Leaders of volunteers can get steeped in practical details of managing volunteer involvement: recordkeeping, scheduling, training, outreach, etc. One way to prevent burn-out is to plan a little time for thinking deeply about the philosophy of volunteerism: why we volunteer, what we accomplish, and how volunteering has shaped our societies.
Look below at our resources that will help remind you why your role is so meaningful. Then, share what you discover with others to lift and inspire them.
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Featured Title
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Exploring Volunteer Space: The Recruiting of a Nation by Ivan Scheier
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Ivan Scheier wrote Exploring Volunteer Space in 1980 and it is still amazingly relevant today. It is a philosophic-yet-practical exploration of the universe of volunteering, attempting to describe, define and explain how and where volunteering occurs. This book is out-of-print. We're offering the remaining copies at a discount.
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Read an excerpt from this book below.
This book is available in print. (US$5.00)
Order Exploring Volunteer Space today! |
More Resources |
This book is available in print at special discounted price of ($7.50). Order Making Dreams Come True .
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This book is available in print(US $16.95) or in e-book (PDF) format for immediate download (US $12.00). Order Visionary Leadership .
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Volunteering and the Test of Time Justin Davis Smith and Michael Locke (editors)
Drawing together a selection of articles, this book illuminates the ways that the political and social context in which volunteering operates has changed from the 1990s to the present.
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This book is in e-book (PDF) format for immediate download (US $16.00). Order Volunteering and the Test of Time .
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This book is available in print (US $24.95) or e-book (PDF) (US $16.00). Order By the People .
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Book Excerpt
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Reflections from Ivan Scheier
Excerpted from chapter 16, Exploring Volunteer Space, The National Center for Citizen Involvement, 1980.
I have sometimes been accused of being a thinker, and I've not chosen to object to that claim as decisively as I might have. Valid objections do exist, as readers of this book may have some cause to confirm. My own view is that a real thinker can deal with a wide range of issues and problems. Yet, in my whole life I can recall thinking seriously about only two problems: Why is it that people help one another? And, why is it that people work and enjoy it?
The questions are stated from the positive side because of long habit in the volunteer leadership field, for we are the people who prefer the study of the positive. Other fields may choose to focus on how and why things go wrong: neurosis, breakdowns in society, and so forth. We are the people who revel in what can go right - how and why people do good things - and we are the people who believe we can promote cause for rejoicing in a more humane future. I hope volunteer leadership never changes in this respect. Permission is granted for organizations to reprint this excerpt. Reprints must provide full acknowledgment of the source, as cited here:
Excerpted from Exploring Volunteer Space: The Recruiting of a Nation by Ivan Scheier, The National Center for Citizen Involvement, 1980. Found in the Energize, Inc. Online Bookstore at http://www.energizeinc.com/store/5-218-E-1.
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