Login | Subscribe | Stay Engaged | About | Partnerships | Contact
Engage Library
It’s common wisdom in the business world that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” In this feature article, author Tony Goodrow proposes a method of measurement that gives a whole new yard stick to help demonstrate the successes of volunteer deployment in…
October 2010
Almost every nonprofit has volunteer leaders – people who are especially passionate about an organization’s mission and dedicate time, energy and talents to even the smallest tasks. Over time, studies have shown that organizations that offer these dedicated individuals…
October 2010
Can you put a monetary value on volunteering? What is a volunteer’s time and effort worth? This Research to Practice re-visits theses questions by studying a paper called “The Economic Value of Volunteering in Queensland,” by Dr. Duncan Ironmonger, Department of Economics, The…
October 2010
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. By 1990, when the second edition of By the People was published, the amount…
April 2001
One of the most basic and vital types of volunteering is citizen involvement in democratic political processes. All the elements of volunteering and volunteer management are here: recruitment, volunteer leadership, supervision, volunteer motivation, etc. Guest contributor Debbie…
April 2002
In their last Points of View, Steve and Susan offered a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reaction to the current fad that suggests volunteer involvement would improve if we simply turned everything over to corporate human resources “professionals.” But in this follow-up column, the…
October 2010
A new type of volunteering is starting to attract media attention: micro-volunteering. It has gained momentum as a creative way to use mobile phones, but in reality it is much more than that. Mike Bright, the founder of Help from Home, a UK Web site focused entirely on micro-…
October 2010
When designing a training workshop or planning a conference, you probably consider using an icebreaker or two as part of your format. Before settling for conventional icebreakers that you have used time and again in the past, take a moment to read this Training Design. Author…
July 2010
Soroptimist International of the Americas is an international volunteer organization for business and professional women who work to improve the lives of women and girls, in local communities and throughout the world. Bucking the trend of other large service clubs,…
October 2005
It seems increasingly complex to offer what the different generations of volunteers want, particularly Baby Boomers and Millennials: high impact volunteer opportunities, a range of choices of positions, ways to apply their workplace skills and more. The good news is…
July 2010
e-Volunteerism’s Steve McCurley and Susan J. Ellis recently attended the 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service, where they were deluged with what is becoming an increasingly common message: “Don’t despair. For-profit corporations and their business wisdom are…
July 2010
Volunteering in New Zealand has developed significantly in recent years. Volunteering New Zealand (the national body serving the sector) is helping drive a new national volunteer management strategy to grow the profession across the country. At the same time, our Kiwi colleagues…
July 2010
One of the hardest things a volunteer manager may ever face is how to deal with an aging volunteer whose performance has begun to fall short of the organization’s expectations. In this special two-part series, e-Volunteerism tackles this important but often over-looked issue…
July 2010
Volunteer centers exist around the world, although they rarely connect with each other across national borders. In Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, the concept of a “volunteer bureau” – the most common original name – first gained traction to mobilize home front…
July 2010
A chapter in Hybrid Organisations and the Third Sector. Challenges for Practice, Theory and Policy, edited by David Billis (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
July 2010
The expression “work-life balance” was first used in the UK in the late 1970s to help explain the unhealthy life choices that many people were making. According to one definition, people “were choosing to neglect other important areas of their lives such as family, friends,…
October 2009
This month’s Research to Practice takes a slight detour from reviewing research to report on an article that tries to take a completely new view on some well-known volunteer issues. The article, called “It Ain’t Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization…
October 2009
With this issue of e-Volunteerism, co-founders and co-publishing editors Susan J. Ellis and Steve McCurley begin their tenth year of publication. When they began this effort, both admit that they had no idea whether a venture like e-Volunteerism would succeed at all, much less…
October 2009
Established in 1964 and held every year in Western Australia, the Dowerin Field Day is an effort to find ways to prevent the small, wheat belt community of Dowerin from becoming a ghost town and to raise funds for improved community facilities. In an attempt to engender…
October 2009
For 30 years, Kate Hanson pursued two passions: growing vegetables and herbs in her organic garden and studying the complexities of working with others. Until recently, she viewed these passions as two completely different and separate areas of her life. But in this creative,…
October 2009