Engage Library

Eva Schindler-Rainman was one of the few volunteerism pioneers to gain popularity both within and outside of our field. An organizational consultant, social worker with a PhD, and behavioral scientist, she was known for her advocacy of effective human resource development -…

We have been privileged to travel internationally during the past few years, which gives us a very different perspective on volunteerism than anyone working only in their home country. Unfortunately, we admit to being close to despair about what is - or, rather, isn't -…

Alec Dickson is a name not enough newcomers to the field of volunteerism know, yet he was an active and outspoken advocate for the importance of volunteering from the 1950s up to his death in 1994. He founded the British organization, Voluntary Service Overseas, which directly…

If there were a Ten Commandments of Volunteer Management, one of them would surely be the statement "volunteers should supplement, not supplant, paid staff." Drilled firmly into the head of every new volunteer manager is the fact that staff support is dependent upon relieving…

Susan: The question of finding "men" to be volunteers and also to be volunteer program managers surfaces quite regularly, frequently accompanied by deep sighs from female colleagues. When a live male candidate actually appears, the sighs change to heavy panting.As you can tell…

It is almost preordained that keynote speakers and casual essayists, when asked to address the topic of volunteering in the United States, will eventually quote Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous Frenchman who keenly observed American life and then wrote Democracy in America,…

Listen to the conference steering committee develop its strategy: "We simply have to offer workshops that will appeal to people who've been in the field a long time and are past the basics. Let's develop an 'advanced' track." This makes sense, but what exactly does everyone mean…

Why did we choose "Should Volunteer Administration Be a 'Profession'?" as our inaugural topic for "Points of View?" Quite simply, it is because the jury is still out on whether or not it is a profession. This is not a debate over the need for professional skills and attitudes.…

Harriet Naylor, always known familiarly as "Hat," was one of the true pioneers in the development of volunteer program management as an acknowledged field in the United States. In her role as national director of the Office of Volunteer Development at what was then the…