Outlines the key executive decisions necessary to lay the foundation for successful volunteer involvement: policies, budgeting, staffing, employee-volunteer relationships, legal issues, cost and value of volunteers, and more.
The merger between the Points of Light Foundation (POLF) and Hands On Network (HON) clearly has potential for positive impact on our field but is also worrisome. What should we expect and do now?
After consulting and training in five countries this year, Susan comments on her observations of global volunteerism.
Have you found it easier to recruit a volunteer to do frontline, hands-on work than to accept a leadership position on a board of directors, advisory council, or key committee? This universal concern is also seen in DOVIAs.
Is it important for volunteer resources managers to do some sort of volunteering themselves, practicing what we preach? Susan wonders if making time to volunteer is a professional development activity.
Despite a few official volunteer statistics, we really do not have many facts. If we want to encourage researchers to do serious data collection about our field, then we need to articulate some better questions to ask.
In part 2 of her response to the dissolution of AVA, Susan explains why it’s important for a professional association to start with (and usually maintain) a single-nation focus rather than an international one.
The Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA) is no more. Susan muses on what we can learn from the demise of AVA to guide us in doing things better in the future and exhorts colleagues to take action.
