“One of the things I like about our agency,” said the Volunteer Manager, “is that we can do things just because they are nice*.” The faith-based foundation of her agency meant a Return on Values drove their work as much as a Return on Investment. Her comment stands as a stark counterpoint—or maybe a final…
Category: <span>Holistic Leadership</span>
Volunteers can be beneficial to organizations and the communities they serve. Yet, it’s hard to prove. Not that your team hasn’t tried. The volunteer hours painstakingly collected. The calculations of a financial value for volunteer time. The articles promoting the health or employee engagement benefits of volunteerism. Data about volunteers donating more money than non-volunteers.…
I’ve been wanting to write about right relationship in volunteerism for some time. It keeps surfacing in what I am reading and journaling, but I have struggled to sort it out in a blog. It seemed like an appropriate time to remember this blog is a sandbox for experimentation and community conversation. One of the…
It is easy to feel overwhelmed. Problems seem so big, and our hands and voices seem so small. Yet, there is something powerful about putting our hands to work in a meaningful way. There is something encouraging about discovering voices who are drawn to work that calls us too. It is a gift to have…
In his recent blog, nonprofit leader Vu Le wondered if nonprofits and philanthropy have become the “white moderates” that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned about in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Le called out fundraising practices “centered entirely on making donors who are mostly white feel good about themselves” as one example of…
COVID-19 is shaking up volunteerism in ways that would seem unthinkable just a few months ago. Many organizations cannot have their volunteers serve due to program closures or health restrictions. Other organizations have had to quickly re-design their programming and bring on volunteers to serve in new ways. This upheaval is jarring, but it offers…