Engage Library
What does the volunteering movement want from politicians in an election year? What efforts should Volunteer Leaders make to try and influence political outcomes and government? What important issues should the sector rally around and why is advocacy in the political arena so…
January 2024
The Australian volunteering landscape has experienced a fundamental shift. The declining rate of formal volunteering, COVID-19 pandemic and soaring cost of living have created a perfect storm. People are less available and less able to volunteer, despite an exponential increase…
October 2023
Tim Suda is an experienced Volunteer Engagement professional, and has worked in emergency response Volunteer Leadership with the American Red Cross. However, on January 12, 2023, his life turned upside down when he was caught up in a tornado and became a recipient of the kind of…
October 2023
"We do it because we are supposed to.""We get the most volunteers this day, but they never come back.""I get anxious about navigating this day." "It's clear the legacy doesn't matter anymore." These are real sentiments about MLK Day of Service and the feelings provoked by…
October 2023
As organizations strive to meet funder guidelines, legal compliance and internal requirements, the notion of “risk” can become a growing spectre. This leads to rampant over-screening of volunteers that creates barriers for candidates and slows down processes in the name of ‘…
October 2023
In the summer of 2023, Arizona State University and the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration hosted more than 100 volunteer administrators in 21 virtual focus groups. The topic was attitudes and experience in making organizations more inviting to a greater…
October 2023
Few topics have been surrounded in contemporary tech lore as much as “The Blockchain.” At the same time, it’s something of a sleeper phenomenon. An author by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper in 2008 that many cite as the blueprint for blockchain technology and…
October 2023
The title of this article suggests that there are two types of people or even jobs – generalists and specialists. In looking at most professions, we see a mix of the two. Yet when we look at Volunteer Engagement, we would argue that we only see generalists. While there may be…
October 2023
Have you ever considered the ethical implications of storytelling? Leaders of Volunteers regularly use this critical skill in our daily work in efforts to engage emotion and bring a human side to our data. Storytelling convinces people to care, to support, to volunteer and to…
July 2023
LGBTIQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans/transgender, intersex and queer) people can face significant day-to-day barriers in bringing their whole selves to a workplace, whether as a volunteer or paid worker. Yet very few studies have focused on the experience of LGBTIQ+ volunteers…
July 2023
The research reviewed by Laurie Mook in this issue of Research to Practice explores factors that support the engageability of volunteers. As distinct from satisfaction, volunteer engageability is the ability of an organization to provide conditions that maximize the involvement…
July 2023
“Who explores, implements, accesses, maintains and improves technology in our organization, and under what circumstances?” If you haven’t already asked this question, it's time to do so. Maybe you have an Information Technology (IT) practice, or maybe no one’s job description…
July 2023
Part Two of a Four-Part SeriesIn the first installment of this series, Engage introduced concepts surrounding Care Circles and how they are formed and managed. A Care Circle is an informally-created, often-spontaneous group of people who come together in support of a person,…
July 2023
Every single one of us — yes, even you! — has something of value to share that others want to read and learn from. If you write it, others read it and gain new ideas and insights that will feed our appetite for fresh ideas, insights and content for professional journals like…
July 2023
Will Rogers, the American vaudeville performer and erstwhile cowboy, once famously said, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” This truism definitely extends to Volunteer Managers when they welcome volunteers for the first time. In this Engage feature,…
April 2023
Engage author Sam Fankuchen previously reviewed the use of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool called ChatGBT in the field of Volunteer Engagement. Now, in this new Ahead of the Curve, Fankuchen taps his considerable AI expertise to provide additional information about the…
April 2023
On a scale of 1 to 10, would you recommend your organization to a friend? Would your volunteers? Incorporating this question into your volunteer survey – along with an open-ended question asking for suggestions on how your organization could improve or enhance the volunteer…
April 2023
When partnering with volunteers and community, things will go wrong. Multiple stakeholders will find themselves at odds. So how do you know if that knot in your stomach is a result of an ethical dilemma? In this Ethics, Faiza Venzant, CVA, executive director of The Council for…
April 2023
How do we volunteer – and involve volunteers in our programs – without falling into the saviourism trap, a concept that rears its ugly head when volunteers feel that we can come in and “fix” the problems of a group or community that we don’t belong to? In this highly personal,…
April 2023
In the midst of one worldwide crisis after another, Points of View editors Rob Jackson and Erin R. Spink shed light on yet another complex issue impacting Volunteer Engagement professionals: lack of trust in our institutions. “At the very moment in history that we need…
April 2023