Abstract

What is your turnover rate of volunteers? This effective practice provides a five-step approach to calculating attrition rate and discusses the importance of exit interviews. Adapted from the August 2002 article, What is Your Attrition Rate?, with permission from VolunteerToday.com.

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Issue

Calculating a program's attrition rate can be helpful in developing a retention plan.

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Action

Attrition is turnover! What is your turnover rate of volunteers? Be sure to only count those volunteers who sign up for long-term jobs. Suggested steps to take include:

1. Set a start and stop date: Calendar year, fiscal year, school year, whatever works best with your normal organizational functioning.
2. Count all the volunteers as of that date.
3. Track on a monthly basis the ebb and flow of volunteers in and out of the program.
4. Count all volunteers after 12 months and compare this number to the previous number. You now know if you are, for example, losing 20 percent of your volunteers on an annual basis or gaining 12 percent annually.
5. Set recruiting goals accordingly.

The attrition rate should be recorded each and every year. This information can show the incremental changes in a program that are often not available when considering month-to-month changes. It is also helpful information for a successor.

In addition to the statistics on attrition or turnover, you should be conducting exit interviews to determine why people are leaving. This can best be done by trained volunteers. It might be hard for a departing volunteer to criticize the program or a staff member (if that is the reason they are leaving) to a staff member. Trained volunteers can identify themselves as such, and get more candid answers to two or three questions.

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Context

This information is also valuable in planning recruitment strategies and educating staff and volunteer leaders.

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Citation

Macduff, Nancy. Building Effective Volunteer Committees, Second Edition. Macduff/Bunt Publishing.

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Posted On

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For More Information

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Resources

Training: Engaging Staff in Reducing the Attrition Rate

Source Documents

Related Practices

• Engaging staff in reducing the volunteer attrition rate

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