Program on the Environment

Volunteers are the backbone of any organization, especially environmental organizations. No environmental organization can successfully function without the help of their environmental stewards. For the amount of work organizations must pay their employees to do, they receive free labor from volunteers, thus saving billions of dollars in employee expenses. Despite how important volunteers are, many groups are losing their volunteer retention rates as less volunteers are consistently coming back, therefore, causing a high turnover rate. The aim of this study was to see what the causes for the decrease of volunteer retention rates are and what steps can we do to improve it. During my internship with National Wildlife Federation, I hosted Habitat Steward trainings and took notes on the motivation of the stewards who signed up. Then based on those notes, I conducted a survey asking the general public on what encouraged or discouraged them from volunteering. Results showed that the biggest obstacle for volunteers returning is time constraints and inconvenient volunteer locations. Volunteers also wanted more variety in activities and better communication. This suggests that perhaps environmental organizations should create shorter shifts, giving volunteers more opportunities to try different activities. These results are important for environment organizations to increase volunteer retention rates and be financially efficient in doing work to preserve, conserve, and protect our environment.