Engage Library

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…

As every volunteer manager knows, your mission is BIG! It takes a lot of creativity, funding, and work from staff and dedicated volunteers to accomplish. But what happens when those very volunteers detract from your efforts instead of supporting them? Are some volunteers in a…

  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…