How a National, All-Volunteer Nonprofit Scaled Recruiting With JazzHR

Background

WeVote is a nonpartisan, nonprofit digital voter guide designed to help Americans make confident, informed decisions at the polls. Through its mobile and web applications, WeVote provides access to ballot information, endorsements, and issue guides tailored to a user’s location and interests.

The organization is unique not only because of its mission, but because of how it operates. WeVote is 100% volunteer-run, works nationally, and runs on a budget more similar to that of a small local nonprofit. Every coordinator, intern, and team member contributes their time to support civic engagement at scale.

That structure also creates a constant need for recruiting. Because many contributors are students, interns, and early-career volunteers, turnover is naturally high by design. To keep its mission moving forward, WeVote must continuously attract, evaluate, and onboard new volunteers across a wide range of roles.

The Challenge

When Greg Buechler joined WeVote, the organization needed to rapidly scale its operations and volunteer recruitment process. At the time, hiring activity was tracked manually through shared Google Sheets and Docs, leaving the team to manage hundreds of candidates with limited visibility, inconsistent follow-up, and no standardized workflow.

For a volunteer-driven organization with no paid recruiting staff and limited time, the process quickly became unsustainable. “We needed an ATS to run our lives,” Greg explained.

Recruiting at WeVote is continuous, not seasonal. Near-full annual turnover means the organization is always bringing in new contributors, and candidate volume surges even higher during peak election cycles. Without a centralized system, it was difficult to respond quickly, maintain consistency, and deliver a professional candidate experience.

WeVote also needed a tool that could support hiring managers and volunteer coordinators who often had limited time to learn a new system. With zero recruitment advertising spend, the organization still needed to attract thousands of applicants annually, screen efficiently, and keep every step organized.

The diversity of roles, the speed of recruiting cycles, and the volume of candidates made JazzHR a natural fit.

The Solution

JazzHR gave WeVote a scalable recruiting system built for a lean, high-volume team. By replacing manual spreadsheets with centralized candidate data, automated workflows, and structured hiring stages, Greg was able to redesign the organization’s recruiting process from end to end.

Features like Bulk Email and Candidate Texting helped volunteers communicate quickly and professionally with large groups of candidates. JazzHR’s clean interface also made it easier for new interns, students, and volunteer coordinators to step in and contribute with confidence.

I’m using JazzHR as the platform for my HR interns to learn the hiring process. It’s simple, but complex enough for what we need. That’s why we love it.

Beyond candidate management, JazzHR helped WeVote centralize documents, communication, and onboarding in one system of record, including through its e-signature capabilities. The result was a more organized, predictable, and equitable process for both candidates and internal teams.

For Greg, the goal was to create a “frictionless” recruiting experience that minimized the time hiring managers spent in the system while still delivering timely communication and a professional candidate journey.

Affordability was also critical. As a national nonprofit with no recruiting headcount, WeVote needed a platform that was powerful enough to support high-volume hiring but accessible enough for a volunteer-run organization. JazzHR’s nonprofit-friendly pricing and automation helped WeVote scale without increasing staff or expenses.

It is absolutely impossible to do what we’ve accomplished without JazzHR being our system of record.

Results & Impact

Since implementing JazzHR, WeVote has built a structured, scalable recruiting process that supports continuous volunteer hiring at a national level.

Over three years, the organization has attracted more than 10,000 candidates and made more than 600 volunteer hires, all with zero recruitment advertising spend. WeVote now consistently hires dozens of volunteers each month and extends more than 10 formal offers monthly. “We subscribe to a few boards,” Greg explained, “but our recruitment advertising spend is zero.”

JazzHR has helped WeVote manage high applicant volume, support near-annual turnover, and maintain a professional candidate experience without adding paid recruiting staff. Candidates receive more consistent communication, volunteers have clearer workflows, and interns and part-time coordinators can manage recruiting responsibilities more confidently.

For WeVote, the biggest impact has been the ability to operate like a fully resourced recruiting team while maintaining the cost structure of a lean nonprofit. JazzHR gives the organization the system, automation, and visibility needed to support a nationwide volunteer workforce and keep its civic engagement mission moving forward.

For a nonprofit that is literally a tiny little speck among all the volunteering opportunities out there, we couldn’t have gotten all these applicants without JazzHR’s automation and integrations.