Your dedicated volunteers deserve more great opportunities to utilize their skills. But is it easy to attract great opportunities? Of course, it won’t be difficult if they can collect a well-crafted letter of recommendation for volunteers.
A well-written letter of recommendation is a perfect companion for every volunteer. It helps them get recognized for all of their hard work. If you are a nonprofit owner or volunteer coordinator, knowing the right way of crafting this letter is a must. It will help all your skilled team members grow as passionate volunteers.
Crafting a proper letter of recommendation requires you to take care of a few details. What exactly are they? Continue reading and you’ll find some key details that you must know if you need to prepare such a letter.
How to Improve Your Letter of Recommendation: 8 Useful Tips
- Personalization is Crucial:
We know your organization already has many volunteers who work day and night. That’s why, knowing all of them is not easy. But you can take the help of technology and make it an easy task. Use a volunteer management software that stores all the required details of each one of them. Before you start crafting a letter, take the help of it to understand and know them well. Keep in mind that this software will help you know their background and skills well. This way, you can prepare a letter that highlights all the unique qualities of the volunteers that will help them stand out.
- Quantifying Achievements Works:
Through this letter, volunteers get a good scope to highlight all their achievements. So, why not quantify their achievements? For instance, you can mention the total number of events that they have organized. Also, you can highlight how they have helped your nonprofit with fundraising by mentioning the total amount of the fund. Moreover, utilize the data of your volunteer platform to highlight the total volunteer hours they have devoted to every event.
- Use Compelling Stories:
Yes, this letter will shine if you use this method to highlight their expertise. But how would you utilize storytelling to create a letter of recommendation? Start narrating stories that include their interactions and also the changes that they have made. This way you can engage the readers to go through the entire letter and know the volunteer well. Your storytelling may also include the challenges that they faced and how they handled those situations.
- Mention Their Skills:
Once again you need to take the help of your volunteer software to know the key skills of a volunteer. Mention if they have skills like leadership abilities, and good communication skills in the letter. Such highlighted points will help attract the attention of the recruiters. Moreover, it also helps understand the strengths of the candidates.
Pro Tip: Mention how any specific skill has helped you achieve your desired goal to help the candidate stand out.
- Use only Professional Language:
It’s a letter that recruiters would be reading. That’s why you need to use a formal tone throughout the letter. So, you must avoid overly casual language to represent a volunteer who has contributed their time and effort working on your events. Moreover, the letter also has to be free from grammatical or factual errors. So, proofread more than once to identify any type of errors. With a well-crafted letter of recommendation, the volunteer will shine in front of any recruiter.
- Collaboration with Volunteers:
It’s not easy to draft a letter for someone else that highlights crucial details about themselves. So, why not collaborate with that volunteer and sit with him or her to craft a genuine letter? But how will they help? They can mention all the details along with their achievements. While you start proofreading the letter, take the volunteer’s help too. This way you can make easy rectifications without wasting much time. Thus you’ll prepare a letter that reflects professionalism well.
- Address Specific Audiences:
Generally, letters of recommendation may be written for various purposes. While writing a letter you must understand the audience who would be reading it. If it’s for academic pursuit, the tone will be different from the one intended for a job application. So, you must customize the content so that you can create a relevant letter for the volunteer.
Endnote:
A letter of recommendation is a crucial document that your nonprofit can offer to any volunteers. That’s why you must know methods to craft that document in the right way. So, keep in mind the simple yet vital facts that we have highlighted in this article. So, going to start writing some important letters for your volunteers? Don’t forget the ideas that we have provided to improve the letter. You also need to be very careful while picking words to craft the letter. After all, this will speak on behalf of your organization and also convey its importance along with the volunteer.