Engage Library

While the recent war in Iraq posed a variety of ethical, moral and humanitarian questions for many of us, it was the headline of the local daily paper that caught my attention and challenged me to confront a potential area of volunteerism with which I am not particularly…

Laura Otten, the Executive Director of La Salle University’s Nonprofit Center, was the opening speaker at the first “National Nonprofit Human Resources Conference: Putting People at the Center,” sponsored by Action Without Borders, in Philadelphia, PA, USA, on June 12-14, 2003.…

Somewhere, in an organization quite like yours, a staff member is in the countdown for the annual fundraiser... With the countdown underway, the lead staff member is juggling a thousand balls: confirming logistics for the entertainment; finalizing attendance figures with the…

Interviewing is a lot like archery. The athletes who participate in that sport have their mind on one thing: hitting the bull’s-eye. Their strategy is to develop the skills to hit the bull’s-eye portion of the target every time. Your target when you interview is the kind of…

Ten Thousand Villages, the largest fair trade organization in North America, works to provide vital, fair income to artisans in Africa, Asia and Latin America by marketing their handicrafts and telling their stories. The nonprofit organization has its American headquarters in…

As many managers of volunteer programs with minuscule to nonexistent budgets would attest, money alone does not make an outstanding program, but it sure can help. When money does become available, the best way to spend it might be to first spend none at all. Get your bearings,…

In the late 1990s, the Volunteer Center of Battle Creek (Michigan) worked closely with the Points of Light Foundation (POLF) and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) to adopt and implement the POLF Family Matters program. The goal of the POLF Family Matters program was to “make…

On a recent visit back to the United States, I heard very different opinions about volunteerism from two good friends. The first said that she will never volunteer again...she tells why. The second friend said she couldn't get enough of volunteering...and she tells why. These…

Fund raising in Italy is deeply rooted in antiquity. We could go as far as to maintain that it was born 2000 years ago at the age of the Roman empire. Seneca and Cicero (De Officiis) might be regarded as the first two theorists of fund raising, not to mention the golden age of…

Minnesota is pleased to announce the beginning of a new statewide association for people in the field of volunteer administration, the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA), affiliating thirteen previously-independent professional networks (and growing). This…

At the recent Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City many non-Canadians would have heard our national anthem, "O Canada," for the first time. Of course, it is a young anthem, adopted only 35 years ago. Canada is a young country but we have a long history of volunteerism. During 2001…

"Time dollar" advocates claim that their currencies are not money, when in fact they are - special-purpose monies that function differently from the general-purpose monies we are accustomed to using. Does this mean that time dollars are a detriment to volunteerism? Not…

I began work as a Coordinator of Volunteers in 1964. A year later I started writing poetry and haven't been able to stop since. I only hope this is not another occupational hazard in a profession already well supplied. Still, it's true that poetry can say some things hard to…

During the period of 1975 to 1998, the defining change in volunteer involvement was the shift in styles of volunteering from the Long Term Volunteers, who had dominated volunteering in the 20th century, to the Short Term Volunteers, who struggled to balance the demands of work…

The fiasco of the United States Presidential Election 2000 in Florida made a mockery of a democracy's fundamental activity: voting.  Mountains of paperwork analyzing what went wrong with election technology or election laws have accumulated in election offices, legislatures and…

At a time of world crisis , this paper calls for proponents of volunteerism to join together in a rethink of priorities and programs. Managers of volunteer programs and volunteers are challenged to take a big picture approach and see volunteerism as a powerful tool in…

David Brettell was the Manager of Venue Staffing and Volunteers for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games ('SOCOG"). Susan Ellis interviewed David while she was in Australia and taped the interview for e-Volunteerism. Questions Asked in Audio Interview: What -…

David Brettell was the Manager of Venue Staffing and Volunteers for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games ('SOCOG"). This article includes excerpts from keynote speeches David Brettell gave at three volunteerism conferences in July and August 2001, in Singapore…

In the mid-1970s, the Association for Volunteer Administration embarked on a revision of its professional credentialing program. AVA selected a performance-based system, based on a core group of competencies deemed essential for the effective administration of volunteer programs…

Is there a big blind spot in volunteer management? Consider: the elderly gentleman in the park, feeding pigeons or even squirrels a woman regularly looking in on a sick neighbor a teenager teaching other young people how to skateboard the police officer (definitely not as…