Engage Library
The 1998 book by Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman (Harper Collins, 1998), recounts the true story of (as the subtitle proclaims) “murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary.” But what does this have to do with volunteers?
July 2003
Somewhere, in an organization quite like yours, a staff member is in the countdown for the annual fundraiser... With the countdown underway, the lead staff member is juggling a thousand balls: confirming logistics for the entertainment; finalizing attendance figures with the…
July 2003
One of the hottest and most complex topics in volunteer management is the screening of volunteers. The amazing thing is that making comprehensive background checks of volunteers is a relatively new practice, almost unknown twenty years ago. It is now, however, a requirement in…
July 2003
One of the most fascinating things about volunteerism throughout history is that it represents the basic human response to "can you help?" It also reflects the culture, values and state of the times in which it occurs. What kinds of things are people willing to do to meet needs…
April 2003
Interviewing is a lot like archery. The athletes who participate in that sport have their mind on one thing: hitting the bull’s-eye. Their strategy is to develop the skills to hit the bull’s-eye portion of the target every time. Your target when you interview is the kind of…
April 2003
Ten Thousand Villages, the largest fair trade organization in North America, works to provide vital, fair income to artisans in Africa, Asia and Latin America by marketing their handicrafts and telling their stories. The nonprofit organization has its American headquarters in…
April 2003
The field of volunteerism spends inordinate amounts of time arguing the finer points of just what is and what is not volunteering. Most readers are familiar with a range of concepts that strive to ‘define’ volunteering. Such concepts include volunteering being conducted
without…
April 2003
Right now in volunteer management we are facing a rising tide: the increasing preference among potential volunteers for short-term, episodic volunteering. By all guesses, in practically all countries, the number of volunteers preferring a shorter term commitment is rising and…
April 2003
World Leisure, an international organization devoted to the scientific study and promotion of leisure, has as part of its structure several commissions devoted to matters consistent with this mission. One of these – the Volunteerism Commission – was founded to organize and…
April 2003
Every one of us has experienced at least one if not many times when we approached an organization and were treated in a less than satisfactory way. Perhaps it was the first time we arrived to volunteer and no one really knew what to do with us. How many of us have called an…
April 2003
The founding of the American Lung Association is intertwined with the work of many courageous volunteers who began by fighting the dreaded scourge of tuberculosis at the end of the 19th century. Read the stories of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau, the first volunteer president of…
April 2003
The emergence of employee volunteer programs has been one of the most significant developments in volunteerism in the past 20 years. In this issue of “Along the Web,” we look at 42 resources from six countries with solid information to help both businesses and charities make use…
April 2003
As many managers of volunteer programs with minuscule to nonexistent budgets would attest, money alone does not make an outstanding program, but it sure can help. When money does become available, the best way to spend it might be to first spend none at all. Get your bearings,…
April 2003
Tired of trying to get your group members motivated to help build membership? The General Federation of Women's Clubs knows that you have to make membership campaigns easy, rewarding and fun. We'll profile several of their membership-building strategies such as "Membership Round…
January 2003
In the late 1990s, the Volunteer Center of Battle Creek (Michigan) worked closely with the Points of Light Foundation (POLF) and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) to adopt and implement the POLF Family Matters program. The goal of the POLF Family Matters program was to “make…
January 2003
On a recent visit back to the United States, I heard very different opinions about volunteerism from two good friends. The first said that she will never volunteer again...she tells why. The second friend said she couldn't get enough of volunteering...and she tells why.
These…
January 2003
There has recently been a flurry of publications in several countries discussing the way that organizations might present the "value" of volunteering in terms of cash equivalents. In the US, a major national nonprofit currently provides the figure of US$16.05/hour as the average…
January 2003
Fund raising in Italy is deeply rooted in antiquity. We could go as far as to maintain that it was born 2000 years ago at the age of the Roman empire. Seneca and Cicero (De Officiis) might be regarded as the first two theorists of fund raising, not to mention the golden age of…
January 2003
Every once in a while we run into someone from Corporate America who, upon learning that we work primarily with nonprofits, proceeds to talk about how charities should be run more like businesses. We also occasionally find the Nonprofit Executive who is certain that social…
January 2003
Good, skilled people in the field of volunteer management are often unsuccessful because they function reactively in programs where there is little or no true commitment, understanding or support for developing and sustaining a healthy, cutting-edge volunteer program.…
January 2003