Employee volunteerism: A profit for the nonprofits?

What if the all the good corporate citizens out there suddenly incented their employees to volunteer with nonprofits and charities? Would there be a major impact in terms of community engagement, money raised, knowledge shared and overall benefit to society?...

The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer

So many people — media and corporate people in particular — like to talk about volunteers in the most flowery language possible: volunteers as selfless and hard-working and nice and sweet and huggable. Gosh golly, don't you love them?!? I'm...

Vancouver 2010: The volunteer effect

Ever wondered how an Olympic Games affects volunteerism in the host city after the fact? Actually, not many people have. But a team of researchers from Australia and the UK have set their sights on Vancouver to put together one...

An Interview with Janet Cloud

In honour of CharityVillage®'s 15th anniversary, we celebrate this sector's changemakers, individual men and women who have made significant contributions to the nonprofit and charitable arena, making change and a difference in the lives of many. Due to their hard...

Screening volunteers for attitude

Involving volunteers only to get work done or to save money are ideas that have long ago jumped the shark. The modern volunteer manager involves volunteers for much better reasons — to involve the community in the work of the...

Eight tips for recruiting and retaining volunteers in tough times

How does a financial crisis affect volunteering? Will volunteering go up or down, or change in other ways as the global economy worsens? One thing is certain: Because volunteers are real people living in real communities, tight budgets will have...

Being the best (board) volunteer you can be

It seems there are never enough volunteers to go around. It also seems that too often, people agree to take on volunteer roles without knowing what they’re in for, how much time it will take and the full extent of...

Tips for training your short-term volunteers

So you need volunteers badly for your next big campaign or event. And as volunteer manager - or executive director, or whatever position in your organization manages your volunteers - you want to make sure it's an experience the volunteers...

How to conduct volunteer screening

In order to ensure healthy and safe organizations, we should develop an overall risk management strategy that covers all aspects of how we operate. "Screening" is just one element in a risk management program that puts the focus on volunteers....

Governance Q&A: Helping volunteers exit gracefully

Shouldn’t a good organization provide a committee chair with a graceful way to exit within a reasonable time frame? Most of our organizations are highly dependent on the contributions of skilled and passionate individuals, and our lives would be much...