Engage Library

The Volunteer Probation Officer Law of 1950 formalized Japan’s unique and long-standing reliance on volunteers to assist professional probation officers and aid offenders of all ages with rehabilitation and to work on crime prevention. Today, just under 50,000 people from nearly…

This Training Design by Rick Lynch presents basic points about how to design an effective training session for volunteers. Co-author of the best-selling book, Volunteer Management, Lynch describes three distinct training arenas or “domains”  – training to increase volunteer…

In this Research to Practice, Steven Howlett reviews a recent research report that delves into how middle-aged and older Americans spend their time when they’re not at work. Published in January 2010 by AARP in Washington, D.C., this report collects information from a…

 “What kinds of work should volunteers do?” Volunteer program managers tend to run into this discussion in a number of different ways, often centering on the issue of whether volunteers can do some positions/work or whether only paid staff can do the work. And the usual context…

If you watched the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, you no doubt recall the “blue jackets” – the 25,000 passionate, talented and dedicated members of the Olympic volunteer team who worked at every event and venue leading up to, during and following the Games. In this e-…

One of the hardest things a volunteer manager may ever face is how to deal with an aging volunteer whose performance has begun to fall short of the organization’s expectations. In this special two-part series, e-Volunteerism tackles this important but often over-looked issue…

In this issue’s Along the Web, Steve McCurley presents another collection of Miscellaneous Good Stuff. In this regular e-Volunteerism column, McCurley covers a wide range of topics, ranging from trends in Internet usage and volunteering by seniors to issues related to student…

Two years ago I came from Poland to Taiwan to undertake a master’s degree program in International Human Resource Development. For over a year now, I have been volunteering in a Taiwanese non-profit animal welfare organization, Animals Taiwan. This experience led to my current…

Most people know about credit unions but consider them simply as alternate banking systems. In fact, credit unions are volunteer-run cooperative credit agencies that combine idealism and practicality. In this Voices from the Past, we learn about this rarely discussed corner of…

After 10 years of e-Volunteerism, convening editors Andy Fryar and Rob Jackson look back at the Keyboard Roundtable concept. They review why this electronic roundtable discussion of experts, tapping away on their computer keyboards, came into being, and revisit some of the…

Is the worst of the recession over? Many nonprofits are still feeling a dual pinch - more clients to serve and less money to do it with. But despite the downturn, many organisations seem to report steady volunteer numbers. Anecdotal evidence from the UK even suggests that…

Most of our readers manage volunteer programs in social, community, arts or environmental services – which leads us to easily overlook the fact that some of the largest and most complex volunteer efforts lie entirely outside these areas. In this Along the Web, we look at one of…

PDF Version with Handouts Single days of service through organized, large-scale events are growing in popularity around the globe. Although such episodic volunteering is a major trend in volunteering, too often we evaluate these events on the specific outcomes of that one day of…

For the last decade, we’ve watched professional associations of volunteer program managers – on local, state/provincial, national and even international levels - launch, thrive, wither, revive or stagnate in dozens of countries. Our conclusion? There is still no consistency of…

When screen writer and public relations consultant Jennifer Dornbush volunteered to be a guinea pig for a friend working towards her Myers-Briggs® certification, she had no idea how much taking a personality assessment would change the way she viewed volunteerism. As a long-time…

Volunteer manager D.J. Cronin has a passion for volunteerism and the sector of volunteer management. He believes that volunteerism is an agent for real and tangible change around the globe and a key to harnessing volunteer effort. And he believes that in today’s busy and…

There’s a huge train leaving the station, and it’s loaded with resources that many say have the potential to fire a capacity building revolution in the nonprofit/government organization service “industry.” Let’s call it “The Pro Bono Express.” Pro bono is the latest buzzword…

In 1990, the Bethlehem Area School District in Bethlehem, PA., decided that every public high school student would perform 60 hours of unpaid community service during high school. The District gave students an open-ended list of approved organizations where they could perform…

Over the last few years, we have seen employer-supported volunteering grow into a vital element of the volunteerism field around the world. More recently, we’ve begun to see a shift from the so-called “team challenge” approach to volunteering (where teams of employees perform a…

Readers of e-Volunteerism and users of the Web site often want to find evidence to support the impact of volunteering. In short, does volunteering work? Finding evidence to support volunteering can be tricky, for all sorts of reasons. This edition of Research to Practice looks…