Volunteer Program/Resources Manager, Role of

Three British volunteers founded The National Trust in the UK 1895. In 2013, the Trust celebrated the involvement of over 70,000 volunteers in this conservation charity, one that protects historic places and green spaces while opening them up forever, for everyone. In terms of volunteer numbers, 2013 was the Trust’s most successful year ever, but that success isn’t just measured in volunteer numbers. In spring 2014, the Trust began the first phase of implementing a £1.2m investment in new systems and processes to support volunteering. A senior manager outside of the volunteering team described the change in volunteering and support at the Trust over the past three years as a “quiet revolution.”

In this e-Volunteerism feature, author Helen Timbrell, Volunteering and Community Involvement Director for the Trust, identifies the key things that helped bring about this “quiet revolution” – including how the Trust approached the challenge, the steps it took, and the order in which it did the work. Timbrell also presents how the Trust operated as a team and individually. This feature article is a follow-up to last year’s e-Volunteerism story about the Trust’s “Going Local” volunteer campaign, “Thinking Differently about Volunteering: Words from the National Trust.”

In 1984, a very important article about funding volunteer efforts was published in the Spring issue of Voluntary Action Leadership: “The No-Apologies Budget: How to Justify the Financial Support a Volunteer Program Deserves.” Written by Neil Karn, then director of the Virginia Division of Volunteerism, this article was the first strong argument for truly adequate funding of volunteer efforts. Thirty years after it was first published, e-Volunteerism is pleased to re-introduce this seminal article, which remains as powerful today as it was in 1984. The budget line items might look a bit different now, but Karn’s points still resonate in advocating for the support and tools volunteers continue to need in 2014.

The Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA) provides consulting services to nonprofit volunteer programs across the United States and Canada. VPA consultants are graduate students and faculty from five universities who volunteer their time to work one-on-one with leaders of volunteers. VPA was established with the help of funding from The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which continues to provide financial support for volunteer programs – within the animal welfare sector and beyond – to receive VPA at no cost. Currently, VPA is seeking to expand its outreach efforts and diversify its nonprofit client base.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, four authors from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte provide a brief history of VPA, an overview of the process, and a summary of its success to date. Based on normative data from over 100 nonprofits, the authors describe three common areas for improvement among volunteer programs. They also provide additional information for those interested in participating in VPA.

Ask care providers of chronically sick children or adults how they are coping, and Kathryn Berry Carter bets that they will say they are tired, stressed, and worn out. During her tenure as the Volunteer Services director of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Berry Carter has witnessed first hand how caring for someone with complex medical needs can be tough physically and emotional.

Berry Carter often wanted to find an efficient way for hospital volunteers at St. Jude to help parents get a meaningful break. For years, she notes, “we limped along, providing some respite care for pre-scheduled needs.” In the fall of 2010, Berry Carter’s team became determined to take a hard look at this logistical challenge and to find a way to fix

In this article for e-Volunteerism, Berry Carter explains the steps she took at St Jude to implement a thriving and successful on-demand respite care program, one that has become an integral component of St. Jude’s family-centered care approach. Though the article mainly discusses respite care in a children’s hospital, Berry Carter describes how the same principles can be applied to respite care in settings ranging from senior nursing care facilities and Alzheimer day care facilities to hospital organizations and other pediatric programs.The St. Jude experience can be replicated in any of these settings, notes Berry Carter, who also provides tips on implementing any pilot program that explores new roles for volunteers, regardless of theme. 

In 2009, Jeffrey L. Brudney and Lucas C.P.M. Meijs proposed a new way of thinking about volunteer resources: as a natural resource which must be managed sustainably or it will be exhausted. In their article, "It Ain’t Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management" (published in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Volume 38, Issue 4, and reviewed in e-Volunteerism by Steven Howlett), the authors argued that volunteer energy should be viewed as a human-made, renewable resource that people can grown, recycle and influence positively as well as negatively.

Australia has seen its share of natural disasters – most notably bushfires and floods – and the surge of spontaneous volunteering each emergency produces. While recent attempts to register volunteers in advance of a disaster are useful, too few are actually activated during an emergency because local officials do not have the resources or skills to coordinate them. In the spring of 2012, with the annual bushfire season right around the corner, Volunteering Victoria, the peak volunteering body for the State of Victoria in Australia, had a simple idea: Why not create a platform that links volunteer program managers across the state in times of emergency?

Launched in January 2013, the Volunteer Program Manager Register now has 70 skilled and experienced volunteer program managers ready to respond to calls for assistance in times of emergency and natural disaster in Victoria, Australia. In this feature article, author Alicia Patterson, the marketing and communications manager for Volunteering Victoria, explains how this Register is meant to work, and how it helps the helpers coordinate volunteers who are keen to assist with recovery efforts when disaster strikes. 

The Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA) hosted its biennial conference on May 8 - 10 in Minneapolis. MAVA is one of the premier professional societies in North America and its conference is always excellent. Participants come from Minnesota and way beyond, especially bordering Canada.  e-Volunteerism's editorial team members Rob Jackson and Susan Ellis were presenters and exhibitors – along with several other authors of past articles in this journal. So it seemed particularly appropriate to use the opportunity to return to one of Voices’ intermittent features and interview conference goers on site. 

It was one of those moments in time that starts a movement – a movement to increase the recognition and support given to Managers of Volunteers. In this feature article, author Claire Teal of Volunteering New Zealand explains how the movement got started at a 2009 National Volunteering conference, what has happened over the past two and a half years, and why she is excited about what she calls a “work in progress.” Teal explains that “VNZ is on target to launch both the competencies and best practice guidelines before the close of 2012,” two exciting accomplishments that will certainly be important to Managers of Volunteers world-wide.