Profession/Field of Volunteer Administration
The Long, Hard Road to Respect
At some point in any meeting of volunteer managers there emerges a recurring theme:“They” don’t respect us! It is raised in tones ranging from angry shouts to bemoaned cries, and is often followed by a litany of examples of neglect, misunderstanding and abuse. To whom the “they” refers varies. Sometimes it’s staff or administration, occasionally the general public, even, from time to time, mothers who are puzzled about strange career choices.
The reality is that volunteer managers haven’t always done a good job of earning respect. In previous “Points of View” we’ve talked about ways to gain respect within our own organizations; this current discussion will focus on societal initiatives. The suggestions in this article are probably outside the reach of any single volunteer program manager, but are well within the capacity of a united profession to achieve.
Watching the Horizon from the Four Corners of the World
During the last year, e-Volunteerism presented a number of retrospectives, looking at what happened in volunteering over the last decade. Now it’s time to look forward.
Though Susan Ellis and Steve McCurley use their quarterly Points of View as an outlet for their opinions, the journal’s feature section editors generally keep their personal thoughts out of the pieces they edit. We decided that this special, re-designed issue was a great opportunity to share the voices and varied perspectives of our far-flung editors – professionals who are all deeply immersed in the field of volunteerism as authors, trainers, consultants and volunteer-involving agency executives, representing the United States (both coasts), England and Australia.
In this Voices, we ask each of our editors to respond to the following question:
What volunteering trends and issues are you keeping your eye on that have the greatest implications or potential for the volunteering field in the next few years?
The responses are presented in recorded audio clips, so you can hear their “voices” for yourself.
The Marriage of HR and Volunteer Management: The Odd Couple?
In their last Points of View, Steve and Susan offered a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reaction to the current fad that suggests volunteer involvement would improve if we simply turned everything over to corporate human resources “professionals.” But in this follow-up column, the authors take another look at this topic from a somewhat more serious perspective. First, they identify five things about managing volunteers that are very different from managing employees, which reinforce why turning responsibility for volunteer involvement over to a human resources department is not such a good idea. Next, to be fair, Steve and Susan identify three things that HR professionals tend to do better than volunteer managers. Which begs the question: Would the marriage of HR and volunteer management really create such an odd couple?
If They Know So Much About HR, Why Do Their Employees Prefer Volunteering Over Work?
Points of View authors Susan J. Ellis and Steve McCurley attended the 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service – a fascinating, huge and baroque affair that every manager of volunteer programs ought to experience at least once. There is no other venue, especially in the United States, which exposes managers to such diversity of volunteer programs, and to both the weaknesses and strengths of our volunteering systems.
It Ain't Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management
This month’s Research to Practice takes a slight detour from reviewing research to report on an article that tries to take a completely new view on some well-known volunteer issues. The article, called “It Ain’t Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management,” is written by Jeffrey L. Brudney and Lucas C.P.M. Meijs and published in the April 16, 2009 edition of the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Steven Howlett explains that in their article, the authors ask readers to consider what would happen if “we draw our eye from the need to recruit volunteers all the time and start to focus on retention?” So far not so new, Howlett admits, before adding that “the authors think they have a new way to describe how we should think of volunteers. We should look on them as a natural resource, and one that can be exhausted or managed sustainably.” Instead of reviewing research, this popular e-Volunteerism feature may just trigger some research of its own as the authors attempt to extend this new way of thinking into implications for management.
Reflections on a Decade of e-Volunteerism
With this issue of e-Volunteerism, co-founders and co-publishing editors Susan J. Ellis and Steve McCurley begin their tenth year of publication. When they began this effort, both admit that they had no idea whether a venture like e-Volunteerism would succeed at all, much less flourish. “So we’ve been surprised, and pleased, and occasionally astounded,” the co-founders admit, as they reflect back on the publication’s 10 years. In this Points of View, Steve and Susan also consider how volunteering has changed over the past 10 years and how it might change during the next decade of e-Volunteerism.