A “linear community” stretching over two thousand miles up and down the eastern United States, the Appalachian Trail was first conceived in the 1920s and completed in 1951. From first to last, it was a project of volunteer initiative and ingenuity – and continues today to be a…
The nonprofit sector has long been the domain of organizations and individuals interested in philanthropic activities and charitable work. However, this is changing, as Corporate America discovers that nonprofits and employee-volunteering programs can be legitimate and useful…
What/who do you call senior leaders where you are? Perhaps you use director, CEO, executive director, director of volunteers, board president and, for me, add bishops, archbishops, chairs of provincial or national committees, doctors (the great senior leaders in most voluntary…
One of the more interesting leisure pastimes is watching the Internet colossus Google release new tools and gadgets to supplement its basic search engine. One of these we’ve been contemplating lately is www.google.com/trends. One of the things about search engines like Google…
People usually suggest an ice breaker because “we need to break up the atmosphere at the start of a meeting” or “people won’t know each other” or ”we always have an icebreaker to start off.” Announce that you’re about to run an “ice breaker,” however, and watch the collective…
Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, the first woman high school principal in the state of California, knew that retired teachers were living on incredibly small pensions, often without any health insurance. In 1947, she founded the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA). But it wasn…
With the world’s largest sporting event, the FIFA World Cup, recently winding up in Germany, we at e-Volunteerism decided it was time to turn our attention to the nuances involved in volunteering and volunteer management practices within the context of hosting major events.…
A number of research studies in the United States have shown that students from kindergarten through grade twelve make greater achievement gains when their parents are aware, knowledgeable, and encouraging about their school experience (Epstein, 1990; Henderson & Mapp, 2002…
The issue of how formal our styles of volunteer management have become is not a new one. From conference workshops to training sessions to books and articles, volunteer resource managers are being told not to make volunteering too formal an experience for people whilst in the…
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, sponsored by US Senator Paul Sarbanes and US Representative Michael Oxley, represents a major change to federal securities laws. It came as a response to the large corporate financial scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing and Arthur…
The recent demise of the Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA), affecting mainly Americans, has surfaced many issues around both the “profession” of volunteer management and the design of a possible association that would serve the needs of managers of volunteer…
Do we need another study on volunteer motives? Michael Callow’s work (published in the International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing) argues that we do and that there is value in looking at volunteering among retirees. Too often, says Callow, we categorise…
Nonprofit organizations are required to identify funding streams and raise a significant amount of financial resources to provide services to clientele, operate facilities, and to pay staff. At the same time, organizations conduct capital campaigns to raise a large amount of…
It has been said that public speaking is one of the number one fears of people. Knowing that, how do volunteer program leaders attract volunteers to an organization’s public speaking program? And then, what do volunteers need to know once they get there? This article will…
Debbie Usiskin, an experienced volunteer programme manager in London, shares her personal exploration of how government requirements to ‘check’ (screen) volunteers provide contradictory and conflicting responsibilities and messages. She raises important questions about finding…
There’s a phrase circulating that crops up periodically in speeches or books: “volunteers are not a program.” This concept can be traced back to an early article by Patty Bouse, Resource Development Specialist in the Nebraska Division of Social Services, in the Winter 1978…
Recruiting volunteers to be the leaders or presidents of their organizations can be a daunting task. Once there, these leaders take on the role with varying levels of effectiveness. Given their brief leadership reigns and the unusual circumstances bringing them to the position…
Volunteering is intricately intertwined with many areas of society and public life, some obvious and some that should be better recognized. In this issue of “Points of View” we discuss public policy arenas that relate to volunteering. For each arena, we pose some philosophic…
