Farewell and Welcome
Farewell to Betty Stallings and welcome to Sue Jones, our new Designer/Editor of our Training Designs feature section. Sue is the training manager at Volunteer Centre Warrington in England, leading the development and delivery of a range of learning products... Read more
Volume XII, Issue 2, January 2012
Students vs. The Machine: Lessons Learned in the Student Community Following the Christchurch Earthquakes
When massive earthquakes hit Christchurch, New Zealand in February 2011, university students wanted to help in the clean-up. But established first response agencies were wary of these young volunteers and too harried to work with them, so they turned them away. Sam Johnson, a student leader, would... Read more
Volunteering through Devotion: India’s Purna Kumbh Mela Celebration
While living in India, Israeli citizen Yael Caplin experienced the Purna Kumbh Mela - a remarkable religious gathering that takes place in Haridwar, where the Ganges enters the Northern plains of India from the Himalayas. Every 12 years, from mid-January to the end of April, the city turns... Read more
The Volunteer Impact Program (VIP) Revisited: An Update on an Innovative Approach to Strengthening Volunteer Engagement Capacity
In 2010, United Way of King County, in partnership with 501 Commons, launched the Volunteer Impact Program (VIP) in Seattle, WA. Now moving into its third year of operation, this free program provides volunteer management training, assessment and consulting services to local nonprofits to... Read more
Does Academic Research Really Matter?
To kick off a new year and a new issue, Points of View authors Susan J. Ellis and Steve McCurley sink their editorial talons into the lack of quality academic research on volunteering, lashing out at researchers who approach volunteering as a mystery and routinely neglect to build on existing... Read more
Strategic Plans for Volunteering
It’s good to have a plan. In this issue of Along the Web, author Steve McCurley presents a wide range of global, national and local strategies for improving volunteer involvement – covering pretty much everything from the grand scheme to the minor details.
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Personal Volunteer History
Want to elicit an “ah-ha!” moment from people who think too narrowly about what volunteering is and who does it? The “Personal Volunteer History” worksheet provided in this Training Designs article is the core of a training exercise that will do just that. It will help:
Demonstrate to paid... Read more
Measuring Volunteering: Why Wrong Conclusions Are Unacceptable
In a Research to Practice article in e-Volunteerism last year, Laurie Mook explored the Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work, a recent publication of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The manual was designed "to guide countries in generating systematic and comparable... Read more
Volunteering an Opinion: Organizational Voice and Volunteer Retention in Nonprofit Organizations
Volunteer “voice” in nonprofit organizations has not been the topic of a lot of study. What happens, for instance, when volunteers encounter situations they find dissatisfying? This issue’s Research to Practice looks at this subject through “Volunteering an Opinion: Organizational Voice and... Read more