Profession/Field of Volunteer Administration

This Training Design presents a thought-provoking, high-level exploration about the volunteer management field and its future. According to those who attended the recent presentation of this material by author Katherine H. Campbell, Executive Director for the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration, it is not for the timid!  Come prepared to challenge the status quo and examine the complexities of titles and the nuances of duties. Use this Training Design to provide an opportunity to talk with colleagues about how we define and influence the collective work we do as volunteer professionals.

e-Volunteerism readers raved about Part 1 of Erin R. Spink’s presentation on "Volunteer Engagement: Defining the Future of the Profession."  Posted in the last issue, one reader called it "a brilliant, educational and provocative article,” while another noted that it “challenges current thinking."

In this issue, Spink presents Part 2 of her study on volunteer engagement, a continuation that readers will no doubt discover is as provocative as Part 1. In her second installment, Spink focuses exclusively on the history of the term, and concludes that a proper definition of volunteer engagement is not only necessary and practical but a step that will help define the future of the profession

Consider the term that has become popular in recent years in English-speaking countries: “volunteer engagement.”  Do you really know what it means? Surprisingly, despite its widespread use, there was no research on volunteer engagement until 2008. In this two-part e-Volunteerism feature, Erin R. Spink shares her seminal research on volunteer engagement and explores why volunteer professionals have been talking about volunteer engagement without a definition for more than a decade.

In Part 1 of this feature, which is based on a presentation at a national Canadian conference and published in the current issue, Spink examines the work of four mainstream authors and their efforts to present a framework for how concepts like "volunteer engagement" are first used and then embraced. Part 2 of Spink’s article, published in our next issue, concludes that a proper definition of "volunteer engagement" is not only necessary and practical but a step that will help define the future of the profession. Readers of Spink’s article will be challenged, provoked and perhaps somewhat surprised as Spink questions who we are as a profession and where we're heading.

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