Engage Library
One of the more interesting, and more useful, new ways of engaging people in volunteering developed in the past decade has been the concept of “family volunteering,” recruiting entire family units to volunteer together.
The implementation of family volunteering has made the…
July 2005
It is often said that volunteering is a great way to test-drive a career. But that premise is only as good as the opportunities we make available to volunteers. And with an increasing number of thirty- and forty-somethings expressing disaffection with their present careers, it…
July 2005
We often think of well-functioning volunteer programs as happy little families, systems in which people get along so well that they resemble the idyllic picture of family relationships portrayed in U.S. television shows from the 1950s. And while this is often true, occasionally…
July 2005
Volunteering is increasingly being recognised as an activity that can promote social inclusion. However, it has been debated (certainly in the UK) how far volunteering is still an exclusive activity benefiting certain sections of society far more than others. We know barriers…
July 2005
During the 1939 German Blitz, many people in Britain lost their homes and, subsequently, their ability to cook meals for themselves. The Meals on Wheels Association of America Web site further recounts:
The Women's Volunteer Service for Civil Defense responded to this…
July 2005
Although South Africa has a long history of volunteering, employee volunteer programmes are a relatively new trend. Charities Aid Foundation Southern Africa (CAFSA) has been actively encouraging and facilitating employee giving for a number of years. They have recently embarked…
July 2005
Recent years have seen a plethora of new research on volunteers and volunteerism. In this issue of “Along the Web,” we’ll focus on “volunteer management infrastructure,” and examine how well prepared we are to actually work with all those volunteers who are lurking out there.…
April 2005
Think about the communications methods you – and others at your organization – use with volunteers right now. Is your organization getting the information it needs about volunteers and their activities via these methods? Information such as:
Their accomplishments as volunteers…
April 2005
In March 2005, a pioneering 48-hour event was held in Canberra, Australia: The 1st Annual Retreat for Advanced Volunteer Management . The 50 participants came from all of the Australian states and territories, plus representatives from New Zealand, Singapore, and the US. The…
April 2005
For quite some time the notion of “corporate social responsibility” has been discussed and demonstrated in various ways. The concept includes many things, from producing products in environmentally-safe ways to providing family-friendly working conditions, yet our field more…
April 2005
Research-to-Practice Editor Steven Howlett re-visits a paper by Colin Rochester published in Voluntary Action, the journal of the Institute for Volunteering Research in 1999, about the management implications for volunteer coordination based on the organisational setting in…
April 2005
Over a year ago, Steve McCurley sent Susan a gift from a local library book sale. It was a copy of the 1966 novel for teens by Alice Ross Colver, Vicky Barnes, Junior Hospital Volunteer: The Story of a Candy Striper. Steve was right that Susan would like this sample of…
April 2005
This issue of Along the Web looks at one of the most difficult areas of volunteering – operating a program in a rural community. Volunteer involvement is much more difficult when you are in a community where the population is sparse and widely distributed, and where many of the…
January 2005
Sabotage!
The very word conjures up images of old war movies – silhouetted black and white figures blowing up railway lines in the midst of the night to prevent enemy advance. Indeed, sabotage is in fact a very real tool of war. Sadly it has also been a tool of some corporations…
January 2005
As we’ve often noted, the most frequently-requested topic for a workshop that any volunteer management trainer receives has always been, and continues to be, employee/volunteer relationships. The tension between paid and unpaid staff surfaces in all types of organizations and…
January 2005
With the advent of more and larger data sets, research on volunteering is transitioning from pontificating to proving hypothesis about volunteering characteristics. The RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas publishes the Investigator, a…
January 2005
This edition of Research-to-Practice looks at three reports that examine corporate employee volunteering. Employee volunteering is an area of considerable growth and of great interest, but how can volunteer-involving organisations and volunteers managers make the most of…
January 2005
You don’t need to be a drama queen (or king), or the star of your 1971 high school production of Bye Bye Birdie, or even a Shakespearian scholar to tap into the rich tool kit of theatre techniques available to any trainer.
While a few very successful trainers go out of their way…
January 2005
So much has been written about youth as volunteers, but most often by adults. Of course adults work with young volunteers, and teenagers and university students have been surveyed directly by researchers. Yet we rarely hear directly from young people in journals such as this…
October 2004
Colleen Kelly suggests that volunteer management has taken the road more travelled – the easier road – because when we began the process of formalizing volunteer involvement we did so mainly from the point of view of organizations recruiting volunteers to “fill positions”…
October 2004