Whom Don't We Ask to Volunteer?

We all know the common wisdom (backed up by research, actually) that the number one reason people volunteer or give money is because they were asked. In other words, there is a big difference between knowing there are ways to be philanthropic and feeling invited to participate. Never confuse publicity with recruitment.

This article examines the potential volunteers we rarely attract for three reasons:

We do not recognize them as talent pools or as people who would be interested in helping us.
We internally edit ourselves by feeling they are somehow out of our reach, and so we never ask them.
We aren’t sure how to approach them, so we don’t. And perhaps we are not sure if we will be able to design work for them or support them as needed.