Recruitment marketing in charities: challenges and opportunities

This chapter outlines the challenges charities face in recruiting skilled and diverse workers. Specifically, we focus on a well known charity with global recognition, which in the UK faces challenges with staff recruitment and attrition particularly in the care providing sector. This is partly due to offering lower salaries compared to similar roles offered in the private sector. Our chapter highlights the benefits of working for charities and explains that focusing on the positive aspects of charities as employers, along knowledge about the charity as a brand, can be used strategically to enhance recruitment marketing. We discuss an in-class project with first year undergraduate marketing students tasked in developing a marketing campaign to encourage recruitment for this charity. In doing so, we highlight the relevance of social media in building positive narratives.