“We had to be gone by 12 noon.” In this poignant, first-person Voices, Claire Haggarty describes what it was like to be a volunteer manager who was forced to evolve during a pandemic. She recalls the touchstones of a year that included a fantastic professional start before the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Thirty-five years ago, Susan J. Ellis published an article in the Journal of Voluntary Action (now Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly) entitled “Research on volunteerism: What needs to be done.” Ellis mused – in 1985 – that the only subject at that time that seemed to…
This special issue devoted to e-Volunteerism’s Co-Founder Susan J. Ellis begins with a feature by Rob Jackson, the Journal’s new Editor-in-Chief. In this article, Jackson reflects on the legacy of Ellis and her life’s work, including how and why she started the profession’s…
In this Voices, co-editor Tracey O’Neill talks with leaders of volunteers about the value of podcasts, those video/audio presentations that now cover every topic around the world and can be accessed via computers, cell phones, and tablets. Through her interviews with…
Now more than ever, technology is playing an all-encompassing role in keeping nonprofits and volunteer programs going. While volunteer-matching apps and social media platforms have been around for a while, social distancing takes us to a whole other level in terms of technology…
“After 12 years at the helm of a leading faith-based volunteering charity, I have decided to retire.” So writes Leonie Lewis, MBE, who has been Director of the Jewish Volunteering Network (JVN) since its inception in the UK in 2007. Having recently chosen to retire from her…
In this Voices, co-editor Tracey O’Neill reviews a new book called The Disruptive Volunteer Manager by well-known volunteer manager Meridian Swift. As O’Neill explains, the new book lays out six steps to increase awareness of volunteers and to try and elevate volunteerism by…
With technological advances growing at an ever-frantic pace, questions and concerns have been raised about the intersection of technology and volunteers. Are technological advances such as robotics, artificial intelligence, drones, and computers likely to displace many…