Engage Library

Once in a while, a volunteer is injured, or injures someone else, in the course of his or her work. Sometimes, it is just an allegation that the volunteer injured someone else; whether or not the allegation is true, a legal defense still is required. In many cases, the cost of…

Keyboard Roundtable participants from Australia, Canada, Rumania, the United Kingdom, and the United States discuss what an "entrepreneurial volunteer" really is (a pioneer or someone who doesn't like rules?  a blessing or a nightmare?) and how a volunteer program manager can…

Lightbulb jokes aside, one of the eternal questions which shows up on a regular basis in online discussions, training sessions and inquisitive e-mails is usually framed quite simply: "What's the recommended ratio of supervisory staff to volunteers?" Susan greets this question…

This Research to Practice article examines how Five Key Trends and Their Impact on the Voluntary Sector (a feature article in this issue) can be a model for interpreting data in a practical, put-it-to-use way. The "Five Key Trends..." article is itself an example of translating…

Earlier this year, Elisha Evans and Joe Saxton of 'NFP Synergy' in the United Kingdom, released a report titled 'Five key trends and their impact on the voluntary sector'. The report looked at five demographic trends and explored their likely impact on the voluntary sector. The…

This article advocates for people with mental illness being more accepted as volunteers. My experience in mental health issues is complex, encompassing several points of view. First and foremost, I am mentally ill myself, fighting against bipolar disorder type 1 since 1986. I…

This training design offers four exercises (with a worksheet or other training tool for each) to help you, your board members, paid staff and/or frontline volunteers to become strategic thinkers who are constantly looking for new solutions, new options, and better ways of…

You can tell the age of the book, The Citizen Volunteer , by the pronoun in its subtitle: His Responsibility, Role and Opportunity in Modern Society. The really ironic part is that the book was copyrighted in 1960 by the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)!   NCJW produced…

This issue of Along the Web deals with a phenomenon that has gained much more attention in the past two years - volunteers who respond during disasters. As publicity about this surge of what has been called "spontaneous volunteering" grows, we can expect the phenomenon to…