Engage Library

On any given day, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri welcomes thousands of guests through its doors. During their visits, guests might encounter several of the museum’s more than 400 volunteers at multiple points. These museum volunteers – ranging from…

In today’s rapidly changing and unpredictable world, managing volunteers comes with distinct challenges. Volatile social and political climates, frequent technological disruptions, and the ongoing impact of global events such as pandemics and social movements have created an…

Allyson Drinnon, a Volunteer Management expert and the author of this Engage feature, admits that she “stumbled into a career as a Volunteer Engagement professional without any formal training, and without a real plan.” Her professional career began at a large international…

Part Four of a Four-Part Series During their recent, three-part Engage series into Care Circles, author Todd McMullin with DanaLitwin and Joan Cardellino defined, described, taught and inspired readers of Engage with thepotential of harnessing this organic construct to address…

For 17 years, author Sam Clift has worked in Volunteer Engagement, in paid and volunteer roles across museums, arts and educational settings. In his role as the Volunteer Resource Manager for the London Transport Museum, he reported a volunteer satisfaction rating of 93 percent…

Without volunteers, community sporting clubs in Australia would not exist. In 2022, according to reports, sport volunteers comprised the largest volunteer sector in Australia and contributed $4 billion annually in terms of labour to the Australian national economy. But the…

Part Three of a Four-Part SeriesIn Part Three of the Engage series on "Digital Care Circles," authors Dana Litwin, CVA, and Todd McMullin re-introduce some definitions, examples and constructs for Digital Care Circles and provide more how-to’s for getting them operational in…

Volunteering occurs in a wide range of settings. And the ways that Volunteer Engagement professionals lead and support volunteers in these different arenas often require adopting some unique practices to attract volunteers and keep people engaged.In this roundtable feature, …

The Australian volunteering landscape has experienced a fundamental shift. The declining rate of formal volunteering, COVID-19 pandemic and soaring cost of living have created a perfect storm. People are less available and less able to volunteer, despite an exponential increase…

Tim Suda is an experienced Volunteer Engagement professional, and has worked in emergency response Volunteer Leadership with the American Red Cross. However, on January 12, 2023, his life turned upside down when he was caught up in a tornado and became a recipient of the kind of…

LGBTIQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans/transgender, intersex and queer) people can face significant day-to-day barriers in bringing their whole selves to a workplace, whether as a volunteer or paid worker. Yet very few studies have focused on the experience of LGBTIQ+ volunteers…

Part Two of a Four-Part SeriesIn the first installment of this series, Engage introduced concepts surrounding Care Circles and how they are formed and managed. A Care Circle is an informally-created, often-spontaneous group of people who come together in support of a person,…

Will Rogers, the American vaudeville performer and erstwhile cowboy, once famously said, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” This truism definitely extends to Volunteer Managers when they welcome volunteers for the first time. In this Engage feature,…

How do we volunteer – and involve volunteers in our programs – without falling into the saviourism trap, a concept that rears its ugly head when volunteers feel that we can come in and “fix” the problems of a group or community that we don’t belong to? In this highly personal,…

Part One of a Four-Part SeriesA chance encounter with volunteering legend Susan J. Ellis–in a New York City hotel lobby during the 1997 Points of Light conference–sets the stage for the start of this three-part series on “Digital Care Circles: The  Future in Volunteering?”In…

While recently donating blood, Adam Janes, CVA, started making comparisons between the funding and infrastructure afforded to the Canadian Blood Service verses the volunteerism sector. And that’s when the questions started. In this feature story, Janes seeks answers to determine…

For the past five years, the Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advancement (MAVA) has conducted research and education on race equity in volunteerism. Through funding from the Minneapolis Foundation, MAVA was able to convene the necessary voices – over 40 community members and…

As Leaders of Volunteer Engagement, we seek to make a difference to the agencies we work in and the communities we serve by recruiting community members to volunteer and make a difference. While we would like to believe we use processes that are equitable in making decisions…

Two and a half years after the emergence of COVID-19, the world has changed in many ways. Some things about today’s life would have been completely unimaginable in December 2019. To assume that volunteering is immune from this massive wave of change would be naive at best and…

While Points of View argues that a new energy is emerging in volunteering, the picture isn’t so clear to Holly Daniels of MAVA (Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advancement). In this Engage feature, Daniels taps into her daily connections with Volunteer Engagement Leaders to…