Engage Library
“Along the Web” for this issue updates the first topic we examined back in 2000: volunteer program liability and risk management. This is a topic that has received a lot of attention during the past five years, with a corresponding amount of materials produced to discuss it. …
April 2006
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, sponsored by US Senator Paul Sarbanes and US Representative Michael Oxley, represents a major change to federal securities laws. It came as a response to the large corporate financial scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing and Arthur…
April 2006
The recent demise of the Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA), affecting mainly Americans, has surfaced many issues around both the “profession” of volunteer management and the design of a possible association that would serve the needs of managers of volunteer…
April 2006
Do we need another study on volunteer motives? Michael Callow’s work (published in the International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing) argues that we do and that there is value in looking at volunteering among retirees. Too often, says Callow, we categorise…
April 2006
Nonprofit organizations are required to identify funding streams and raise a significant amount of financial resources to provide services to clientele, operate facilities, and to pay staff. At the same time, organizations conduct capital campaigns to raise a large amount of…
April 2006
Debbie Usiskin, an experienced volunteer programme manager in London, shares her personal exploration of how government requirements to ‘check’ (screen) volunteers provide contradictory and conflicting responsibilities and messages. She raises important questions about finding…
April 2006
We commonly do “Along the Web” by subject categories, but in the past issue I thought I’d just list a variety of interesting reports that have shown up recently that either don’t fit neatly into categories or are within subject areas that we have already covered. This continues…
January 2006
Recruiting volunteers to be the leaders or presidents of their organizations can be a daunting task. Once there, these leaders take on the role with varying levels of effectiveness. Given their brief leadership reigns and the unusual circumstances bringing them to the position…
January 2006
Volunteering is intricately intertwined with many areas of society and public life, some obvious and some that should be better recognized. In this issue of “Points of View” we discuss public policy arenas that relate to volunteering. For each arena, we pose some philosophic…
Linda L. Graff and Susan J. Ellis, and Steve McCurley
January 2006
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-…
January 2006
This Research to Practice reviews a report on recruiting and retaining volunteers to work with AIDS service organisations. The study findings were developed through a survey of volunteers plus interviews and focus groups with managers of volunteers. The study examined the…
January 2006
Research shows that over 50% of those volunteering do so in response to being asked by a friend, co-worker, or relative. This leads to what Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch call the “concentric circle” theory of recruitment, an approach that maximizes the relationships of those…
January 2006
In the post-Enron (or Tyco, WorldCom, IGA, etc) accounting-scandal era, corporate citizenship has taken on new meaning and relevance. Boards of directors are suddenly on the hook as much for their company’s ethical performance as their financial results (as well they should be…
January 2006
South Australia boasts the highest volunteering rate in Australia, celebrates a strong level of government support for volunteers and even has volunteer involvement featured in the state’s ‘strategic plan’. The northern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia’s capital city, has…
October 2005
Building collaborative relationships with highly-skilled volunteers can gain huge dividends for your organization and for the volunteers who participate. Based on her research for the upcoming book, The Art and Science of Engaging Baby Boomer Volunteers, Jill Friedman Fixler…
October 2005
We have, in Points of View, spent some time in past columns looking at questions, problems, difficulties and quandaries. Alas, there are a lot of those things in our field to look at and ponder.
But since that’s not the only picture, in this issue we thought we’d focus, for a…
October 2005
This article examines a research report done at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada by Evelina J. Rog, S. Mark Pancer, and Mark C. Baetz: “Corporate Volunteer Programs: Maximising Employee Motivation and Minimizing Barriers to Program Participation.” The…
October 2005
This training exercise aims to get participants to explore their own perceptions around cultural diversity. Nancy Nuñez, Training Service Manager for Volunteering Ireland, shares an exercise she learned in ‘Anti Racism Training for Trainers’ that she usually uses with volunteer…
October 2005
We commonly do “Along the Web” by subject categories, but in this issue I thought I’d just list a variety of interesting reports that have shown up recently that either don’t fit neatly into categories or are within subject areas that we have already covered. We’ll continue this…
October 2005