Description

Provides an innovative framework for successfully leading an all-volunteer effort, whether it's a service club, community group, PTA, or religious congregation. Scheier challenges conventional wisdom about boards, fundraising, and membership development when applied to grassroots volunteer efforts – and he does this with a keen eye and humor. A highlight of the book is a collection of easy-to-conduct group interaction exercises.

Table of Contents

Readers' Reviews

We're always interested in receiving readers' reviews.

When you've completed the book, remember to submit a review!

Brief Excerpt

Excerpted from "The Need for Specialized Principles"
Are all-volunteer groups pervasive? Yes. Important? Definitely. Literally centuries of experience with them are part of our history. Then why can't we make these groups work better? I appeal to your own experience on this. It does seem to me that non-staffed groups often resemble roller-coasters. They go up with inspiring leaders, dramatic crises or other mobilizing events; they're down or dead most of the rest of the time. There are always happy exceptions, of course, but as a rule, it is amazing how such good individuals can make up awful groups.

All this suggests a need to explore development of a body of knowledge and set of expectations specialized to non- staffed volunteer groups. I find only a few scattered works that meet this need. By contrast, the subject of how to manage volunteers working with paid staff boasts scores of books, videotapes, and hundreds of workshops and conferences.

Concerned about whether you can view an electronic book?

Viewing the table of contents linked above is a good test to see if you can easily view electronic books. If you can successfully click on the link and open the table of contents, you should have no problem viewing the book. If you have problems, you probably need to install or upgrade Acrobat Reader. Click on the graphic below to download the latest version from the Adobe website. It is an easy download. They also have a support area if you continue to have problems with viewing.