United States

In June 1979, Pennsylvania’s “First Annual Symposium on Volunteerism and Education” was convened in Harrisburg.  The keynote address was delivered by Gordon Manser, co-author of the 1976 book, Voluntarism at the Crossroads.  We dust off and republish his speech here, allowing us to look back through the prism of 31 years at the issues he predicted would affect our field in the coming decades.  Some – such as the impact of the gasoline shortage at that time or Proposition 13 in California – have evolved into somewhat different challenges.  Other themes continue to be very pertinent today.

While most attention was fixed on the human beings caught in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, there were many who immediately realized the plight of animals – especially family pets – who were truly in a life-or-death situation at the same time.  The Humane Society of the United States became coordination headquarters for weeks, first engaged in rescuing animals; then housing, feeding, and caring for them; and finally either reuniting them with their owners or finding and transporting them to new homes.  More than 10,000 animals were rescued and cared for in Louisiana and Mississippi alone. 

 

Betsy McFarland, Director of Communications in the Companion Animals Section of the Humane Society of the United States, also serves as the national staff member tasked with volunteer-related matters.  Without warning, Betsy’s office because deluged with offers for help from a special type of “spontaneous disaster volunteer”:  people who would drop everything to help animals in need.  It took weeks of unremitting activity and effort to cope, all with extraordinary volunteers. 

Listen to Betsy’s story in her own words in this audio interview.

 

How do you avoid having to sell a solution or future direction that the management or leadership team has created? Because it IS a sell job when a few people decide on a new way for the many.  When there are circumstances where any answer is a potential right answer – and there is a large group of stakeholders invested in that answer – there is another way:  large group interventions (LGI).  Instead of training people on a new direction and having to parry objections and dissatisfactions, including them in the creation process avoids the uphill battle.

There are several designs for large group participative events:  Search Conferences, Future Search Conferences, Open Space Technology, Real Time Strategic Change, World Café, and the Technology of Participation, to name some of the most popular.   There are some basic principles behind all of these techniques that are discussed in this article, along with specific design ideas when using the search conference method.

A “linear community” stretching over two thousand miles up and down the eastern United States, the Appalachian Trail was first conceived in the 1920s and completed in 1951.  From first to last, it was a project of volunteer initiative and ingenuity – and continues today to be a unique participatory wilderness experience, maintained by volunteers and engaging its almost 3 million hikers per year in communal sharing through written registers and chance encounters. 

The nonprofit sector has long been the domain of organizations and individuals interested in philanthropic activities and charitable work.  However, this is changing, as Corporate America discovers that nonprofits and employee-volunteering programs can be legitimate and useful business tools to promote their brand value.

The latest trend for companies is to create corporate nonprofit foundations and employee-volunteer programs to demonstrate corporate social responsibility (CSR).  Although having noble missions, the real intention of these corporate nonprofit foundations and inspired employee-volunteer efforts is to enhance brand value, increase overall company profitability, grow customer loyalty, and reflect company values in tangible ways. 

Two for-profit corporations, Bank of America and Toyota, are both enhancing their brand name through their respective nonprofit foundations and employee-volunteer programs, each of which helps Bank of America and Toyota to build stronger relations with their communities and stakeholders.

In this article, Kevin Kalra, himself a 2004 Toyota “Community Scholar,” explores what “brand value” is and how CSR furthers it.

Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, the first woman high school principal in the state of California, knew that retired teachers were living on incredibly small pensions, often without any health insurance. In 1947, she founded the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA).   But it wasn’t until 1956, after approaching more than 30 companies to offer health insurance to retired teachers, that she found one willing to take a chance on NRTA members.  The organization then expanded its membership to all retirees and became AARP in 1958.

Dr. Andrus was a remarkable volunteer.  Read her story.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, sponsored by US Senator Paul Sarbanes and US Representative Michael Oxley, represents a major change to federal securities laws. It came as a response to the large corporate financial scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing and Arthur Andersen. Effective in 2006, all publicly-traded companies are required to submit an annual report of the effectiveness of their internal accounting controls to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Provisions of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (commonly-referred to as “SOX” and sometimes as “SarbOX”) detail criminal and civil penalties for noncompliance, certification of internal auditing, and increased financial disclosure. SOX is all about corporate governance and financial disclosure.

It is generally accepted that while SOX currently has specific regulations only for publicly-held companies in the United States, all American businesses, for profit and nonprofit, will in some manner eventually be affected by its provisions.  The purpose of this paper is to summarize the Act and suggest ways in which it impacts or will impact the nonprofit community relative to employees, volunteers, board selection, and best practices. 

For purposes of this article, “volunteer” will be synonymous with “employee.”  Non-American readers will find the last section of the article, “Broader Interpretations for Nonprofits,” useful for any country.