Preparing Your Agency

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 strengthen their ability to deliver services through the effective involvement of volunteers. In a 2011 article called “The Volunteer Impact Program (VIP): An Innovative Approach to Strengthen Volunteer Engagement Capacity,” e-Volunteerism introduced the VIP model, shared some preliminary results for participants and discussed lessons learned in delivering this intensive program to local nonprofits. In this new feature, authors Nikki Russell and Liahann R. Bannerman revisit VIP and report on some exciting long-term positive results and the challenges of delivering VIP to nonprofit organizations.

Legal tender, cash, currency, change, capital, funds, riches, dough, bread, moolah, scratch, greenbacks, dinero, bank. . . According to fun-with-words.com, there are more terms for money than almost any other word in the English language! Even if there weren’t so many terms for the green stuff, it’s evident that money is an important part of our lives, for good and bad. After all, while many claim that money makes the world go ‘round, others claim that it is the root of all evil.

Certainly money and compensation is the root of a great debate among those who supervise a volunteer workforce. When it comes to the volunteer manager position, there is a disconnect between the demands of the position and the pay level attached to it. In this e-Volunteerism feature story, writer Paula Gangel analyzes a range of comparative salary levels to try and understand why there is such a discrepancy between work demands and compensation for the Director of Volunteer Services position. And Gangel presents options to help volunteer managers earn the proper amount in every paycheck. 

In February 2010, United Way of King County in Seattle, Washington, launched an intensive volunteer management capacity-building model in partnership with Executive Service Corps of Washington. Called the Volunteer Impact Program (VIP), it was designed to help food banks and meals programs more effectively recruit, involve and retain high-value volunteers. During this nine-month program, key staff benefited from cohort-based training and peer learning, and worked with volunteer consultant teams to assess volunteer management capacity and develop action plans. They also received small grants to implement key elements of their action plans.  

This e-Volunteerism feature article offers a summary of the VIP experience. It shares the preliminary results for VIP participants, and identifies lessons learned in delivering an intensive volunteer management capacity-building program to local nonprofits

In the spring of 2001, Canadian Blood Services (CBS) contracted the services of an external consulting firm to conduct a review of its volunteer program. The research had two key purposes. The first was to explore how CBS might improve both the involvement, and the management, of volunteer resources. The second was to summarize current and anticipated issues and trends in volunteerism and volunteer program management both in North America in general, and in other large Canadian health sector organizations. This article reports on the results of this review.

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, delightful feature article for e-Volunteerism, Hanson asks an important question: “Could the basic principles of an organic approach to gardening also serve us as approaches for organizing and supervising volunteers?” Hanson provides the answer to this question and explains why the lessons she’s learned from her gardening can definitely be applied to working with others. You may never look at a tomato plant the same – and you’ll certainly never again plant a tomato beside a cabbage.