Engage Library

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…

In life, sometimes we know when we are ready for something and sometimes we don’t. So much of life, it can be argued, is knowing things in hindsight. In this Engage feature, Adam Janes explores how nonprofit professionals knew we weren’t ready for something as disruptive at…

In this inaugural article for the new Ethics section, authors Katherine H. Campbell, former Executive Director of CCVA, and Ethics Editor Erin R. Spink present an introduction to ethics for the Volunteer Engagement profession. In the first of their two-part presentation,…

For decades, running a strong volunteer program meant clearly defining roles and responsibilities, sourcing the right volunteers and managing consistent project delivery. Today, the same considerations remain true, but the practices of delivering them in a modern setting have…

In this tribute Voices, co-editors Allyson Drinnon and Tracey O'Neill provide the first comprehensive description of the newly created Ellis Archive on the Professional Leadership of Volunteers, an important and exceptional resource for the entire field. Now offered through the…

Susan J. Ellis was more than a passionate advocate for the change that great volunteering could make, and more than a passionate voice for the influence that Volunteer Engagement professionals could make while forging that change. She ‘walked the walk’ and ‘talked the talk.’ She…

Susan J. Ellis may be best remembered for her prolific writing and famous "Hot Topics," her personal musings on important issues in the volunteer engagement field. But for many people, their fondest memories and biggest 'aha' moments came from Ellis’ work as a trainer. This…