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Online training for you or your entire organization to work successfully with volunteers! Learn More
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The
volunteer management field is well-equipped with several excellent texts, some
classics, that broadly cover the necessary elements for effective volunteer
involvement. Whether you are an experienced paid manager of volunteers, new to the profession, or a
volunteer leading other volunteers, these books will help you to institute
best practices and develop strategies for maximizing the potential
of volunteers.
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Featured Book
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Volunteer Management: Mobilizing All the Resources
of the Community, 2nd Edition
By
Steve McCurley and Rick
Lynch
Volunteer Management is the most
widely utilized text on managing a volunteer program in the world.
Authors
Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch designed Volunteer Management to provide
the new and the experienced volunteer program manager with both basic knowledge
and state of the art information, based on the more than 50 years of experience
the authors have acquired in their work with thousands of volunteer programs. And this
2nd edition is updated and expanded, too. -- A resource no leader of volunteers should be without!
See an excerpt below.
Order the book NOW! (e-book, US$18.00)
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More Resources with an Overall Look at
Managing Volunteer Programs
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Best of All: The Quick Reference Guide to Effective Volunteer Involvement
A compendium
of best practices in volunteer program management. Specifically geared for volunteer volunteer coordinators who may
not call what they do "volunteer management," yet helpful to even the most
seasoned managers of volunteers who are just too busy to search through libraries
of literature for solutions to their volunteer program shortcomings. From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Volunteer Program Success Outlines
the key executive decisions necessary to lay the foundation for effective
volunteer involvement: policies, budgeting, staffing, employee-volunteer
relationships, legal issues, dollar value of volunteers, and more.
Volunteer Management: An Essential Guide, 2nd edition
Truly
an "essential guide," this book from Down Under is filled with solid information for
both starting and strengthening a volunteer program in any setting. Over 90% of
the material is fully applicable anywhere in the world (and the information
specific to Australia makes fascinating
reading!).
Volunteer Management Audit A
validating tool for analyzing the effectiveness of an organization's volunteer
management practices, with complete score sheets and instructions to conduct
the process successfully. |
Book Excerpt
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"Enhancing the Status of the Volunteer Program"
Excerpted from Chapter 16 in Volunteer Management: Mobilizing All the
Resources of the Community, 2nd Edition
by Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch � 2006, Johnstone Training and Consultation,
Inc.
Enhancing the Status of the Volunteer
Program
To make the most difference, a Volunteer Program Manager and the volunteer
program itself must have influence in the larger organization. In order to have
influence, paid staff of the organization must place a high value on the
volunteer program. If they are to place a high value on the volunteer program,
staff must place a high value on the things volunteers do. Agencies will respect
Volunteer Program Managers only to the extent that they also respect volunteers.
They may like you personally, but they will only value you to the extent that
volunteers make a significant contribution to the agency.
In too many agencies, staff pay lip service to the value of volunteers,
but their actions say otherwise. Although they find the work of the volunteers
to be useful, they too often do not value it as highly as the work of paid
people....
Ensuring Respect for Volunteers
In order for the Volunteer Program Manager to gain influence, staff
must respect and value the contributions of volunteers. A theme of this book has
been to upgrade the volunteer program, to make it more mission-critical in the
life of the agency. As the Volunteer Program Manager begins to engage volunteers
in high-impact ways, staff will start to think about volunteers in new ways.
An example comes from a hospital volunteer program. For
decades, volunteers had done the usual things, such as transporting patients from
one place to another, acting as a runner in the pharmacy, or providing
information to visitors. The administration of the hospital talked about how "we couldn't stay open without volunteers," but, in truth, people never thought
of volunteers as doing things that were as important as the things staff did.
One day the director of volunteers met with the purchasing
manager of the hospital. With her, she brought the purchasing manager of a
large defense contractor who had agreed to volunteer his expertise to help the
hospital. She had arranged the meeting by telling the purchasing manager that
she had found a volunteer who might be helpful in purchasing. The purchasing
manager was skeptical about this, but agreed to the meeting. At the meeting,
the volunteer asked the purchasing manager three questions about the purchasing
system of the hospital. The purchasing manager was embarrassed to admit he did
not know the answers to any of the questions and was smart enough to see that he
ought to know them.
To make a long story short, the volunteer helped to revamp
the entire purchasing system of the hospital, saving it thousands of dollars
each year. As the purchasing manager told his peers about this, they began to
see volunteers in a different light and were receptive to talking to the
director of volunteers about new roles for volunteers in their departments. The
status of the volunteer department is now so high in this hospital that the director
of volunteers recently served as acting director of the hospital for two months.
To gain increased status for the volunteer program, Volunteer
Program Managers must act as leaders. They must make positive change in the way
people view volunteers. To do this, they should follow the planning suggestions
in the second and fourth chapters of this book, connecting the work of volunteers
to the mission in both traditional and nontraditional ways. As more volunteers
engage in new mission-critical activities, more staff will view them in new
ways.
Permission
is granted for organizations to reprint this excerpt. Reprints must provide
full acknowledgment of the source, as provided:
Excerpted from Chapter 16 in Volunteer Management: Mobilizing All the
Resources of the Community, 2nd Edition, by Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch �
2006, Johnstone Training and Consultation, Inc. Found in the Energize, Inc.
Online Bookstore at http://www.energizeinc.com/store/5-224-E-1.
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Energize, Inc. 5450 Wissahickon Ave., C-13 Philadelphia, PA 19144 [email protected] www.energizeinc.com
Energize empowers and inspires leaders of volunteers worldwide. Our specialty is creating and selecting the most relevant, innovative resources in volunteer management. We're advocates for the power of volunteers and for the recognition of the leaders who unleash it. About Us |
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