Engage Library

In last issue’s Points of View, we examined the purpose and potential of a National Volunteer Week. We argued that such national celebrations are not just about individual volunteer recognition, and we took a more strategic look at the purpose and value of such weeks. In this…

The world is evolving and volunteers with it. Today’s volunteers have diverse lifestyles, preferences, and needs that must be accounted for when volunteer managers develop volunteer roles and fine-tune their personal leadership approaches. That said, one thing remains…

Volunteering is generally presented very seriously – largely because many of the causes volunteers support are very serious. But not all. And even grim situations can evoke laughter, since a sense of humor is a great coping mechanism. Humor is also a great communication tool…

Voluntas is a pilot project underway in New South Wales, Australia, that aims to test whether early intervention when conflict begins among volunteers can lessen the burden of destructive conflict. The pilot uses the services of volunteer facilitators trained in mediation to…

Now that we’ve gone through April, May, and June, most countries have completed their annual national “Volunteer Week” to celebrate volunteers and volunteering. Unfortunately, despite good intentions, it usually feels like the only people who are aware of the celebration are…

Lutheran Community Care SA/NT (LCC) is an Australian community services organization that utilizes a formal model of volunteering. In response to changing trends in volunteering and the desire of new volunteers for more flexibility, the organization has experimented…

Volunteer recognition is one of the few aspects of volunteer involvement about which we actually have quite a bit of reliable information. Mostly this is because volunteer recognition is simple to evaluate since recognition is, after all, in the eye of the receiver: “Does the…

Music festivals have changed dramatically in the 50 years since Woodstock, that seminal, outdoor musical event in the United States that arguably started the much slicker concept we are familiar with today. Although music festivals in the wet UK often involve standing in…

Barwon Health, the largest and most comprehensive regional health services in Australia, concluded several years ago that its 1,000 volunteers were ready and able to improve the health of their community. So in February 2014, the health service implemented a Volunteer…

  Someone once asked me how I hold my head up so high after all I have been through. I said it's because no matter what, I am a survivor, NOT a victim.          - Patricia Buckley Volunteering with victims of crimes can be a somber experience, yet many find this area of…

Today’s workplaces may have as many as five generations of workers, each raised in different times with different influences affecting their work styles. The same is true of volunteer programs. Organizations are now experiencing many different generations of volunteers…

Volunteers are the backbone of our communities, a fact that we all appreciate every day on the job while coordinating and managing volunteer programs. This article is about one volunteer manager’s successful experience helping a valued community member with special needs…

In this Points of View, authors Rob Jackson and Susan J. Ellis take issue with recent research on volunteering and, in a cautionary tale, argue that asking the wrong questions will ensure the wrong answers. Point by point, they review troublesome assumptions in a published…

What do cats have to do with training? As a trainer, it is often easier to facilitate sessions when the group has similar experiences and similar levels of expertise or starting points. Yet there is a richness of knowledge and experience that diversity can yield. Cats are not…

When it opened in July 2002, the Imperial War Museum North (IWM North) in Manchester, England, unveiled an ambitious community volunteering project: the museum had recruited over 100 local residents, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, to work towards vocational…

Back in September, the BBC in the UK ran a series of news stories and articles looking at the development of robotics. They were following up on a study by researchers at Oxford University and Deloitte, a study predicting that about 35 percent of current jobs in the UK are at…

We all recognize that 2015 became a landmark year for refugees, with unprecedented levels of migration unknown since the civil disruption of World War II. In this issue of Along the Web, writer Arnie Wickens explores how specific volunteer services around Europe responded to…

  /* /*]]>*/ There are many research studies on volunteerism from the perspective of volunteers. Among other things, researchers have asked volunteers why they do or do not volunteer, and why they remain in their roles or leave. However, research from the perspective of paid…

What does it mean to move beyond volunteers as a “program” and, instead, embrace engagement as a strategy to fulfill your mission? The shift starts by understanding the benefits of developing a strategic plan for volunteer engagement. In this article, writer Beth Steinhorn…

Retiring Baby Boomers, life-long tech users, and skilled professionals! Oh, my! What’s a volunteer administrator to do? It may seem overwhelming to keep up with all the recent trends in volunteering – especially when trends force us to change or adapt how we recruit and work…