Describe your nonprofit and volunteer roles. Makeform turns the brief into a volunteer exit survey with departure reasons, experience ratings, open feedback, and optional follow-up.
Send volunteer feedback to Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a complete prompt, adapt it to your program, or send it to the Makeform builder.
Audience
Recurring volunteers leaving a community service role
Format
Anonymous survey with ratings and open comments
Prompt size
354 chars
Example survey structure
Anonymous survey with ratings and open comments
Program and length of service
Primary reason for leaving
Rate training, support, and role clarity
What should we improve?
May we contact you to follow up?
Suggested routing tags
Scheduling
Role support
Follow-up requested
Separate the primary departure reason from contributing factors for clearer summaries.
Step 1
Invite
send soon after a volunteer leaves
Step 2
Listen
capture reasons, ratings, and context
Step 3
Review
group patterns by program and tenure
Step 4
Improve
assign changes and close the loop
Why volunteers leave
A consistent survey lets departing volunteers explain role barriers or life changes, giving coordinators comparable feedback with useful context.
Use one primary-reason question plus a contributing-factors checklist to distinguish the deciding issue from everything that influenced it.
Open questions reveal moments, barriers, and suggestions that fixed answer choices cannot anticipate.
Tag responses by program, flag follow-up requests, and send trends to the people responsible for training, scheduling, and volunteer support.
Fit the exit moment
Keep a shared core for comparison, then tailor questions to each role and commitment.
Explore training, role clarity, coordinator support, scheduling, belonging, recognition, and whether another role might fit better.
Ask about shift instructions, supplies, workload, team leads, logistics, and intent to return for the next event.
Cover workload, meetings, information, decision-making, leadership relationships, term completion, and succession advice.
Include boundaries, check-ins, resources, and a clearly routed question for unresolved concerns requiring staff attention.
Survey workflow
Build around decisions your team can make and establish a regular review rhythm.
Explain who is leaving, how the role worked, the anonymity choice, and the decisions feedback should inform.
Remove leading or unused questions, add prefer not to answer, and keep identity optional.
Share soon after departure and explain the purpose, effort, voluntary nature, and response handling.
Compare patterns, protect confidentiality, and give each selected improvement an owner and review date.
Conversation, email, or survey
Conversations go deep; surveys are consistent. An anonymous survey can come first, with a conversation only when requested.
Field guide
Six sections balance measurable patterns with context. Collect identity only for requested follow-up.
Service context
Program, role, and approximate tenure support comparisons. Use broad tenure bands when small groups could reveal an anonymous respondent.
Departure reasons
Ask for one primary reason and multiple contributing factors. Include life changes and completed commitments alongside organizational issues.
Experience ratings
Use one scale for training, communication, scheduling, clarity, support, belonging, and recognition. Include not applicable.
Meaning and friction
Ask what made volunteering worthwhile and what created friction. Specific moments are easier to act on than general comments.
Future relationship
A volunteer may be leaving one role, not the organization. Offer different commitments or future opportunities without pressure.
Privacy and follow-up
State whether responses are anonymous or confidential and who reviews them. Show contact fields only after follow-up permission.
Related tools
Pair exit feedback with forms for recruitment, registration, ongoing listening, general surveys, program applications, and anonymous comments.
Collect suggestions during service, before a volunteer reaches the point of leaving.
Open toolGather interests, availability, skills, and role preferences at the start of the relationship.
Open toolRegister volunteers for programs and capture the practical details coordinators need.
Open toolCreate a broader exit questionnaire for staff, members, customers, or program participants.
Open toolBuild pulse checks, experience surveys, and other research forms from a written brief.
Open toolOffer a channel for candid concerns without requiring identifying details.
Open toolFAQ
Practical answers for nonprofit coordinators building a respectful, actionable offboarding process.
It is a questionnaire offered when someone completes or leaves a volunteer role. It covers departure reasons, their experience, improvements, possible return, and optional follow-up.
Include role context, tenure, primary and contributing departure reasons, experience ratings, meaningful moments, needed changes, future interest, and optional follow-up permission.
Anonymity can support candor. Explain whether responses are anonymous or confidential, avoid required identity fields, and limit details that could reveal someone in a small program.
Send it soon after the final shift, term, or resignation. Explain the purpose, expected effort, voluntary nature, response handling, and review deadline.
Offer neutral choices covering life changes, completed commitments, opportunities, role fit, scheduling, training, communication, and support. Include other and avoid challenging the decision.
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and keep using your volunteer exit survey without a response cap. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge.
Review trends regularly, compare groups large enough to protect confidentiality, and use comments for context. Assign each selected change an owner and review date.
Yes. Ask permission, then show optional contact fields only when follow-up is requested. Route unresolved concerns to the appropriate staff member.
Turn departures into better volunteer experiences.
