The sudden withdrawal of many formal volunteering opportunities at the start of the COVID pandemic in March 2020 cast a spotlight on the nature of volunteer work. In many cases, important services were suddenly curtailed while still other organizations pivoted volunteer roles…
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…
Reimbursing volunteers – a contradiction in terms or an evolving strategy? In search of clarity, a team at Colorado’s Community Resource Center (CRC) started digging into an issue that has clearly emerged as a critical and lingering one in the volunteering field. These team…
Should volunteer professionals expect to be paid for publishing and presenting? Or is there value in blogging and writing about volunteer management in order to share knowledge with peers in the field?
In this Voices, co-editor Allyson Drinnon explores these questions. She…
This past August 2018, Starbucks, the coffee giant, and the non-profit organization Points of Light launched a six-month pilot program that allows Starbucks employees to get their full pay check while volunteering at selected non-profits for half the work week. Before long,…
Was Olive Cooke, a 92-year-old volunteer for the Royal British Legion, hounded to death by fundraisers this past May? In this Points of View, intrepid sleuths Susan J. Ellis and Rob Jackson turn the Olive Cooke case inside out and use it to debate a question that volunteer…
In 2014, Paul C. Muller and his team of researchers published a report called "The Economic, Social and Cultural Value of Volunteering to Tasmania," the first such study in that Australian state. The report agrees with the authors of previous e-Volunteerism articles that…
This quarter’s Research to Practice reviews an article that presents a way to measure the social returns on investment in volunteer recruiting, training, and management. Called Social Return on Investment, or SROI, it is a type of cost-benefit analysis that compares the present…
Andrew G. Haldane, Chief Economist, Bank of England, recently stated that “whether seen from an economic or social perspective, volunteering is big business, with annual turnover well into three-figure billions.” And in his recent lecture to the Society of Business Economists…
Volunteer for four hours and get a free concert ticket. Volunteer for 100 hours and get a tax rebate. Or volunteer for 500 hours to organize a gala fundraising dinner, but pay for your own admission ticket to eat.
Do we need to offer incentives to people to get them to volunteer…
Sarah Jane Rehnborg has more than a decade in the classroom – teaching volunteer management on the graduate level to students from public affairs, business management, social work, communications, fine arts and other areas of specialization. Along the way, Rehnborg found some…
What is the definition of “giving?” Has the term become synonymous with nothing but money – rather than the giving of an individual’s time, talents and skills? And what about the word “philanthropy?” Has it, too, become indistinguishable from the giving of only money? Are…
We hear over and over again how volunteers are indispensable to many organizations. While we have previously covered articles on different methods used to estimate a value for volunteer contributions, a new study out of New Zealand looks at how volunteer value is communicated,…
In this issue, author Laurie Mook looks at an interesting case study of the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House as an example of how to measure the direct impact of volunteer service on the organization, clients and volunteers themselves. The research – conducted by Debbie Haski-…
It’s common wisdom in the business world that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” In this feature article, author Tony Goodrow proposes a method of measurement that gives a whole new yard stick to help demonstrate the successes of volunteer deployment in…
Can you put a monetary value on volunteering? What is a volunteer’s time and effort worth? This Research to Practice re-visits theses questions by studying a paper called “The Economic Value of Volunteering in Queensland,” by Dr. Duncan Ironmonger, Department of Economics, The…
This is a landmark article, in that it tackles a critical subject rarely presented in depth: what it takes to raise money to support volunteers and the infrastructure of a volunteer program. As the title says, noted trainer and author Betty Stallings covers both the attitudes…
A year ago the RGK Center at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) started the Investigator series and has generously shared pre-publication drafts with the readers of e-Volunteerism to get additional input. The goal of the series is to act as a resource and a promoter of in-…
