Engage Library

The fiasco of the United States Presidential Election 2000 in Florida made a mockery of a democracy's fundamental activity: voting.  Mountains of paperwork analyzing what went wrong with election technology or election laws have accumulated in election offices, legislatures and…

At a time of world crisis , this paper calls for proponents of volunteerism to join together in a rethink of priorities and programs. Managers of volunteer programs and volunteers are challenged to take a big picture approach and see volunteerism as a powerful tool in…

The Internal Battle by Steve McCurley Niccolo Machiavelli is famous for writing a book entitled The Prince, which is about gaining and exercising Power. "Power" is something that you don't hear discussed much among volunteer managers, since most of them don't have it. In fact,…

Steven Farmer and Donald Fedor have taken a look at factors which make volunteers decide to continue and increase their contribution of volunteer time and effort to a particular organization. This issue is a serious one to effective involvement of volunteers, since the…

Print periodicals in our field emerged in the late 1960s. What were the topics of interest back then? Browse the tables of contents of the forerunners of today's publications and discover what has changed--and what hasn't.

Time (or lack of it) is always the bane of the existence of most volunteer managers. This is especially true when you're attempting to relate with and keep track of dozens or hundreds of volunteers - a supervisory ratio far beyond the bounds of rationality. The computer offers…

David Brettell was the Manager of Venue Staffing and Volunteers for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games ('SOCOG"). Susan Ellis interviewed David while she was in Australia and taped the interview for e-Volunteerism. Questions Asked in Audio Interview: What -…

David Brettell was the Manager of Venue Staffing and Volunteers for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games ('SOCOG"). This article includes excerpts from keynote speeches David Brettell gave at three volunteerism conferences in July and August 2001, in Singapore…

With this issue of e-Volunteerism we start our second year of publication. It was our intent - from the beginning - to publish something of value to colleagues anywhere in the world. We wanted to engage contributors and readers from as many countries as possible, representing a…

Is there a big blind spot in volunteer management? Consider: the elderly gentleman in the park, feeding pigeons or even squirrels a woman regularly looking in on a sick neighbor a teenager teaching other young people how to skateboard the police officer (definitely not as…

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 -…

The growth of volunteering around the world has also led to the growth of organizations whose purpose is to support volunteering. What follows is a list of such organizations. It is vaguely organized by geographic territory - sometimes by country or sub-territory, sometimes by…

Recent events have made the public more aware of the role of volunteers in protecting lives and property during fires and emergencies. Throughout the U.S. and many other countries around the world, communities (particularly small, rural ones) depend on citizens to assume those…

e-Volunteerism is always on the lookout for new innovative programs, practices and initiatives to share with our readers. When we learnt recently of two international work exchanges among volunteer management practitioners, we were quick to speak to those involved. In this issue…

As the gap widens between young and old America, we will find ourselves contending with either generational conflict or reaping the benefits of intergenerational communion. Volunteer program managers who creatively address this looming social challenge will help make the 21st…

Volunteering involves political, cultural and philosophical aspects, all of which are worthy of discussion for the ways in which volunteering interacts with other aspects of society. Much of this discussion is about how government and other institutions can work cooperatively to…

Marc Musick and John Wilson are doing some of the most interesting and useful studies of volunteer behavior today, and this current article, co-written with William Bynum, is no exception. In what is both a review of available literature and new research of their own, the…

This article outlines several volunteer-related research projects currently underway in the United Kingdom, initiated and funded by the government. There are as yet no findings to report, but e-Volunteerism feels the article will be useful to our readers as a model for how…

With volunteering by youth at an all-time high in the United States, it is important to examine the continuum of civic action to ensure that we are creating pathways that allow more volunteers to facilitate more sustainable community change.  We must recognize that each level of…

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 -…