Supervision

An increasing number of hospitals and other healthcare environments are now beginning to incorporate integrative health interventions into their settings to meet the stress or symptom management needs of both patients and employees. These practices often include massage, canine visits, art, music, energy healing, guided imagery, essential oils, yoga, and Tai Chi, and work in tandem with mainstream medicine to address everything from patient boredom to emotional distress, physical symptoms of pain, anxiety, and nausea.

While interest in integrative health interventions in hospitals has grown over the last several years, the use of volunteers in these programs has grown, too. And as integrative care expert Cathrine Weaver writes in this issue of e-Volunteerism, there has also been an uptick in the unanticipated need for emotional support and more focused monitoring of volunteers in these programs. “The integrative interventions volunteer role makes great demands on the individual, and these demands can take an emotional toll,” writes Weaver. “Understanding this has helped us see the importance of supporting these volunteers in a different way.”

In this feature story, Weaver explores how to engage volunteers in integrative health programs and how to provide the monitoring behaviors and support they need to maintain their own wellbeing while helping others.

High school students do not often think of nonprofits as an option for career-building. Although they may have been exposed to nonprofits through volunteering or community service requirements, they are generally guided by career counselors and their parents to have career aspirations outside of the nonprofit sector.

In this issue of Research to Practice, Laurie Mook looks at a mixed-method study of nonprofit professionals from various chapters of the Young Nonprofit Professional Network and explores how students initially became aware of nonprofit careers and the connection between volunteering and career selection. The implications for volunteer resource managers and their role in fostering the next generation of nonprofit leaders are discussed. The conclusion? At a time when the need for nonprofit leadership continues to grow, volunteer resource  managers can play an important role in nonprofit career decision-making for students.

The world is evolving and volunteers with it. Today’s volunteers have diverse lifestyles, preferences, and needs that must be accounted for when volunteer managers develop volunteer roles and fine-tune their personal leadership approaches. That said, one thing remains constant: the key psychological processes that drive human behavior.

New discoveries in brain science, psychology, and human behavior are disrupting business as usual and creating new opportunities to connect, collaborate, and mobilize volunteers for the greater good. In this feature article, volunteer engagement consultant and trainer Tobi Johnson presents four well-researched brain phenomena that she argues can be strategically tapped to engage and sustain volunteer participation at your organization.

Voluntas is a pilot project underway in New South Wales, Australia, that aims to test whether early intervention when conflict begins among volunteers can lessen the burden of destructive conflict. The pilot uses the services of volunteer facilitators trained in mediation to assist and intervene when there are difficult conversations to be had with and between volunteers.

The Voluntas committee is made up of mediators, HR professionals, and volunteer management experts to address an important unmet need in the volunteer sector: affordable conflict management services.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, authors Steve Lancken and Zeynep Selcuk explain the pilot and some of the questions it raises, such as: 

• What services are available to manage conflict and disputes?
• Can early intervention avoid expensive processes or loss later in the conflict cycle?
• Are volunteers more likely relate to volunteer facilitators and mediators?
• How does conflict impact volunteer engagement?

Voluntas’ experience will provide insights into some of the challenges in relationships that occur when volunteering.

Volunteers are the backbone of our communities, a fact that we all appreciate every day on the job while coordinating and managing volunteer programs. This article is about one volunteer manager’s successful experience helping a valued community member with special needs connect with a volunteer role that would suit her. Author Kayla Young explains that she decided to share her experience to provide encouragement to all leaders of volunteers who work with people who may need a bit of extra initial training and support. “With our busy schedules, a common reaction to special needs may be, ‘I’m sorry but I don’t have time for that,’” writes Young. “But as you’ll see from this story, a tiny investment in standing up for the potential of others can often yield big results for your organization.”