In Practice
Summer can be a quiet season for some of us in the sector. For nonprofits built around a school calendar, that quiet comes with a real coordination challenge.
Programs wind down in May or June. Staff bandwidth shifts. Our volunteers — the people who show up for weekly events or work hard to staff programming throughout the year — take vacations, take much needed breaks, and step back from regular commitments. While this is expected, what often surprises us is how much ground gets lost by September.
The gap we find ourselves in — volunteer limbo, as I like to call it — is rarely about the volunteers themselves. It is about what happens to the relationship when programming slows or stops for a season. Summer quietly creates distance, and by fall, what felt like an active volunteer community can feel like a warm leads list that needs to be engaged from the ground up.
I see this as a relationship-maintenance challenge. How do we ask volunteers to stay connected without creating pressure to perform during the summer months?
One answer lies in being agile and adaptive. If programming runs on a school calendar, are there things volunteers can do over the summer to help prepare for the next cycle? Write thank you notes? Pack boxes? Help with admin tasks? Or is there space to build something new entirely — a summer touch-point that fits slightly outside the normal scope but speaks directly to what volunteers and the community need in that season?
Another way to work through this challenge is understanding and applying persona work to your volunteer base. Persona work allows us to clearly define what motivates the people who show up, not just what they do when they are there. When we understand what drives certain types of volunteers, we can build messaging and outreach that meets them where they are — sometimes just to say hello — keeping the relationship warm through the slower months.
Keeping relationships engaged means we can start making asks as soon as the programming cycle begins again. It is not about doing more. It is about the touch points that let volunteers know we are still here and looking forward to having them back.
— Aubrey
Coming Up
Events from Roots to Leadership
COMMUNITY MEETING
Date: May 19th, 2026
Location: Girl Scouts Texas Oklahoma Plains
Time: 8:00 am - 9:30 am
We will dig into what motivates volunteers, how to set expectations that work for everyone involved, and how to create structures that keep your programming running even when coordinator capacity shifts.
CONNECTION CIRCLE
Date: May 28th
Location: Tarrant Area Food Bank
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
This session is built around what's happening in your volunteer programs right now. Bring a situation you're navigating, a question you haven't been able to answer, or just an open mind. We'll work through it together.
COMMUNITY MEETING
Date: June 11th, 2026
Location: Lena Pope
Time: 8:00 am - 9:30 am
We'll talk about what healthy team dynamics actually look like in practice, how to recognize when energy is shifting on your team, and how to set boundaries that protect both the people and the mission.
CONNECTION CIRCLE
Date: June 16th, 2026
Location: Tarrant Area Food Bank
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
We'll talk about what healthy team dynamics actually look like in practice, how to recognize when energy is shifting on your team, and how to set boundaries that protect both the people and the mission.
Sector News
Volunteer Retention Strategies
VolunteerMatters, a volunteer management platform built for nonprofits, published their volunteer retention strategies for 2025, and one theme runs through it — people stay when they feel seen.
Personalized communication, consistent recognition, and simple touch points that reference a volunteer's specific contributions are among the highest-impact retention tools available to coordinators.
It’s not about the sophisticated technology or elaborate programming. It’s the moments when a personalized message with their name, what they personally did and why it mattered arrive in their inbox or show up in the mail.
When summer creates distance and communication goes quiet, we lose the very thing the research says keeps people connected — the sense that someone on the other side of the relationship is paying attention.
One Thing to Try
The Summer Send-Off Message
As the program year closes, consider sending one direct message to active volunteers — not a newsletter, not a group email. Something personal that does three things:
Names something specific they personally contributed this year. Not just their company or group. Them, personally.
Acknowledges the break with no pressure to stay connected but offer innovative ways to stay engaged, if possible.
Offer one big thing to look forward to in the fall.
If persona work is already part of how you manage your volunteer base, use what you know. A message that reflects what someone cares about lands differently than a general thank you. That is the difference between maintaining a relationship and maintaining a list.
From the Community
Community Connection is where the nonprofit sector shares what it needs and what it has to offer. Open roles. Board seats. Volunteer opportunities. Events worth showing up for.
It is a shared space that connects the organizations doing the work with the professionals ready to join it, strengthen it, and grow alongside it.
Strategy & Learning Sessions
☕ Free Nonprofit Strategy Session with BizBrainstorm
This free, two-hour strategy session brings together volunteer experts from across industries to work alongside nonprofit leadership teams on your most pressing opportunities and obstacles. The format is hands-on and collaborative, designed to generate real clarity and momentum rather than general advice.
Organizations that participate also receive a small donation and often walk away with a group of engaged champions who stay invested in their work long after the session ends. BizBrainstorm hosts one to two nonprofits per month, and the application process is open now.
Note: Participating organizations must be on the list of Fidelity Investments’ Donor Advised Funds. No cost involved.
📖 Learning Resources with AFP Fort Worth
Have you heard about AFP Fort Worth and want to learn more? Did you know that AFP Fort Worth now has Free Monthly webinars for members and $10 for non-members?
Reach out to Olivia Jane Barhorst, MNLM, CFRE, for questions about membership, scholarships, and more. Olivia is on the AFP Fort Worth Board of Directors as Director of Education and also serves as a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) International Ambassador and can answer professional development questions.
📝 Grant Training Program with City of Fort Worth
Pathways to Partnership is a grant training initiative hosted by the City of Fort Worth that supports small and emerging nonprofits in becoming grant-ready. This program does not guarantee funding; instead, it is designed to inform, prepare, and equip community partners with the knowledge and tools needed to successfully pursue federal grant opportunities.
The program is intended for organizations with annual budgets of $250,000 or less, those that have previously been denied funding—particularly through a Fort Worth RFP—or nonprofits that are newly established and seeking to better understand funding opportunities.
Participants will receive guidance on the City’s application process, HUD grant requirements, compliance expectations, software tools, and strategies for strengthening organizational and financial capacity.
A Final Note
The end of the program year is not the end of the relationship. Summer is a season to tend to it — quietly, simply, on purpose.
Until next time,
Founder & Executive Director
Empowering nonprofit leaders to grow and lead with purpose.
