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The majority of e-Volunteerism readers are leaders of volunteers and many of us play a significant role in training volunteers. But should that be the case? In this Training Designs, editor Erin R. Spink asks some tough questions about the role that leaders of volunteers play in training volunteers. By looking into what she calls “the trouble with training,” Spink offers insights into why and how this could look different.

Have you ever felt like you are working all alone in volunteer management, or being pulled in different directions by groups working in siloes? Then you will be excited to hear about the launch of the new National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement, a group that developed after the 2017 National Summit on Volunteer Engagement Leadership “to guide future collective action at the national level towards embracing volunteer engagement as an effective strategy to address community needs.”

In this Voices, author Allyson Drinnon hears from some of the people active in the National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement movement. They explain why this collective action at the national level will advance the power and potential of volunteer engagement.

Episodic volunteering – as one-time or short-term volunteering is often called – is becoming the norm as times change and individuals move away from traditional volunteer roles that require consistent, long-term commitments. Technology has made it easy to find and sign up for events on the spur of the moment. It also makes it easier for organizations to organize such events and perform volunteer management functions such as recruiting, scheduling, and follow-up. Some of these events involve thousands of volunteers, and include marathons, sporting competitions, and festivals. 

One such mega event was the World Meeting of Families and the visit of Pope Francis to Philadelphia in 2015. In this Research to Practice column, reviewer Laurie Mook looks at the results of a study of the experiences of over 2,400 volunteers at this mega event in the City of Brotherly Love. Mook’s examination provides useful insights for episodic volunteer management.

What can an organization learn by examining why some people choose not to volunteer? In this issue’s Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews an article by researchers from Australia and the Netherlands that focuses our attention on these non-volunteers.

While we know a lot about volunteers, their motivations, and issues related to volunteer management, we know far less about non-volunteers. Using the concept of ‘volunteerability’ – defined as an "individual’s ability to overcome related obstacles and volunteer, based on their willingness, capability, and availability" (Haski-Leventhal et al., 2017, 2) – the authors in this study reviewed literature, held focus groups, and conducted a survey to understand the barriers that non-volunteers face in their willingness, capability, and availability to volunteer.

Although the article is positioned in terms of informing social policy, the findings are also useful at the organization level. Understanding the non-volunteer perspective can be helpful in attracting and retaining new volunteers to your organization. 

As volunteer managers struggle with a lack of time, the hours spent on volunteer training typically shrinks. The up-front investment in a volunteer decreases dramatically, depriving volunteers of a crucial connection with the organization’s mission.

In this Training Designs, Meridian Swift—a well-known volunteer manager, author, and blogger—explores why training should be embraced as an investment that will influence a volunteer's future commitment. Through this article, Swift will help volunteer managers discover ways to manage the time they need to make this investment. 

Why do volunteers break the rules? This Research to Practice reviews an ethnographic study of an animal shelter where disruptive behavior by volunteers was a regular occurrence. This disruptive behavior was defined as “any behavior that either explicitly violated a rule or was identified by more than one staff member as disruptive” (Jacobs, 2017, 31). Researcher Molly Jacobs volunteered four days a week for a year at the shelter, keeping extensive notes of her observations and interactions. She also interviewed paid and unpaid workers. In her analysis, Jacobs was able to identify different ‘rule breaking’ categories and analyze why this occurred.

This Research to Practice review of this study provides an opportunity to think about these types of disruptions in your own volunteer context, and perhaps determine different ways to handle them.

When volunteer management consultant Sheri Wilensky Burke hears about an organization’s poor volunteer retention, she often discovers that the organization has not defined retention goals. “It’s common to set goals for recruiting volunteers and other metrics, but often organizations don’t consider what successful retention really means,” she notes. “Surely it is not realistic (or even desirable!) to expect that every volunteer will stay forever. But without setting goals for the desired length of volunteer commitment, it is difficult to assess if the organization has an actual problem keeping volunteers engaged or instead has a perception problem in its assessment of their retention.”

In this e-Volunteerism feature, Burke argues that volunteer evolvement is critical to volunteer retention—and makes the case that volunteer evolvement goes a long way toward meeting volunteer retention goals. Here, she defines volunteer evolvement as enabling volunteers to take on greater responsibilities within an organization, much like a volunteer “career ladder” that offers them the opportunity for growth and new experiences. “Even the most engaged volunteers can get bored from doing the same thing repeatedly,” she argues. “Just like paid staff who want professional development and promotion, many volunteers similarly desire new challenges in their volunteer careers. What better way to recognize your most committed volunteers than by asking them to take on new tasks and/or assume a leadership role?”

Volunteer recruitment messaging is long overdue for an overhaul. But what wording works best? This Training Designs article will walk you through the technique of “testing” messages to determine which are most effective with different audiences. You’ll learn how to design and develop your own recruitment test using a simple A/B (split testing) method that Training Designs Editor Erin Spink has used successfully. Through this article, you will have all the tools you need to design your own tests. And you’ll be on the way to improving future recruitment results.

What role can volunteering and leaders of volunteer engagement play in developing future leaders? This Research to Practice reviews a new instrument developed specifically to help volunteer resource managers identify future leaders in their volunteer base.

Recognizing that many of the qualities that prompt individuals to volunteer are also qualities of leaders, leadership development researchers Janina Fuller and Curtis Friedel set out to develop a way to identify volunteers who had the desire and potential to develop as leaders. To do so, they conducted two surveys with volunteers from HandsOn Network affiliates across the U.S. The first survey aimed to understand volunteers’ perceived advantages and disadvantages of developing leadership as volunteers. The second survey posed questions to volunteers to capture leadership behaviors and intentions. As the authors write, “Organizations that purposefully recognize their volunteers’ leadership skills generate positive consequences not only for themselves and their volunteers, but also for the clients and the communities they serve.”