Our feature articles are sourced from practitioners around the globe and seek to encourage new thinking, highlight innovative practice and stimulate debate in the world of effective volunteer engagement.
Those who manage, lead, or work alongside volunteers often give advice to their teams, and may be surprised and perhaps frustrated when it's not acted upon. This can happen both in situations where volunteers have a lot of independence and authority to act on their own, but…
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…
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…
Those who manage, lead, or work alongside volunteers often give advice to their teams, and may be surprised and perhaps frustrated when it's not acted upon. This can happen both in situations where volunteers have a lot of independence and authority to act on their own, but…
A community organizer is usually a social agitator who wants to build grassroots power. While a volunteer manager may be working toward social justice, the primary goal of this position is usually tied to a pre-determined objective, like service delivery or broader…
When it comes to volunteer leadership, experienced volunteer manager Meridian Swift believes that two models dominate: reactive or proactive. But in this e-Volunteerism feature, Swift argues that it’s time to break the cycle of being a reactive volunteer manager – someone who…
“People just don’t commit like they used to!” is a common complaint of leaders of volunteer engagement who find themselves confronting the new trend of shorter-term volunteers. Many of us struggle these days with recruiting volunteers – or, at least, the kind of long-term…
Think of how meaningful and useful it would be to peer inside the heart of every one of your volunteers – to understand what is important to them, what inspires them, what gets them excited, what taps into their passion, and what keeps them dedicated to your mission. Or you…
In this feature article, Elisa Kosarin introduces behavior-based interviewing as an extremely effective screening method for assessing highly-skilled volunteer applicants.
Kosarin’s article is based on the author’s extensive experience working for Fairfax Court Appointed…
When it comes to workshops for managers of volunteers, the regular training topics that we too often wheel out represent a continuous cycle: a repetition of recruitment, policies, procedures, regulatory environment, support and recognition for volunteers, and maybe something on…
One of the most powerful things a volunteer can do is see a need and start trying to meet it. With enough passion and hard work, that initial maverick will attract other volunteers to the cause and a worthy organization will emerge and grow. That evolution might expand over…
In 2014, Paul C. Muller and his team of researchers published a report called "The Economic, Social and Cultural Value of Volunteering to Tasmania," the first such study in that Australian state. The report agrees with the authors of previous e-Volunteerism articles that…
Irish-Australian colleague DJ Cronin speaks his mind with passion and humor, reflecting on the importance of truly loving the role of leading volunteers.
I love my job. I am in love with my job. I intend to live forever! So far so good! But saying such things in today’s society…
Whatever Happened To . . . is a recurring feature at e-Volunteerism that allows us to revisit past articles to see what has been happening since we first published the stories.
In this issue, we revisit “Perspectives on Membership Development,” a story from 10 years ago about…
Andrew G. Haldane, Chief Economist, Bank of England, recently stated that “whether seen from an economic or social perspective, volunteering is big business, with annual turnover well into three-figure billions.” And in his recent lecture to the Society of Business Economists…
The ability to measure the processes and outcomes of organizational initiatives is vital to understanding whether an organization has achieved its mandate. But determining the best method to measure the impact of volunteers and how to successfully report on those findings are…
