What is your organization’s mission? Hopefully, you know. But we are guessing that unless you’re a volunteer centre, your mission doesn’t reference involving volunteers based on community input?
It’s been our goal for over 20 years at Engage to get Volunteer Engagement Professionals to interact with our content and each other. On our "About" page, we state clearly that our articles are "interactive, inviting you to contribute comments and additional materials.”
We know, however, that this rarely happens. Sure, we get the occasional comment about content we publish, but that rarely gets any kind of conversation going.
So in this issue, we are trying something new.
In honor of the start of our 25th year at Engage (formerly e-Volunteerism), authors Rob Jackson and Erin R. Spink revisit the first ever Points of View from our journal's founding co-editors, Susan J. Ellis and Steve McCurley. Never known to mince words or shy away from a spicy exchange, Ellis and McCurley are at their best debating the important topic, “Should Volunteer Administration Be a Profession?”
The year 2024 marks the 40thanniversary of International Volunteer Managers Day. With this in mind, Erin did a little digging. She discovered that in just three years from now, 2027 will mark the 80th anniversary of the first document that discusses the management of volunteers as a paid job, leading to the development of the professional Volunteer Manager.
Susan J. Ellis was more than a passionate advocate for the change that great volunteering could make, and more than a passionate voice for the influence that Volunteer Engagement professionals could make while forging that change.
She ‘walked the walk’ and ‘talked the talk.’ She invested time, money, and her expertise into the development of resources that have become the benchmark of volunteerism the world over.
But more than that, she was a generous soul with a heart that was driven to not only help build volunteerism in her home country – but the world over. Whenever the name ‘Susan J. Ellis’ is brought up at a volunteerism conference or a DOVIA meeting, stories are inevitably shared by volunteer leaders about the knowledge they learned from one of her publications, or the encouragement they personally received while meeting her at the Energize booth during a conference or over a quick chat at the conclusion of a workshop.
To celebrate Ellis’ life, her long-time colleague, friend, and fellow writer Andy Fryar, who serves as manuscript developer for e-Volunteerism, approached key volunteerism leaders from around the world and asked them to share their personal insights about the difference she made to volunteerism in their country – and to them personally. This unique e-Volunteerism feature presents stories and reflections from 10 volunteerism leaders on the influential lift of Susan J. Ellis and her life’s work.
In this Voices, co-editor Tracey O’Neill reviews a new book called The Disruptive Volunteer Manager by well-known volunteer manager Meridian Swift. As O’Neill explains, the new book lays out six steps to increase awareness of volunteers and to try and elevate volunteerism by disrupting the volunteer management norm in a forward-moving way. Swift, who has more than two decades of volunteer management experience, calls it a “step by step journey to setting a new normal, one in which leaders of volunteers unleash the potential that awaits.” And O’Neill provides an assessment of Swift’s new book that promises to “reframe, redefine, reshape, and re-imagine” volunteer management.