Description

Volunteer Vancouver has been innovative in its emphasis on what they’ve coined as “A People Lens”: seeing all the work of an organization as dependent on having the best people – paid and volunteer – delivering mission-driven services. There’s a lot of interest right now in how to engage “highly-skilled” volunteers, particularly professionals, in meaningful service opportunities. This guidebook highlights ways real organizations have found creative and innovative volunteer projects for a wide range of volunteers, often teaming them up with agency executives. The “101 Ways” refers to the unusual and intriguing titles proposed for such positions along with each case study. And Volunteer Vancouver practices what it preaches: they utilized a working group of talented volunteers to put this book together.

Table of Contents

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Brief Excerpt

"A shift in the WHY of volunteering"

For the not-for-profit leader looking to engage this new kind of volunteer, some of the tried and true rules still apply:

• Take time to clarify and understand the person’s interests and motivations.
• Encourage, acknowledge, recognize—in other words, be a good people leader.

The new reality means new approaches too:

• High capacity volunteers demand more one-to-one time, but since they produce more, you can be more selective in choosing volunteers.
• Volunteers new to not-for-profits, and especially those who highly value their own time and abilities, often want to see quick and dramatic results. Educate them early and frequently as to the scope and scale of your change model and its impact, no matter how modest.

Isn’t this what it has always been about? All of this might be interpreted by some as a disappointing shift in values on the part of a new generation of volunteers and not-for-profit leaders, from good-heartedness to uninspired pragmatism. However, it turns out that the leading outcomes of many of these engagements are relationships of tremendous mutuality.

Jointly vesting in strategically important projects compels volunteer/not-for-profit teams to work intensively together for success. In these circumstances people not only learn but also actively integrate new processes, systems and practices. Perhaps more significantly, many on both sides of the exchange also experience a broadening of their outlooks and attitudes. These are the kinds of society-altering changes that the voluntary sector advocates for, and that volunteerism, in whatever form, definition, or fashion, will always be about.

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