Workshop · 2 hours

Thousands of people care. A few dozen actually do something.

A two-hour session on how people move from watching to leading — and where your organisation loses them.

You have the numbers. Followers, subscribers, members, people who came to one thing and said they'd love to help.

And still the work sits with the same small group. You ask for help and it goes quiet. You recruit volunteers and they're gone by month three. Every campaign starts with the same few people saying yes again.

The usual explanation is that people are busy, or that commitment isn't what it used to be.

Here's what's actually happening. Most organisations treat engagement as a yes or no — you're either in or you're not. People don't work that way. They move in stages, from observer to follower to contributor to leader. Each stage needs a different ask, a different level of trust, and a different kind of support.

Ask someone at stage two for a stage four commitment and they don't say no. They just don't answer.

The workshop

Two hours, interactive, with the people who actually do this work: your community or volunteer leads, your campaign team, your board if they're involved in recruiting.

What we do

  • Walk through the six stages of engagement and what each one needs from you
  • Map your own people onto it, honestly — where they enter, where they stall, where they leave
  • Find the step where you're losing the most, which is almost never where people expect
  • Rewrite your actual asks so each one fits the stage it's aimed at

What you leave with

  • A framework you can use in every planning conversation from then on
  • A clear picture of your biggest gap right now
  • Concrete ways to lower the barrier at that specific step
  • Something you can do on Monday
The goal was never more volunteers. It's the right ask, at the right moment, to the person who's ready for it. Do that and your growth stops being a number in a newsletter and starts being people who carry something.

Practical

  • 2 hours, online or on location
  • Adapted to your organisation beforehand — I'll ask what's stuck before we run it
  • Can also run as a short series instead of a single session

Request this workshop

Tell me your organisation, roughly how many people will join, when you'd like it, and what's stuck right now.