Engage Library

In 2003, while working at The Urban Institute, Mark A. Hager spearheaded a national study of volunteer administration called the Volunteer Management Capacity (VMC) study. In 2019, he returned to the field to collect new information and update the study. In this Research to…

When volunteer engagement relies on practices borrowed from business for paid staff, we can lose the relationships and purpose that are fundamental to success. Adopting a concept known as “radical welcome” as a guiding principle offers an antidote that reconnects us with…

Editor's Note:  Due to unfortunate circumstances, this issue's Ahead of the Curve on "End-to-End Impact: Crediting Volunteers with the Differences They Make" has been delayed but will appear in our July - September issue. In its place, we revisit a story on volunteer management…

As leaders of volunteer engagement, are you actively involved in ‘building back better’ discussions that are taking place in your post-pandemic organisation? Have you been invited to be part of these conversations? Have you asked if these conversations are happening, whether you…

The proposal of a universal basic income (UBI) – the provision of unconditional cash payments to all citizens of a given society – is neither new nor unproblematic. The idea has, however, enjoyed a wave of renewed interest in the wake of the pandemic and its social and economic…

“We had to be gone by 12 noon.” In this poignant, first-person Voices, Claire Haggarty describes what it was  like to be a volunteer manager who was forced to evolve during a pandemic. She recalls the touchstones of a year that included a fantastic professional start before the…

What common challenges do leaders of Volunteer Engagement face when they approach ethical issues? What common mistakes do they make? In this Ethics column, Editor Erin Spink interviews volunteerism expert  SarahJane Rehnborg to discuss these and many more issues that surface…

What if we addressed societal issues as a shared, co-productive responsibility of all members of society? What role would volunteers play? How would nonprofit and volunteer management look different? These are some of the questions addressed in a study of volunteerism in…

There’s no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused seismic shifts in the volunteer landscape. Organisations have had to re-evaluate how they involve volunteers, often dramatically accelerating the pace of progress. In many cases, long-held attachments to formal volunteer…

It’s a fact: 70 percent of volunteerism throughout the world is done by passionate individuals who wish to serve others and do so outside the framework of an organization or other entity. And during the COVID-19 pandemic – when organizational volunteerism is being reduced or…

Volunteer management professionals have been fighting for years to be recognized for their occupation, the work they do and the potential it holds. This journey contains key questions: What do we want? What has been accomplished? What have we yet to accomplish? What will it…

The last year brought unexpected change and disruption to the volunteer management profession. But as we all start a new year, the profession is poised to take advantage of opportunities to move forward and change the future for the better. In this Voices, Meghan Kaskoun…

In this Part 2 conclusion of this new Ethics column, authors Katie Campbell and Erin Spink delve deeper into a key ethics tool known as the CCVA Values and Principles document. Together, Campbell and Spink unpack how these values and principles guide the ethical behaviour of…

Question: How much time would you save if you no longer manually sourced, screened, scheduled, tracked, analyzed, reported on and reached out to re-engage your volunteers and their contacts?Answer: Though most of our peers wouldn't admit it, you'd probably reclaim 20 percent to…

Meaningful volunteering is one way for employees with high work demands to recover from stressful work situations. Employees who volunteer show higher levels of positive organizational citizenship behaviors than employees who don’t volunteer. At the same time, many nonprofit…

In this Points of View, Rob Jackson and Erin Spink sit down (well, Rob stood up!) to chat on video about all things volunteer engagement and 2020. In what was an exceptional year for the whole world, volunteer engagement professionals faced new challenges and opportunities of a…

Have you ever wondered what it's like to consult in the volunteer engagement space? Perhaps you have even considered exploring it as a career? In this feature article, volunteer engagement consultant and change management expert Christine Stankowski looks at the benefits and…

In this issue of Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews a study that explores the question, ‘Why do volunteers choose the particular organization they do to volunteer for?’ The researchers in the study use a marketing perspective, where the volunteer’s choice of organization…

What is Engage? How can we best describe its new, exciting content – including two new columns called Ethics and Ahead of the Curve? What happens now to e-Volunteerism.com? Can the Volunteer Engagement community continue to access content from this beloved professional journal?…

In this Points of View, co-authors Rob Jackson and Erin R. Spink readily admit that few will be sad to see the year 2020 end. But, they write, “if nothing else, the pandemic and its impacts on leaders of volunteers and volunteerism have demonstrated more than ever the power and…