Our Partners
Simplifying Volunteer Sign-Up
Making it easier for volunteers to say “yes”
Junior Achievement (JA) is a nonprofit organization that empowers young people to own their future success by teaching them essential life skills in financial literacy, work and career readiness, and entrepreneurship. Through hands-on, experiential programs led by community volunteers, JA helps students build the knowledge and confidence they need to make smart decisions and thrive in the real world.
The Challenge
Junior Achievement of Eastern Iowa (JAEI) was growing and needed more volunteer support. Each year they recruited many new volunteers, but the rate for returning ones was lower than hoped.
The process for the previous school year (2023–2024) looked like this:
They invited volunteers to renew their service via email. The emails were sent from MailMeter and included personal data pulled from their database. Volunteers were asked to review the information and highlight anything that had changed.
They emailed volunteers up to three times if they didn’t reply.
For volunteers who did not respond to the emails at all, a printed version was mailed through USPS.
The overall method was cumbersome for JAEI and the recipient, and was not effective for collecting new information. Of the 3,050 volunteer renewal requests sent that year, they had 114 responses— for a total return rate of 4%. If this trend continued, they would not have enough volunteers to successfully implement their programs.
Exploring the Challenge
In April of 2024 Dani Carter joined Junior Achievement of Eastern Iowa as a new Program Director, and soon after she joined a SEE Learning Cohort. The timing happened to coincide with the start of their annual volunteer renewal process.
As she learned about the SEE framework, she was also building her understanding of JAEI’s renewal process. She met with staff who were directly impacted by it, and they had conversations around why and why not.
“I asked "why" during each step of the process, to determine where improvements could be made or which steps needed to remain the same due to the inner workings of the data management system.”
These meetings helped her to understand the mental models held by the data management person and administrative assistant and discuss what had and had not worked in the past. These conversations allowed them to assess the social, cultural, policy, digital, and process environments associated with volunteer renewals.
During one conversation, the administrative assistant suggested replacing the MailMeter system with Jotform—a platform they were already familiar with and used to register new volunteers. Armed with this new idea, they looped in the Vice President of Education who also asked the "why" and "why not" questions, and he gave them the go-ahead to pilot the new method as a small experiment.
The Small Experiment
They streamlined the renewal process by having both new and returning volunteers fill out the same form on the same platform via an emailed link. Volunteers reacted positively to the change!
The new digital environment was quicker and more convenient to fill out. In contrast to the older method, people could easily fill out the form on their phones, so they were more likely to do it right away, rather than putting it off and forgetting about it. In addition, portions of the form were capable of auto-filling if individuals had information saved in their web browser.
The new method also allowed JAEI to easily collect more updated information from volunteers— such as their address, email address, and employer. They added some new questions too, such as whether the volunteer could speak additional languages and if it’s okay to text them. Now, potential volunteers could simply click a checkbox to express interest, rather than highlighting, which increased the rate of people marking their preferences.
An additional benefit was that the form was sent out via Constant Contact with Dani’s work email address listed as the sender. This gave the email more credibility, reducing the concern of a phishing scheme or scam.
Photo credit: Junior Achievement of Eastern IowaThe Results
During the 2024–2025 school year, JAEI sent out a total of 3,946 volunteer renewal requests via email (three times) and saw an amazing increase from a 4% to 16% renewal! With four times the return rate from the previous year, they could support entire districts, and the team celebrated the outsized impact of this seemingly small tweak.
“Our experience was incredible and really helped our organization grow in a variety of areas outside of our small experiment. When the culture of the organization supports exploration and provides the opportunities to ask the "why" and "why not," then true growth can occur.”
“I am thankful that we were able to participate in the learning cohort, which created a collaborative learning environment…Most importantly, we weren’t just talking theory — but during the cohort, we worked through multiple applications and had our small experiment to work through. That really helped us see firsthand the impact of the process and know that our efforts were making a difference.”
- Dani Carter, Program Manager, JAEI
Looking Ahead
We checked in with Dani several months after her cohort ended to ask if she had any new experiments planned. She said they planned to make the form even shorter, and have volunteers email or call staff at JAEI for more information as a second step, when needed. They think this strategy will streamline the process even more. Furthermore, the success of their first small experiment helped the team gain the support of senior leadership to try more!