What to Expect...
by Susan J. Ellis

Although the roles of volunteers and volunteer leaders have been present for hundreds of years, the 20th century produced the first formalization and articulation of the principles of volunteer leadership.

The Growth in Learning Resources for Volunteerism
For the first time, people were being hired specifically to recruit and involve volunteers as the focus of their work. This, in turn, led to the wish to find and share information on how to do this work better. By the 1970s in the United States, it was possible to read a few books and attend a periodic conference on volunteer program management. At the close of the century, learning resources for volunteerism had multiplied dramatically. This evolution seems to have concurrently developed in other English-speaking countries and in some European countries, notably The Netherlands. As we start the 21st century, interest in learning the skills of effective involvement of volunteers has spread around the world. In many cases, the only difference is that many countries are starting their learning processes with materials already available in English. After translating these materials, these non-English speaking countries eventually produce native resources that not only offer the information in their own language, but often accommodate cultural disparities. The Internet is speeding up this process.

Lack of Awareness of these Resources
But there is a problem. Even in the United States today, too many people seem to "discover" volunteerism by accident. It fascinates me how often someone will simply assume that nothing exists to help leaders of volunteers. For example, every few months some publisher will produce a book by an author totally unknown to the volunteerism field (never seen at conferences, never published an article on the subject first), purporting to provide the world "for the first time" with "new and insightful" tips on working with volunteers. These books never have a bibliography or list of association resources. They are rarely marketed well and generally are the publisher's exclusive title on this subject. Frequently, the result is that the book remains orphaned on the back list without much publicity.

Even worse is the number of people hired to be volunteer program managers who have no idea of the existence of the professional field. It's always been strange to me that someone would not even consider doing research for helpful materials. The first inclination of a newcomer hired into any other field would be to ask: "Are there any professional societies where I could get training? Are there books I might find in the bookstores or the library that could help me learn what I need to know?" For some reason, when it comes to volunteer administration, people presume there's nothing out there.

Culling Resources from the Past to Help Us Move Forward
This obvious ignorance of the field brings me to the purpose of this feature section in e-Volunteerism. Our field has a wealth of history of which few are aware. Recent invitees to our field have no idea of the resources available from which to learn. Even seasoned colleagues who are "plugged in" to what is going on in our field today are frequently clueless as to what has come before. Some wonderful resources have been forgotten.

Of course, it isn't easy to find these older materials. Only a handful of archives or collections of books and journals exist, and most are not very accessible. That's why Regis University and the Denver DOVIA have done us such an enormous service in scanning and posting hundreds of pages of Ivan Scheier's writings, going back to the 1960s, on a special website at http://www.regis.edu/spsmnm/dovia/ivan. But Ivan's writings are not alone. Myriad sources exist waiting to be unearthed and rejuvenated.

For that reason, e-Volunteerism, an innovative journal of the 21st century, will do its part to pay tribute to and make use of volunteerism's past. Each quarter, I plan to browse the Energize library, rediscover valuable writings from decades ago, and share them (usually excerpted) with e-Volunteerism subscribers. 1

This project must be a collaborative effort. Resources exist that are squirreled away in private collections, tucked away in basements, or buried under more modern materials. Help us find these missing or forgotten gems. If you have read something written before 1980 and feel it is still relevant, please suggest it. We are not only interested in materials from the United States and would love to see pioneer work from other countries. Let's honor--and learn from--our predecessors.