Volunteer Learning: How to Define It and Support It For Your Volunteers
Research, as well as practical experience, points to the myriad benefits of volunteering. For some individuals, volunteering may provide an opportunity for learning, particularly among younger volunteers looking to build lasting skills to enhance professional and personal lives. How do volunteers learn through their volunteering, and how might Volunteer Engagement leaders support volunteers’ learning? This Research to Practice reviews a recent article that investigates these questions. It also discusses findings from both the volunteer and Volunteer Management perspective, and offers some suggestions that may be particularly relevant for organizations that engage young adult volunteers in their programs.
Bailey-Boushay House,, Seattle WA
Thu, 11/20/2025Our facility has 3 programs, skilled nursing floors, an adult day health/outpatient program for those with HIV/AIDS and an on-site Emergency Homeless Shelter (for our homeless outpatient clients). Training and education for the three programs really is different.
All volunteers attend a full day on-site training day which includes regulatory training for our nursing home. At their first shift, volunteers learn more about how the programs work and are mentored by a current volunteer. Staff are always on site to assist.
Every 4-6 weeks I hold a Volunteer Gathering for volunteers to come, have dinner and learn from each other (the wisdom of the circle), share ups and downs, ask questions and build community. There is also an educational component. Volunteers share ideas and some are yearly. Topics included are directly connected to our population. A short video about Huntingtons disease, ALS or a staff member as a guest speaker. Education changes as our residents come with a variety of diseases. And we keep up with trends regarding our outpatient clients.
This does take planning and coordination. I know it helps with satisfaction and greatly helps with retention. In turn, our staff also build relationship with the volunteer and trust their skills. *we do require a minimum of 100 hours as our residents require time to build trust and seek ongoing relationship building.