Engage Library

The Keyboard Roundtable asked participants from the United States, Australia, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Denmark to comment on the structure and state of National volunteer centers or umbrella groups in each of their countries.

When we started this Roundtable, I thought the question was a simple one: Where does Volunteer Services belong?

In 1978, when Katie Noyes Campbell and I wrote the first edition of By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers, we included a chapter on the emergence of the profession of volunteer management.

Volunteers with strong loyalty to their cause tend to hold their traditions sacred. Imagine what would happen if two long-standing volunteer groups, serving different children's hospitals in the same city, united after decades of fiercely independent -- even competitive --…

Our previous issues have dealt with serious topics related to volunteerism, demonstrating the capacity of the Web to produce amazing amounts of useful material to assist managers of volunteer programs. Of course, that's only one side of the Web. The other, more entertaining,…

Susan: The question of finding "men" to be volunteers and also to be volunteer program managers surfaces quite regularly, frequently accompanied by deep sighs from female colleagues. When a live male candidate actually appears, the sighs change to heavy panting. As you can tell…

Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America Marc Freedman Public Affairs, New York, 1999 ISBN 1-891620-17-1 Marc Freedman's premise in Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America is that the baby boom…

The Saguaro Seminar is a program of Harvard University that builds on the work of Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone: Collapse and Revival of the American Community). One of its initial activities was to conduct this national survey of almost 30,000 people, released in…

Keeping a volunteer program responsive to today's volunteers involves leading a periodic environmental scan to determine what trends are factors in attracting and retaining volunteers. It is important that all staff and leadership volunteers understand these trends. They have…

One of the top ongoing issues of most of the all-volunteer groups in the CompassPoint Nonprofit Services’ study featured in the Winter issue of e-Volunteerism was “reaching new members and keeping them involved.” In the world of volunteer management, that translates to “…

Modern technology makes it easy for anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to access training on virtually any subject. With the click of a mouse, you can learn how to arrange flowers or earn a degree without leaving the comfort of your home. You can log in to join a…