Preparing Your Agency

Want to incorporate writing techniques used by professionals to inspire, motivate and recruit volunteers? Want to know what works in prompting a reader to move from the armchair to the work site? Of course you do – because you already know that you can make or break your program with the power of words that are written, spoken or enhanced by video.

The secret to words that work is all about showing, not simply telling. Concrete images and specifics show your potential volunteers exactly what you are about and why it matters. Vivid details help you build interest and add drama, and help your readers visualize the unique value you can bring to their lives. You can show them precisely how you (and they) can make a difference in their communities. This feature article by Dalya F. Massachi offers suggestions, examples and ideas to move you in the right direction. You’ll learn to think of yourself as your readers’ eyes, ears, hands, taste buds, nose – and heart.

This feature article is based on an excerpt of the author’s award-winning book, Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact.

In 2010, United Way of King County, in partnership with 501 Commons, launched the Volunteer Impact Program (VIP) in Seattle, WA.  Now moving into its third year of operation, this free program provides volunteer management training, assessment and consulting services to local nonprofits to strengthen their ability to deliver services through the effective involvement of volunteers. In a 2011 article called “The Volunteer Impact Program (VIP): An Innovative Approach to Strengthen Volunteer Engagement Capacity,” e-Volunteerism introduced the VIP model, shared some preliminary results for participants and discussed lessons learned in delivering this intensive program to local nonprofits. In this new feature, authors Nikki Russell and Liahann R. Bannerman revisit VIP and report on some exciting long-term positive results and the challenges of delivering VIP to nonprofit organizations.

Legal tender, cash, currency, change, capital, funds, riches, dough, bread, moolah, scratch, greenbacks, dinero, bank. . . According to fun-with-words.com, there are more terms for money than almost any other word in the English language! Even if there weren’t so many terms for the green stuff, it’s evident that money is an important part of our lives, for good and bad. After all, while many claim that money makes the world go ‘round, others claim that it is the root of all evil.

Certainly money and compensation is the root of a great debate among those who supervise a volunteer workforce. When it comes to the volunteer manager position, there is a disconnect between the demands of the position and the pay level attached to it. In this e-Volunteerism feature story, writer Paula Gangel analyzes a range of comparative salary levels to try and understand why there is such a discrepancy between work demands and compensation for the Director of Volunteer Services position. And Gangel presents options to help volunteer managers earn the proper amount in every paycheck. 

In February 2010, United Way of King County in Seattle, Washington, launched an intensive volunteer management capacity-building model in partnership with Executive Service Corps of Washington. Called the Volunteer Impact Program (VIP), it was designed to help food banks and meals programs more effectively recruit, involve and retain high-value volunteers. During this nine-month program, key staff benefited from cohort-based training and peer learning, and worked with volunteer consultant teams to assess volunteer management capacity and develop action plans. They also received small grants to implement key elements of their action plans.  

This e-Volunteerism feature article offers a summary of the VIP experience. It shares the preliminary results for VIP participants, and identifies lessons learned in delivering an intensive volunteer management capacity-building program to local nonprofits

In the spring of 2001, Canadian Blood Services (CBS) contracted the services of an external consulting firm to conduct a review of its volunteer program. The research had two key purposes. The first was to explore how CBS might improve both the involvement, and the management, of volunteer resources. The second was to summarize current and anticipated issues and trends in volunteerism and volunteer program management both in North America in general, and in other large Canadian health sector organizations. This article reports on the results of this review.