Toolkit to Engage and Recruit Volunteers

Literacy Minnesota's volunteer outreach team has spent the last two years discussing and implementing best practices for engaging and recruiting volunteers from communities of color and indigenous communities. Since April 2018, we have successfully increased the percentage of volunteers of color and indigenous volunteers recruited from 11 to 27 percent by changing our outreach methods to be more inclusive, improving our data collection and being intentional in our overall work. This toolkit highlights our work and the steps we took to accomplish our goals. The ideas and recommendations were put forth and shaped by staff, AmeriCorps VISTA members, interns and volunteers who are mostly people of color. While it is focused on adult literacy volunteers, the recommendations can be applied to other volunteer programs.

This is ongoing work, and your comments, suggestions and experiences through application are invited at mwika@literacymn.org. Thank you for your interest in learning about this important work and taking action to address inequities in your volunteer program and our society. We acknowledge this is challenging work, and we look forward to the progress we can make together in building more just and equitable communities.