There’s nothing quite so satisfying as finding the right book at the right time. Here are a few books that found me when I was ready for them. They show up frequently in my thinking, writing, and facilitating. Most of them are not about volunteer engagement per se. However, they all deepened or expanded my…
Category: <span>Volunteer Worth</span>
It’s that time of year again. The time when we sort out the best and the worst of the year behind us. I thought I might use hours, a common volunteer engagement metric, to assess key relationships in my life. As I review my calendar, one friend stands out for the amount of time we…
[Link to the latest version of this blog – typically updated during National Volunteer Week in the U.S.] “The most enduring and controversial question within the field of volunteerism is the one that relates to the ‘value’ of volunteers and the hours they contribute”. Andy Fryar This enduring question comes to the forefront each year…
[This is an old post. Please visit Value of a Volunteer Hour: When and Where to Use Wage Replacement Rates (or Not) for an updated version.] “The most enduring and controversial question within the field of volunteerism is the one that relates to the ‘value’ of volunteers and the hours they contribute”. Andy Fryar This…
1 Abandon numbers and dollars when describing volunteer value. In folk tales, when a gift is counted or priced, it loses its magic.1 2 Remember that you cannot measure everything that matters, especially when it comes to community and volunteerism. As William Bruce Cameron puts it, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not…
In a 2018 article, nonprofit leader Jan Masaoka called the nonprofit sector to task. She named the growing professionalization of the sector and its reliance on consultants as a step away from nonprofit roots in activism and the causes that drive it. This shift has led to increasing “sophistication” in nonprofit operations, with paid professionals more…
I often begin workshops on volunteer engagement asking people about their volunteerism and what was meaningful about it. Not once has anyone said that what was most meaningful about their volunteer work was serving 104 hours. Conversely, as a former nonprofit executive, I am keenly aware that organizations need to demonstrate effectiveness. Yet when we…
In June, I wrote a blog about the dangers of centering the service experience primarily on volunteers while the client, staff, and organizational needs took a back seat. The question of who we center in volunteerism has stuck with me (thanks to Vu Le’s post on who we center in fundraising). It got me thinking…
“Our lot as human beings dealing with a complex, multi-dimensional and paradoxical world, is that our knowledge can do no more than create a weak and rather uni-dimensional representation of that world.” Gareth Morgan It’s that time of year: National Volunteer Month. It also happens to be the season when Independent Sector (IS) releases…