Engage Library

Everything shifted for Tracey O’Neill, CVA, the moment First Nations Elder Uncle Rob Patton said: "Colonial systems dehumanise us all." The comment reframed 25 years of O’Neill’s practice as a Volunteer Engagement Leader and an “expert” in the sector, and brought home the stark…

What really stands in the way of great Volunteer Engagement? Funding, leadership buy-in or something less obvious? It can feel difficult or overwhelming to answer this question in today’s fast-paced and resource-constrained workplace environments. This issue’s Research to…

What happens when a volunteer's personal beliefs conflict with the needs, choices or identity of the person they are serving? In this Ethics, Lori Showalter explores this issue from the lens of healthcare volunteers in a video presentation that addresses the ethical…

Volunteering has long been recognized for strengthening communities, but its impact extends well beyond service. As employers increasingly value practical experience, transferable skills and demonstrated commitment, volunteer programs are becoming powerful pathways to employment…

This month, Voices goes on the road for a wide-ranging video conversation. Tracey O'Neill, CVA, takes you to the National Volunteering Conference in Adelaide, Australia and speaks with leaders of Volunteer Engagement from across the country, unscripted and in their own words.…

Volunteers doing court-ordered community service at nonprofits, NGOs and charities was meant to be an alternative to fines and jail time. But there are nonprofits and probation officers offering another alternative: make a donation to a nonprofit and get a letter for the court…

The future of Volunteer Engagement Leadership: A video conversation with Rob Jackson, Erin Spink, Betsy McFarland and Faiza Venzant  What should the future of Volunteer Engagement Leadership look like? How should the field move forward and what should be considered as…

For more than a century, women’s leadership has been central to shaping the voluntary and community sectors in Aotearoa, New Zealand. This Engage feature by Cheryll Martin explores that evolution—from early grassroots organising and wartime mobilisation to today’s complex,…

Due to the history of philanthropy, nonprofit and civic organizations have mostly built their engagement infrastructure around a single question: Is this person willing to serve? And that willingness to serve, author Breauna Dorelus argues, automatically generates moral…

When it comes to the user experience and digital volunteering workflows in Volunteer Engagement, what is needed and what has changed with the introduction of AI? Ahead of the Curve’s Sam Fankuchen dives into these dilemmas and more in this issue, and delivers a surprise or two.

“Experience required” has long been a standard in volunteer recruitment, an understandable way to ensure that competent people fill key leadership roles. But when prior experience becomes the main pathway to meaningful participation, it’s worth asking how that readiness is built…

When asked if they had volunteered, only a few students raised their hands. Ten minutes later, almost all of them had their hands in the air. What if the problem isn’t that people don’t volunteer – but that they don’t recognize what they are doing is volunteering? In this…

Researchers and practitioners alike have long discussed the relationship between volunteering and monetary donations, particularly with respect to the question of whether these two forms of giving are substitutes or complements of one another. Despite these discussions, those in…

“Who cares?” When it comes to volunteer impact, that’s the question Volunteer Engagement experts Rob Jackson, Erin R. Spink, Sue Carter Kahl and Jessica Pang-Parks strive to answer in this issue’s Points of View. Watch and learn from this video conversation as these four experts…

In recent years, democracy around the world has been declining. According to one report, the “global index score is at just 5.17 out of 10, its lowest point in the history of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index.” Understanding why and where democracy is…

For the past 10 years, Tobi Johnson, MA, CVA, consultant and founder of VolunteerPro, has surveyed leaders of Volunteer Engagement from around the world about a wide variety of topics, including the state of the profession and specific challenges. Johnson published her findings…

Volunteer programs are modernizing at the same time volunteerism itself is changing. Across sectors, leaders are coordinating more complex schedules, more diverse volunteer motivations and higher expectations for impact reporting, often with fewer administrative resources. It…

The only things that are constant, apparently, are taxes and ethical issues involving volunteers. Join Ethics Co-Editors Erin McLean and Erin R. Spink as they review recent news stories involving ethical challenges with volunteers and also unpack the ethics at play.

In conversations about volunteerism and community care, environmental work often gets left out of the narrative. Granted, we hear about community care and justice for volunteers in human services like food pantries, senior companionship and youth development. But what about the…

Since its charter in 1983, the Mississauga Cooksville Lions Club in Ontario, Canada had always been a high performer with significant impact in the community. However, it was not immune to the volunteer participation challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic forced on social purpose…