Canada

It's the holy grail of all trainers – more interaction! But how do you increase interaction if you continue to use your typical orientation and trainings methods?

In this Training Designs, author Sammy Feilchenfeld introduces "Poll Everywhere" – a free plug-in tool for PowerPoint^® that lets you to ask questions and get answers live. Using a number of resources, this Training Designs article will showcase a few different ways you can use Poll Everywhere to connect with volunteers in training sessions. Feilchenfeld explains that volunteers only need their phones to participate via web browser or text, and reviews how volunteer managers can work with their live responses. This Training Designs will no doubt help you deliver the highly engaging trainings you strive to create while interacting more with your volunteers.

This e-Volunteerism feature provides an important introduction to a new collection of volunteer resources and written materials recently produced by CNIB, an organization previously known as the Canadian National Institute for the Blind that will celebrate its 100^th anniversary in March 2018. The materials include a series of manuals, toolkits, and training guides on a range of topics—all designed to enhance the volunteering experience with CNIB.

According to writer Jennifer Spencer, a team of CNIB employees assembled these materials on a wide range of topics, including advocacy, fundraising, being a program ambassador, and how to create a culture of volunteerism. This new collection of volunteer resources and materials is available on CNIB’s website. “This was purposefully done to make the material as accessible as possible, and to allow people from different organizations to adapt and tailor the manual for their needs,” writes Spencer. “By sharing these materials with the wider e-Volunteerism audience, we hope that you will be challenged not only to borrow from our resources but to create your own.”

In this e-Volunteerism feature, author Jill Jukes from the March of Dimes Canada’s Western Region argues that it’s time to update how organizations plan and prepare for volunteer involvement. Taking a close look at what she calls the traditional “Volunteer Engagement Cycle,” Jukes outlines why the current sequence of planning, recruitment, intake/onboard/screening, placement, training and supervision, recognition and retention, and evaluation does not always reflect current trends and realities. The remedy? Jukes proposes an entirely new Volunteer Engagement Cycle, one that that she calls Version 2.0. “This isn’t a monumental change to the traditional cycle,” Jukes writes, but one that renames and reimagines how organizations plan and prepare for volunteer engagement. Is it better? Will it work? Has Jukes merely proposed new words for the same things? In the end, Jukes asks you to decide.

Have you ever wanted to learn some tips that enhance how you relate to an audience when presenting? Or have you ever wanted some methods or tricks to put together a training session that helps people retain more afterwards?

In this Training Designs article, Erin R. Spink reviews a recent training session delivered by global trainer Michael Bungay Stanier that may help you realize both.  As Spink reveals, Bungay Stanier incorporates his insights from neuroscience discoveries into his training design approaches. She’ll not only review his formula for designing training but she’ll also cover what he calls his TERA model, which is designed to help trainers create safe and engaging environments. “You may not walk away with a degree in neuroscience,” Spink predicts, “but you'll gain some great ideas and tips that will make your future training sessions more engaging and impactful.”

Volunteer recognition is one of the few aspects of volunteer involvement about which we actually have quite a bit of reliable information. Mostly this is because volunteer recognition is simple to evaluate since recognition is, after all, in the eye of the receiver: “Does the volunteer feel appropriately recognized or not?” You can therefore evaluate recognition techniques through straightforward opinion studies, unlike other aspects of volunteer management that have seen far too many opinion-based surveys that reveal not much more than the ignorance of those responding to the questionnaire.

There are a number of interesting and useful studies about the most effective ways to recognize volunteers. In this issue of Research to Practice, Publishing Editor Emeritus Steve McCurley discusses one such study from Volunteer Canada. 

Here's an important addition to your advocacy toolbox. This Training Designs presents training resources to help you describe and demonstrate the power of volunteer engagement to peers and senior managers through the lens of “transformational leadership.” Newly-appointed Training Designs editor Erin R. Spink explains the theory of transformational leadership and the many commonalities it shares with volunteer engagement as a means to bring about significant change in both followers and the organization.

With the ideas and tools in this article, your presentations and training sessions can include the leadership language that is more familiar to senior management – a step that may open their eyes to what volunteer engagement can do for an organization and reinforce the value of your role and what you do.

The ability to measure the processes and outcomes of organizational initiatives is vital to understanding whether an organization has achieved its mandate. But determining the best method to measure the impact of volunteers and how to successfully report on those findings are distinct challenges in volunteer administration.

In this excerpt from a new, yet-to-be-published book called Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: A Balanced and Strategic Approach, authors Christine Burych, Alison Caird, Joanne Fine Schwebel, Michael Fliess, and Heather Hardie review the limits of statistical reporting and suggest ways to measure and communicate more useful data once it is collected. Using examples and outlining strategies, the authors present the basic touchstones of reporting results and note that it’s important to consider your audience, how and who should deliver the reports, and what to do if the news is not good. 

“Utilizing the strategies we have outlined for reporting on the engagement of volunteers can play an important role in articulating the impact and contribution of volunteers,” the authors write. “Reporting in a strategic way helps us to focus our priorities and to communicate to volunteers, key stakeholders, our executives, and boards that we are achieving our mandate to support the mission and vision of our organizations.”

Take a moment to think about your worst job ever. The one you struggled to get out of bed to go to. The one you gleefully left at the end of your shift or the start of your weekend. What job design factors contributed to your dissatisfaction? Was the work boring or repetitive? Did you have zero or low control?  Were you aware of how your work contributed to the organization’s goals?

Now take a moment to think about your best job ever. The one that made you just as eager on Monday morning as on Friday afternoon. How was that job designed? Did you perceive your work to be meaningful? Did you find the right amount of challenge? Did you receive both positive and constructive feedback? Were you aware of the way your work impacted others?

Now think about the volunteer positions in your organization, specifically the ones where you struggle with retention, absenteeism, motivation, or poor quality of performance. How can you apply the proven principles of paid job design to developing more satisfying volunteer opportunities? In this e-Volunteerism feature, author Debbie Anderson explains why it all begins with the work design when motivating volunteers to succeed.

Not long ago, three Volunteer Centres in neighboring communities near the Waterloo-Wellington area of Ontario, Canada were all trying to provide top-quality training and professional development for their member organizations. After noticing that many topics of interest were the same in all three communities, representatives from each centre concluded that the combined resources of three centres were better than one. Which begged the question: Could they work together as a team to deliver the best possible training and education programs?

The answer was a big, resounding “Yes.”  A few months later, the seed that would eventually grow into the Waterloo-Wellington Learning Alliance (WWLA) was planted.

In this Training Designs, authors Sarah Daly and Joanna Michalski describe how the three Volunteer Centres worked together in 2010 to create a partnership benefiting all three of their communities. Though the authors admit that creating WWLA has been a “rollercoaster of learning curves,” they use this Training Designs to share examples of how community-focused collaboration strategies can translate into training and professional development opportunities that other volunteer organizations can benefit from and implement, too.  

The Training Designs feature of e-Volunteerism is based on the recognition that orientation, induction, and training are critical to the success of each volunteer and to the entire volunteer involvement effort. Great training starts volunteers on the path to positive service experience and helps provide the greatest benefit to the organization, too. In this issue, new Training Designs Editor Karin Davis begins her tenure with an article on how basic adult learning principles can enhance volunteer training. You don’t have to be an expert in adult development to understand and apply these principles, but knowing them will make you a more effective trainer.