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With the release of our newest addition to the online bookstore, Share of Mind, Share of Heart, we are reminded that volunteer management is not just about filling volunteer roles and day-to-day operations. Volunteer managers are charged with inspiring and engaging volunteers in a way that encourages them to keep coming back or praise our organizations when it's time to move on.
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Featured Title
| Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits Sybil F. Stershic
| In a world crowded with advice on every business front, where marketing so often focuses on the creative aspects of promotion, Stershic shows you how to bring the personal back into the conversation because, in the end, it's not as much about the marketing materials, as it is about the people.
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Engaging with volunteers, staff, and the executive team, to create and stay true to the brand promise in your marketing materials, is not only recommended, it's necessary. Stershic helps you understand that maintaining public awareness of your organization starts with the team of people who matter most.
Read the an excerpt from this book below.
This book is available in e-book (PDF) for immediate download. (US$14.00)
Order Order Share of Mind, Share of Heart today! |
Other Resources | Keep Those Volunteers Around by Bill Wittich
| Because nothing is more frustrating than to be continually searching for new volunteers to replace the ones who drift away, this book is filled with easy-to-read, practical information and inspirational quotes to help "keep those volunteers around." Each of the twelve chapters focuses on a way to excite, inspire, and motivate volunteers. Illustrates techniques for using humor in the workplace, giving fast feedback, being a "coach," hiring the best, empowering volunteers, and demanding excellence.
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This book is available in e-book (PDF) format for immediate download (US $12.00)
Order Keep Those Volunteers Around today! | Keeping Volunteers: A Guide to Retention Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch
| Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch have once again provided a thoughtful, easy-to-read, and totally practical book on a subject of critical interest to every volunteer program manager. Keeping Volunteers focuses on demonstrated methods for enhancing volunteer retention and commitment.
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This book is available as an e-book (US$10.00).
Order Keeping Volunteers: A Guide to Retention today! | Making Dreams Come True without Money, Might or Miracles: A Guide for Dream-Chasers and Dream-Catchers Ivan H. Scheier
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Special sale! This extraordinary book, the last from volunteerism pioneer Ivan H. Scheier, urges us all to nurture dreams--our own and those of others. Every important social, community, and personal change starts with a spark of inspiration flamed by creativity and will. But all too often, dream-chasers never even start the race. An ideal book for volunteer managers who play the role of "dream-catchers" every day. Aren't most volunteers "dreamers"?
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This book is available in paperback at the sale price of $7.50!
Order Making Dreams Come True without Money, Might or Miracles today! | e-Volunteerism: The Electronic Journal of the Volunteer Community
"Retention vs. Attrition: How to Keep Volunteers Coming Back for Years " True, some turnover is expected and even projected. Oftentimes though, good volunteers are lost because of exceedingly preventable reasons. This article categorizes and annotates a variety of free online sources on retention and burnout, making it easy for e-Volunteerism readers to gain a comprehensive picture of a complex and essential issue.
"Volunteer Retention and Feelings of Connection" In this article, frequent contributor Rick Lynch helps us to understand the importance of a volunteer's feeling of connection to an organization in terms of volunteer retention. He offers in depth tips on how to make your volunteers feel more connected as well as how to avoid creating feelings of alienation.
e-Volunteerism subscribers can log in here.
Non-subscribers can read these and all journal articles from the past 12 years with affordable 48-hour access. |
Book Excerpt
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Engagement Matters
Excerpted from Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits by Sybil F. Stershic, WME Books, 2012. www.WMEBooks.com
Engagement Matters
Your best efforts to advance your mission by creating a favorable impression of your nonprofit depend upon how engaged your employees and volunteers are in supporting your organization. But what exactly is workplace engagement? While a popular management topic, people have difficulty articulating what engagement really means.
An easy way to understand employee/volunteer engagement comes from research firm BlessingWhite's description of the difference between employees who are engaged and those who are not:
Engaged employees stay for what they give - they like their work and are able to contribute, whereas disengaged employees stay for what they get - a comfortable job, good salary, and decent job conditions.
Who would you rather have work in your organization?
Because their work is mission-driven, nonprofit employees/volunteers can be presumed to be more engaged than employees who work in the for-profit sector but are not necessarily so (depending on the organization's culture). Research suggests a nonprofit employee/volunteer's passion for the mission may not be enough to sustain his/her on-the-job engagement. "This varies by organization," according to Bill McEwen, Customer Engagement Practice Leader for Evolve Performance Group and former Gallup consultant, "as some [managers] are super in recognizing and energizing those who work for them, while others may pay great attention to their mission and relatively little attention to the people called upon to fulfill it." ... Any organization oblivious to low morale and high turnover risks brand disintegration.
Marketing from the Inside Out
If you're fortunate to have a workforce of skilled employees and volunteers who believe in your brand, how do you engage them and keep them engaged? You start by recognizing them as your most important internal audience - especially given their individual and collective impact on your nonprofit brand...An "inside-out marketing" approach enables you to take care of these internal stakeholders so they can take care of your external stakeholders: clients, customers, members, donors, referral sources, corporate and community partners, etc. Applying marketing inside your organization addresses both the rational and emotional sides of employee engagement:
- Rationally engaged employees and volunteers "understand how their work contributes to the success of the organization"
- Emotionally engaged employees and volunteers "feel inspired to do their best."
Permission is granted for organizations to reprint this excerpt. Reprints must provide full acknowledgment of the source, as cited here:
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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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