Happy New Year and new millennium! Susan uses this milestone to envision her hopes for the future of professional development in our field, along with some move-it-forward resolutions.
Let’s use the start of the new century as an opportunity to to ask some genuinely hard questions about volunteer involvement in our organizations--what have we really accomplished and where do we want to go?
Here's a caution to all to examine the assumptions behind the “conclusions” reached by the new Independent Sector “Giving and Volunteering” in the U.S. study--or any other attempt to quantify volunteer activity.
The volunteer field's perspective was absent from the White House Conference on Philanthropy (guess they only meant money), as well as from discussions about “civic engagement,” “civil society,” and other community themes. Why?
Susan shares her list of major trends in the field right now. Do you see the same things, in the same way? Differently? And, even more important, what other issues do you see surfacing for the volunteer world--both good and bad?
It has long been impossible to get senior management to attend sessions about volunteerism designed for them. No matter that the invitation promises executive-level topics or includes an elegant breakfast, they don't "get" why they should come.
Guest writer Andy Fryar from Australia observes that effective time management is the key not only to successfully blend the needs of volunteers with those of the organization, but also to avoid burning out volunteer program managers.
A major reason employees are hesitant to accept high-skill volunteers is a lack of creativity in creating assignments for these volunteers to accomplish. Traditional approaches to volunteer work design almost inevitably lead to conflict.
What is the importance of volunteering by poor people, particularly those we consider “disenfranchised”? We in volunteer leadership have to refocus our energies on involving the people we “serve” as part of their own solution.
If the whole world is changing, how can volunteerism stay the same? Of course it can’t. But are we prepared to make fundamental changes as well as cosmetic ones?
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