Support » Recruitment of Volunteers

Volunteer Flood Groups usually begin with a small group of individuals who are keen to make a difference in their community and help prepare for flooding or other emergencies. Sometimes the parish or town councillors will take the lead. It is often the case, however, that there are insufficient volunteers at the start to undertake the roles identified in the Community Flood Plan. Flood groups use different ways to recruit more members. Here are a few examples:

Advertise in the parish newsletter or free paper circulated to households
Put an article on the village/town website or facebook page if you have one
Do a simple leaflet for distribution door to door or at community events. You’ll find an example below of one used recently in Watchet in Somerset that you could use as a template.
Set up a stall at a community event. You’ll find some ideas about what to include under the Communications section below
Ask for help from your local supermarket. They often have community reps who will help you to publicise your cause.
Run an event in your village/town hall. We would be more than happy to support such an event whenever we can.

Attached below are resources our CCRN colleagues have produced to help support Community Emergency Response Teams or Flood Groups with volunteer recruitment. In preparing these resources we engaged with recruitment specialists and piloted several workshops across Cornwall.

These workshops have been facilitated to explore and consider:

What barriers prevent people from volunteering? Why might people stop volunteering? Can we overcome or influence some of these objections?
What can you gain from volunteering? Why is it good to volunteer? What motivates us to volunteer?
Factors affecting recruitment, writing a case for support to recruit volunteers and how to get the word out