Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch have once again provided a thoughtful, easy-to-read, and totally practical book on a subject of critical interest to every volunteer program manager. Keeping Volunteers focuses on demonstrated methods for enhancing volunteer retention and commitment. Effective volunteer programs of the future will worry more about maintaining the involvement of the volunteers they already have rather than waging continuous and expensive recruitment campaigns.  Are you keeping volunteers engaged for the long haul?

Chapters cover the basic rules of retention, how to make volunteers feel special and part of a team, handling volunteer burnout, moving people from short-term to long-term service, and more – even how to release a volunteer from service!

Relying on hundreds of program experiences and studies from around the world, Keeping Volunteers is the first globally-based examination of effective techniques for ensuring that volunteers feel valued, recognized, and connected with the organization's mission.

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We can further enhance the volunteers’ sense of effectiveness by giving them information as to whether and to what degree the results are being achieved. If we don’t do this, the statement of result will fail to have any motivating value, and it will be impossible for both volunteer and supervisor to know how well the volunteer is doing.

Many Volunteer Program Managers shy away from measuring volunteer performance, thinking that doing so would discourage or demotivate them. The opposite is more likely to be the case. If people can’t tell how well they are doing, if they can’t tell if they are succeeding or failing, they tend to get bored with the activity. There is also no incentive to try a different course of action, if you don’t know that your present course isn’t working. (p. 42)

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