History

This special issue devoted to e-Volunteerism’s Co-Founder Susan J. Ellis begins with a feature by Rob Jackson, the Journal’s new Editor-in-Chief. In this article, Jackson reflects on the legacy of Ellis and her life’s work, including how and why she started the profession’s first online journal 20 years ago. He also shares reflections on Ellis’ work that has emerged in the last 17 months since her passing. And he looks ahead to the future of e-Volunteerism by sharing, he writes, some “exciting news and plans about the future for the Journal.”

The voices of international hospice and palliative care volunteers come through clearly in a new book, The Changing Face of Volunteering in Hospice and Palliative Care. Published in mid-2018 by Oxford University Press and edited by Ros Scott and Steven Howlett, it presents an international perspective, history, and information on hospice and palliative care through the eyes of different country experts. And it also includes insightful volunteer narratives to illustrate and aid the reader in understanding the volunteers’ perspectives.

In this Voices, co-editor Allyson Drinnon reviews this valuable resource, with a special emphasis on the voices and stories of hospice volunteers that unfold in this publication. 

In this Voices, Kerry Martin explores the evolution and significance of TimeBanking, a concept that operates on a very core principle: For every hour of service that members provide to one another, they earn an hour that’s redeemable for another service for them.

Through stories from and about TimeBanking members, Martin reviews the nuts and bolts of this growing movement. He explains how TimeBanking has expanded to 40 countries, why individuals and organizations are included, and its growing symbolism as the “core of community.” As Martin writes, “TimeBank members open their hearts to not only help one another but also be helped by one another.”

We're all trying to up our training game and learn best practices from those with demonstrated experience and excellence as trainers. Who better to learn from than e-Volunteerism’s very own Betty Stallings? The journal’s first editor of the Training Designs section, Stallings is a respected thought leader in volunteer engagement and training throughout the country and abroad.

As Stallings comes to the end of her training career, Erin Spink, the current Training Designs editor, interviewed Stallings and asked her to share not only her best training ideas but also additional tips, tricks, and recommendations to help today’s trainers grow in skills and knowledge. Stallings summarizes lessons from a lifetime of training experiences during her career as an international trainer, consultant, author, and keynote speaker who specialized in volunteerism, nonprofit fundraising, board development, and leadership. This opportunity to hear from one of the profession’s most revered trainers is not to be missed.

In 2010, Volunteer NOW and the Voluntary Service Bureau in Belfast obtained Heritage Lottery Fund money to conduct a two-year oral and social history project to capture the volunteer stories of over 110 people in all walks of life in Northern Ireland. The work led to the publication of a book called Volunteer Voices: Belfast’s Creative Extremists and an exhibit open to the public. The book also included several historical accounts of the evolution of volunteerism in Belfast, sometimes bleak but also hopeful. As the Foreword states:

Most of the past forty years of Belfast’s history has been turbulent, fractured and painful. The City suffered and over 1,500 of its people died; countless others injured. During the early 1970s Belfast experienced one of the largest movements of population in Europe since the Second World War. Later with the erection of ‘peace walls’ and interface barriers, it became, and still is, a physically divided city…Amidst this reality, however, are countless stories of people with hope. People equipped with enthusiasm and energy who gave their time as volunteers…and “faced the dragon’s fire” believing it was possible to make a difference.

In Voices, we excerpt some of the many inspiring examples of the power of volunteering told in this book. 

On June 6, 1939, youngsters who loved to hit a ball and run some bases played the first Little League baseball game at Park Point in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Today, what began as a three-team organization has grown into Little League^® International (LLI) – spreading across the United States and into 100 countries, involving nearly 1.5 million adult volunteers committed to helping young Little League players develop athletic skills alongside concepts of character and loyalty.

Despite its world-famous work and engagement of volunteers, there has been little exchange between LLI and the volunteer management field. In this Voices, Lori Renner Larsson sets out to fill this void with her review of Little League volunteers, answering questions about their structure and how they are coordinated while sharing insights about the lasting appeal of volunteering around children and baseball.

A community organizer is usually a social agitator who wants to build grassroots power. While a volunteer manager may be working toward social justice, the primary goal of this position is usually tied to a pre-determined objective, like service delivery or broader organizational support like fundraising. In practice, the roles often overlap. Both require a high level of interpersonal skills, insight into what motivates people, and the leadership to get those people to act in ways that benefit the community.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, author Aimee Inglis discusses the often fine line between the two fields and the tension this creates in the volunteer community. Inglis explains that “as a volunteer manager who is also trained in community organizing — and currently working at a nonprofit that organizes for social and economic justice and tenants’ rights — I have felt the line blur between the two fields. I have also felt the tension as both fields professionalize and learn the same lessons in silos where they would be stronger sharing notes.”

Inglis builds on her personal experiences as she examines not only the history of community organizing but also how community organizing and volunteer engagement have become part of the profession. Inglis also proposes ways for volunteer managers to bridge what she calls the unnecessary divide between these fields.

Most people are very familiar with the concept of a telethon, a word coined to combine "television" and "marathon." It’s a televised fundraising event, lasting many hours or even days, in order to raise money for a charitable or other worthy cause by combining a variety show or television production with solicitations for pledges from the viewing audiences. The first national telethon was hosted by Milton Berle in 1949, raising $1.1 million for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation over the course of 16 hours. Because the idea worked, the concept spread quickly and today examples of telethons can be found around the world.

One of the key factors in a successful telethon is, of course, volunteer involvement – and the presence of volunteers is frequently acknowledged on air. The celebrities who perform during the show donate their time, so they are certainly volunteers. The people who answer the telephones to accept pledges are all volunteers. And they are just the tip of the iceberg of people running special event fundraisers in conjunction with the telethon.

Over time, many factors have changed the impact of telethons, most critically the ability of the Internet to spread the word more broadly than television, with much less effort and cost. This Voices article shares this telethon evolution and reviews how volunteers continue to be part of the process.

Intrepid Australian volunteer and traveler Louise Rogers writes:

Don’t you love travelling? The preparation…the journey…the reflections…the recollections…and ah!...the experiences to be had?

I’ve had an amazing journey over the past 25 years, working in the voluntary sector in Australia and, in particular, the field of educating those who work with and lead volunteer effort. I’ve travelled through this time with many colleagues and friends, accumulating some wonderful experiences and being part of incredible changes in the volunteer world in Australia.

Now in the first flush of retirement, I have the opportunity, indeed the privilege, to reflect on those adventures – the challenges, the achievements, and the lessons learned along the way. As I look back, the landscape is barely recognizable. Like every other area of our lives, volunteerism is responding and adapting to rapid social, cultural, and economic changes.

Join Rogers in this special e-Volunteerism feature as she reflects on a quarter century in the volunteer world. You may find yourself nodding and smiling in recognition.