking, event scheduling and calendars, messaging, onboarding features, and more to give you all the tools you need to streamline the volunteer management process.

Camp never sleeps—which is why volunteers are so important. With these tips, you’ll have no trouble recruiting individuals willing to help. Then, you can focus on developing a strong camp community dedicated to delivering a great summer experience to all your campers!

Rob Burns is the Senior Director of Business Development at CircuiTree and Bunk1, providing camps and conference centers with leading tools and resources. An experienced nonprofit professional, Rob is the founder of Run2Revive and a regular conference speaker for the American Camp Association.