Engage Library
When I conducted my first workshop in England in 1992, I vividly remember discussing the topic of organizational image. I asked participants how long their organizations had been operating in the community. When one response was "since the Crusades," I knew I wasn't in Kansas…
January 2003
One of the truly neat things about volunteering is that is allows people to make a contribution to the world in which they live. With formal volunteering this is only true, of course, to the extent that organizations allow people to volunteer, thus recognizing that ability to…
January 2003
Minnesota is pleased to announce the beginning of a new statewide association for people in the field of volunteer administration, the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA), affiliating thirteen previously-independent professional networks (and growing). This…
January 2002
Imagine that some catastrophic event hits your community, and residents are unable to use telephones, the Internet, or other communication tools we take for granted. Did you know that there is a vast global network of volunteers ready to get help to you quickly and efficiently?…
July 2002
At the recent Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City many non-Canadians would have heard our national anthem, "O Canada," for the first time. Of course, it is a young anthem, adopted only 35 years ago. Canada is a young country but we have a long history of volunteerism. During 2001…
July 2002
"Time dollar" advocates claim that their currencies are not money, when in fact they are - special-purpose monies that function differently from the general-purpose monies we are accustomed to using. Does this mean that time dollars are a detriment to volunteerism? Not…
July 2002
I began work as a Coordinator of Volunteers in 1964. A year later I started writing poetry and haven't been able to stop since. I only hope this is not another occupational hazard in a profession already well supplied. Still, it's true that poetry can say some things hard to…
July 2002
During the period of 1975 to 1998, the defining change in volunteer involvement was the shift in styles of volunteering from the Long Term Volunteers, who had dominated volunteering in the 20th century, to the Short Term Volunteers, who struggled to balance the demands of work…
July 2002
Susan and Steve explore the question:
Are people who are required to do unpaid service really "volunteers"?
July 2002
One of the least-researched areas of volunteer involvement in the United States is that of ethnic volunteering. Hispanic volunteering, in particular, has received much less attention than it deserves considering the vast increase in size and importance of the Hispanic population…
July 2002
Rather than offering a training design, I'd like instead to share a lot of quick ideas with you that I have learned and found invaluable in almost 30 years as a trainer. Instead of adding more words than you would ever want to read about each idea, let me just offer them in "…
July 2002
Mary Wiser, innovative director of volunteer services at the Courage Center in Minnesota, lost her fight with cancer but remains in the memory of the many volunteer program managers who saw her as a mentor. Unfortunately, Mary was not a writer, but her friends have culled her…
July 2002
Volunteers have always been the backbone of sports, leisure and recreation programs, so we decided to do a quick round-up of Web resources in this area. What follows is a mix of things:
research studies and articles
forms and policies
workbooks and manuals
And just for fun we…
July 2002
The refrain is heard time and time again in the groups and organizations of modern society. Schools have been crying out for ages about the shortage of math and science teachers. Corporations have been wailing about the lack of skilled workers. Community issues go un-addressed…
January 2002
The fiasco of the United States Presidential Election 2000 in Florida made a mockery of a democracy's fundamental activity: voting. Mountains of paperwork analyzing what went wrong with election technology or election laws have accumulated in election offices, legislatures and…
January 2002
At a time of world crisis , this paper calls for proponents of volunteerism to join together in a rethink of priorities and programs. Managers of volunteer programs and volunteers are challenged to take a big picture approach and see volunteerism as a powerful tool in…
January 2002
The Internal Battle by Steve McCurley
Niccolo Machiavelli is famous for writing a book entitled The Prince, which is about gaining and exercising Power. "Power" is something that you don't hear discussed much among volunteer managers, since most of them don't have it. In fact,…
January 2002
Steven Farmer and Donald Fedor have taken a look at factors which make volunteers decide to continue and increase their contribution of volunteer time and effort to a particular organization. This issue is a serious one to effective involvement of volunteers, since the…
January 2002
The activities in this training module are intended to foster a sense of teamwork and collaboration among paid and unpaid staff, among leadership and members, and in situations where management, paid staff, and volunteers participate equally. The activities may be used…
January 2002
Print periodicals in our field emerged in the late 1960s. What were the topics of interest back then? Browse the tables of contents of the forerunners of today's publications and discover what has changed--and what hasn't.
January 2002