Why Volunteers Don't Open Your Emails (And What to Do)

If your volunteer emails are getting opened by about a third of the people you send them to, you're doing reasonably well by nonprofit standards. If fewer than one in five is opening them, something is wrong. And if you're not sure what your open rate is, that's probably the first thing worth finding out.

Low email open rates in volunteer programs rarely mean volunteers don't care. They usually mean one of a few things: the subject line didn't earn the click, the email arrived at the wrong time, or you've been sending often enough that people have quietly trained themselves to skip it. All three are fixable.

What's Hurting Your Open Rates

Generic subject lines. "Newsletter," "Update from [Organization]," and "Volunteer information for August" are all the same email as far as the inbox is concerned. They say: this can wait, or possibly be skipped. A subject line that earns a click gives the reader a specific reason to open it now, not later.

Compare:

• "August Volunteer Update" (no urgency, no specificity)
• "We still have 4 open spots for Saturday's shift" (a specific need, a reason to read)
• "Quick note before your shift this week" (personal, direct, relevant)

The second and third examples give the reader something. They're not perfect, but they're meaningfully better at signaling that this email is worth a few seconds of attention.

Sending at the wrong time. Mid-morning on weekdays tends to work well for most audiences. Emails landing Friday afternoon or late Sunday get buried under everything else that accumulated over the weekend. There's no universal rule, but your audience has patterns. If your volunteers are mostly retired, morning sends on any weekday are fine. If they skew toward working adults, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings tend to perform best.

Sending too often. If every email feels important, every email matters. If you send three times a week and two of those emails are routine filler, people start filtering all three. The remedy: send less, but make each send worth opening. A volunteer newsletter that arrives once a month and is consistently useful gets opened. A semi-weekly blast mixing important updates with noise gets trained into the archive.

Writing Subject Lines That Actually Work

Before you write the subject line, ask: what is the one specific thing I want the reader to do or know after reading this? If the answer is vague ("stay informed"), the subject line will be vague too.

Some patterns that work well for volunteer communication:

The specific ask. "We need 3 more volunteers for Friday" is clear and gives a motivated volunteer an immediate reason to open.

The personal opener. A message from a person's name rather than an organization name gets opened more often. "A quick note from [Your Name]" outperforms "Message from [Org] Volunteer Team."

The direct question. "Are you coming on Saturday?" is simple, honest, and has a clear purpose.

The practical heads-up. "Updated parking info for Saturday volunteers" serves a real need. If volunteers are driving to your site, they'll open that.

What doesn't work: manufactured urgency ("You won't want to miss this"), vague positivity ("Exciting news!"), and subject lines that bury the point behind three levels of preamble.

What Goes Inside the Email

Even volunteers who open your emails don't read them the way you'd read an article. They scan. They look for the part that applies to them and skip the rest.

Keep emails short. Put the most important thing first. Use short paragraphs. If you need to communicate multiple things, either break them into separate sends or use clear visual structure: a brief intro, then a short list.

The welcome email for new volunteers benefits from being a bit longer, because it's establishing the relationship and setting expectations for the first time. For ongoing communication, shorter is almost always better.

Shift reminders work the same way. A well-crafted volunteer reminder arrives at the right time, contains exactly what the volunteer needs (location, time, what to bring), and asks nothing else of them. It doesn't need to also include a volunteer spotlight and a program update.

When to Send Longer Emails

Not every volunteer email should be short. There are legitimate reasons to send something more substantial.

Program changes that affect how volunteers experience shifts warrant detail. If something significant is changing about what volunteers will be doing, where they should go, or how things will work, that's worth explaining clearly. A brief email that leaves people confused is worse than a longer one that actually answers the questions they'll have. Communicating schedule and program changes well, even if that means more words, is worth it.

End-of-year summaries and impact reports are also good candidates for longer sends. These land differently than a routine update because they serve a different purpose: they remind volunteers why the work matters and what they contributed to. That kind of message earns the space it takes up.

For everything in between: one main point, as concisely as you can say it.

Checking Whether It's Working

Most email tools give you open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates. If you're using a tool that tracks this (including platforms built for nonprofits), check those numbers at least quarterly.

If your open rate is below 20% consistently, the subject line is almost certainly the problem. If people are opening but not clicking or responding, the email itself might not be giving them a clear action. If unsubscribes are creeping up, you're either sending too often or the content isn't earning the space.

Recruitment emails have their own dynamics, since they're going to cold audiences. For your active volunteer list, people already opted in. They want to hear from you. The goal is just to make sure each email gives them a good reason to keep opening the next one.

A Quick Check Before You Send

Before your next volunteer email, run through this list:

• Does the subject line tell the reader specifically what's in this email?
• Is the most important information in the first two sentences?
• Would a volunteer know what (if anything) you want them to do?
• Could you cut two sentences without losing anything?

If yes to all four, send it. If not, fix what you found.

Better open rates come from respecting your volunteers' attention: sending things worth reading, at times when people will see them, with subject lines that are honest about what's inside. It's not complicated. It just requires consistency and a willingness to treat each email as something that has to earn its place in someone's already-full inbox.