Engage Library

Research to Practice

Research to Practice seeks to identify, review and interpret academic and other research important to the volunteer engagement field. Because the various reports and studies are discussed in terms of their major relevance to practitioners, each of the articles is also listed in the Engage Library by subject covered.

Cloning Yourself: How to Use AI Agents to Responsibly Scale an Army of Virtual Volunteers
AI agents are autonomous robots that can perform complex tasks according to the prompts, context, guardrails and tools their human architects authorize them to access. Sierra, Meta and a cohort of prominent tech firms have debuted a concept called the Personal Agent Protocol.…
Sam Fankuchen
Ahead of the Curve
October 2026
Celebrating Legacy and Leadership
This Voices celebrates legacy and leadership in Volunteer Engagement, just in time for the International Volunteer Managers Day (IVMDay) Celebration of “Legacy and Leadership” on November 5, 2026. Here, Voices  Co-section Editor Tracey O’Neill brings together leaders in the…
Tracey O’Neill, CVA
Voices
October 2026
Engaging VolunTOLDs: Making Strategic Decisions About Required Volunteers
Not long ago, Beth Steinhorn and about 140 other volunteers arrived early to a volunteer site, watched an orientation video, waited for assignments that primarily never came, and left in a few hours when told they wouldn’t be needed after all. Turns out, Steinhorn hadn’t…
Beth Steinhorn
Feature Articles
October 2026
Health-based Volunteer Programs: A Benchmark
For 10 years from 2013 to 2023, Leaders of Health Volunteer Engagement (LOHVE) Network conducted annual surveys of health-specific volunteer programs, initially across Victoria but later more broadly across Australia and then in other parts of the world. Taking data from all 10…
Sharon Walsh
Feature Articles
October 2026
The Hidden Reasons Your Volunteer Leaders Are Walking Away
Volunteer retention remains one of the most persistent challenges for organisations worldwide. Yet despite considerable investment in recruitment, training and induction, attrition among volunteers who take on leadership responsibilities continues at rates that threaten mission…
Paul Clarke
Research to Practice
October 2026
AI Usage in Volunteer Engagement That Doesn’t Cause More Harm
Whether or not your employer encourages AI use, the ethics of AI implementation in Volunteer Engagement are tricky. This Ethics article explores the hopes, fears and real-world dilemmas that Leaders of Volunteers face when working with AI tools. Authors and Volunteer Engagement…
Meena Das, Jessica Pang-Parks, CVA
Ethics
October 2026
Transferable Skills Revisited: What Makes Us Invaluable in the Age of AI?
Where does Volunteer Engagement fit in an automated world? Does it continue to have a place and purpose? These are questions Leaders of Volunteer Engagement may not be asking themselves today, but you might want to start, and fast. In this Points of View, authors Rob Jackson and…
Erin R. Spink, Rob Jackson
Points of View
October 2026

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