When Everyone's a Volunteer: The Effective Functioning of All-Volunteer Groups

Ivan H. Scheier

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.

Electronic format: Energize, 2003, 76 pages, ISBN 0-940576-35-X
Printed format: Energize, 1992, paperback, 63 pages, 8 ½ x 11, ISBN 0-940576-12-0

Electronic version:


Price: US$9.00


Print version:


Price: US$15.95


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

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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.

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