Challenge
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay: Recruitment Program
PROJECT
CLIENT
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay
SERVICE
- Strategy
We helped Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay use design thinking to address their recruitment and retention issues.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay had a problem. Their mission is to match mentors (“Bigs”) with pre-teen children (“Littles”)—and the non-profit saw many high-quality volunteer Bigs dropping out over the course of their application process.
So BBBSMB came to Continuum with a three-pronged challenge. They asked us to help: (1) increase the percentage of Bigs who stayed engaged throughout the entire application process; (2) maintain the quality of Big/Little matches; and (3) optimize the operating model of the organization. An improved experience had to be designed to appeal to potential high-quality Bigs but still effectively screen out all other prospects without adding additional operating costs.
Our team employed a design thinking approach to understand the root cause of the drop-off issue, and to improve their recruitment and onboarding experience to improve BBBSMB’s overall program.
Research & Insights
Commitments to People Are More Powerful than Commitments to Organizations
Volunteer Decisions May Seem Spontaneous, but They Aren’t
The Importance of Now
The Process Can Be a Detour
Make the Matches Organic
Solution
The solution was an onboarding experience that relies on digital and human touchpoints that maintain excitement and engagement at the points of greatest opportunity: between a volunteer’s initial inquiry through to the in-person interview.
A new digital tool has re-shaped the initial stages of this experience. It speeds up and simplifies the process in a way that maintains focus on building a connection with a future Little Brother, causing the organization to fade into the background. This improves engagement among Bigs when it matters most, and has a secondary benefit of freeing up time for the BBBSMB staff to focus on serving more Littles.
Human interactions move into the foreground later in the process—only when absolutely necessary and most valued by Bigs.
500
SINCE THE LAUNCH OF THE NEW VOLUNTEER RECRUITMENT WEBSITE FOR MEN IN LATE JULY 2015, NEARLY 500 INTERVIEWS HAVE BEEN SELF-SCHEDULED THROUGH THE WEBSITE.
Results
“Since the launch of the new volunteer recruitment website for men in late July 2015, nearly 500 interviews have been self-scheduled through the website,” says Richard Greif, BBBSMB’s Vice President of Marketing, Communications, and Community Relations. “And since that time, we have made 16% more Big/Little matches (compared to the same time last year) but with 11% fewer total volunteer inquiries. This gain in efficiency has also come without any additional spending, which means we are scaling our operation while reducing the cost to recruit a match. Additionally, the staff time that would have been normally spent pre-qualifying volunteers and booking interviews has been reallocated to focus on enrolling more children and families into our program.”
