A successful recruitment plan takes into account your organization's capacity to sustain volunteer involvement and future trends relevant to SHIP, including Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage. A recruitment plan also sets forth a strategy for identifying potential collaborators and partners in your community. A plan also may target specific events and locations for recruitment efforts. Regardless of the approach, it's a good idea to design a recruitment plan with the SHIP's mission as the main focus.  

To meet the needs of your entire community, it's best to recruit volunteers with the intent of broadening involvement, and to consider gender, physical challenge, age, race, and ethnicity when aiming to reach under-served communities. 

The essence of volunteer recruitment is finding people who are able to perform a given task (counseling, outreach, program support) on behalf of your local SHIP. 

The following are some basic volunteer recruitment planning steps.

• Identify the reasons why prospective volunteers may want to volunteer for SHIP; some may be motivated by the chance to help others, the chance to master a complex subject, or the camaraderie of a team effort.  
• Research the economic and social trends that might affect your efforts for better or worse; for example, a company that drops its retiree health benefits may increase the number of volunteer counselors you need.
• Attract the desired volunteers by designing meaningful projects that play to their interests.
• Target the people in your community whose current or previous work requires the skill sets, like problem-solving and client counseling, that you need in SHIP volunteers.
• Commit to a monthly goal for recruitment outreach efforts and create an activity calendar. 
• Track the where, when, and how you recruited, and ask prospective volunteers what attracted them to SHIP.
• Prepare for incoming volunteers by establishing standard policies and procedures.   

Many agencies and organizations form volunteer recruitment committees to help with planning. The committee can consist of paid staff, board members, current volunteers, and community leaders with interest in SHIP's mission. Once the plan is complete, one person generally handles the task of seeing that the plan is put into action.