Personal asks and a good first experience are the follow-up habits most often linked to volunteers returning

Losing volunteers from one year to the next is common, and the size of the loss is well documented. Eisner, Grimm, Maynard and Washburn, writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in 2009, reported that 21.7 million of the 61.2 million Americans who volunteered in 2006 did not volunteer the following year, more than one-third.

They also reported that 74 percent of people in professional or management roles continued, compared with 53 percent in general labor or transportation roles. Those are descriptive rates with no controls, so they show a pattern without explaining it. Our working read is that many willing people are lost in the gap between a sign-up and a first real conversation.

Being asked is one of the best-supported links to volunteering in the research Hineni reviewed. Freeman's analysis of national survey data, published as National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper 5435, concluded that "many volunteer only when requested to do so." He described volunteering as something "people feel morally obligated to do when asked."

The finding is observational. It shows that people who are asked volunteer more, and it cannot prove the ask caused it. In practice, ask by name, mention the specific role you thought of for that person, and make replying easy.

Answer every sign-up by name, keep a record of each attempt, and check in after the first shift.

• Contact each new volunteer yourself, and say who you are and what happens next.
• Log each call, email or text, and keep attempts separate from replies, so a message sent is never mistaken for a conversation held.
• Match people to roles that use their interests and skills. Hager and Brudney's 2004 Urban Institute survey found that screening and matching volunteers to tasks, training and recognition were associated with higher retention as charities reported it. The study is correlational.
• After a first shift, ask how it went and offer the next opening.
• Thank people in ways others can see, such as a season thank-you.

Hineni helps chairs who want a shared record of who has been answered. Each sign-up routes to a named lay leader, each person has one record, and contacts are logged. Each leader works from a queue of requests they own, with the member's own words, a status and a next step.

The habits in this guide work just as well with a notebook or a spreadsheet. The goal is the same with any tool: every person who says yes hears back from someone by name.