Engage Library
Are you helping to develop the next generation of volunteers? Today’s youth are tomorrow’s adult volunteers—if they grow up with the empathy and mindset to contribute their time and talents to their communities. Unfortunately, some studies have shown that contemporary youth…
April 2019
As volunteer managers, we want to influence others to embrace the values of our organization. We want them to understand the uniqueness of the mission, the needs of clients, and the importance of volunteers’ contributions. We want to encourage them to join us and to support our…
October 2018
As a volunteer resource manager, you may be serving members of the LGBTQIA community and working with LGBTQIA volunteers and/or LGBTQIA paid staff.
April 2018
The Daily Mail online recently published a Reuters article, “Good job or taking work? Volunteering by asylum seekers in Italy praised and panned.” It provides an interesting outline of the pros and cons of an initiative in Italy which offers migrants from sub-Saharan Africa –…
October 2017
We know that teenagers can make wonderful volunteers. With their ideas, energy, and willingness to contribute to their communities, they are a rich and sometimes untapped volunteer force for many organizations.
But how should adults approach working with teens? What unique…
July 2017
Teenagers—with their ideas, energy, and willingness to contribute to their communities—are a rich and sometimes untapped volunteer force for many organizations. Not only are teens the volunteers of our future, they have gifts to offer today.
What must we consider when working…
April 2017
If you find your way to e-Volunteerism and then to this article, you have done some things which many of us readily take for granted and increasingly do without thinking.
For a start, you will have some kind of electronic device which you know how to use and connect to the…
January 2017
Last year, e-Volunteerism wrote about volunteers at the front lines of the refugee crisis in Europe, and how their impassioned scramble to help—though often inefficient and always insufficient—nonetheless addressed grave needs and sent a message to governments to act. These…
October 2016
It all began when people with intellectual disability told us they wanted their own friends: friends who were not part of their own family or paid to spend time with them. At IHC we listened, and that premise became the foundation that IHC Volunteer Friendship Programme is…
October 2016
Today’s workplaces may have as many as five generations of workers, each raised in different times with different influences affecting their work styles. The same is true of volunteer programs. Organizations are now experiencing many different generations of volunteers…
April 2016
Volunteers are the backbone of our communities, a fact that we all appreciate every day on the job while coordinating and managing volunteer programs. This article is about one volunteer manager’s successful experience helping a valued community member with special needs…
April 2016
What do cats have to do with training?
As a trainer, it is often easier to facilitate sessions when the group has similar experiences and similar levels of expertise or starting points. Yet there is a richness of knowledge and experience that diversity can yield. Cats are not…
April 2016
When it opened in July 2002, the Imperial War Museum North (IWM North) in Manchester, England, unveiled an ambitious community volunteering project: the museum had recruited over 100 local residents, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, to work towards vocational…
January 2016
Founded in 1901, the Junior League rapidly became the most influential women’s organization in the United States. Today there are also chapters in Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Its mission statement puts volunteering and women front and center:
The Association of…
July 2014
Most Volunteer Centers have no independent purpose apart from the volunteer community they serve. So it would seem vital for a Volunteer Center to develop strong, mutually-supportive relationships with any organization committed to engaging or deploying volunteers of any kind.…
April 2014
Culture, politics and religion are often hot topics debated by pundits on the evening news and in major newspapers across America. These topics are also increasingly discussed within community and charity organizations seeking ways to encourage diversity within their volunteer…
April 2013
Everyone in the volunteer world is intellectually in favor of involving people with disabilities as volunteers, but somehow – in practice – this is not happening as often as it could.
July 2004
Six months before it opened in July 2002, the Imperial War Museum North embarked upon an ambitious community volunteering programme, working with over 100 local residents – many from disadvantaged backgrounds. Volunteers worked towards vocational qualifications in the Museum,…
October 2002
Despite all the theory and research about Generation Y — those individuals typically born between 1977 and 1997 — there still appears to be a considerable amount of confusion as to how volunteer managers can effectively engage this generation. Could this confusion stem from not…
April 2010
While we often focus on the good that volunteering does for recipients of service, there is increasing evidence that volunteering benetifts volunteers, too. One of these benefits, for instance, is increased work skills and experience that may lead to better prospects for…
April 2008