Synopses & Reviews
Despite the challenges and pressures of the U.S. economy, Americans are still volunteering in record numbers. With nonprofits struggling to provide services that directly affect our quality of life, volunteers have become even more vital to nonprofit organizations. Now more than ever, effective management of our splendid volunteer resources is imperative if we are to evoke, focus, and sustain their motivation, resources, and skills into providing the growing array of human services offered by our people-helping agencies and organizations.
Covering all aspects of the management of volunteer programs, the Second Edition of The Volunteer Management Handbook has been completely updated to reflect the latest in volunteer resource management (VRM): best practices; effective policies and policy making; demographics and social evolution; planning and analysis (program and participant) in volunteer programs; recruiting, orienting, and training volunteers; volunteer evaluation (program and volunteer); ethics and professionalism; and state, national, and international programs.
Edited by nonprofit expert Tracy Connors, this practical volume provides useful perspectives and guidance for volunteer resource management issues, as well as highlighting and explaining the trends, issues, and developments that lie ahead. Contributions are featured from visionary nonprofit professionals, outlining the present and future of more successful volunteer resource management, to explain how to:
Manage more effectively within dynamic, fluid organizational and program environments, including managing performance in both a strategic and tactical context to achieve impressive results.
Use advanced information management technology and networking to change "technology walls" to "program bridges" at every stage of the VRM process—from recruiting, marketing, and orientation, to coordination, scheduling, evaluation, and recognition.
Understand—and change—organizational culture to establish a growth-filled environment for volunteers and staff.
Reassess your organization's volunteer resource management model and planning to develop VRM policies that help protect your organization from risk, yet promote involvement, quality programming, increased productivity, and greater volunteer satisfaction.
Use creatively and effectively the growing number of potential volunteer options offered by social media, economic conditions, cultural and technological advances to expand and enrich your VRM program offerings.
Now available as both an online and print publication, this invaluable guide offers seventeen additional online chapters, exclusively through the new edition's companion website. Learn to get, develop, and keep the right volunteers for your nonprofit with the proven guidance found in The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition, the must-read every nonprofit needs to create a volunteer-happy organization.
Synopsis
Completely revised and expanded, the ultimate guide to starting—and keeping—an active and effective volunteer programDrawing on the experience and expertise of recognized authorities on nonprofit organizations, The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition is the only guide you need for establishing and maintaining an active and effective volunteer program. Written by nonprofit leader Tracy Connors, this handy reference offers practical guidance on such essential issues as motivating people to volunteer their time and services, recruitment, and more. Up-to-date and practical, this is the essential guide to managing your nonprofit's most important resource: its volunteers.
- Now covers volunteer demographics, volunteer program leaders and managers, policy making and implementation, planning and staff analysis, recruiting, interviewing and screening volunteers, orienting and training volunteers, and much more
- Up-to-date, practical guidance for the major areas of volunteer leadership and management
- Explores volunteers and the law: liabilities, immunities, and responsibilities
Designed to help nonprofit organizations survive and thrive, The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition is an indispensable reference that is unsurpassed in both the breadth and depth of its coverage.
Synopsis
Praise for The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition
"People are central to creating change and addressing challenges in our communities. By finding new ways to collaborate, share best practices, and develop effective volunteer service opportunities, we will create real solutions. The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition is an invaluable tool for the service sector." Michelle Nunn, CEO, Points of Light Institute
"This handbook is a uniquely useful resource for all managers and administrators of volunteer programs in America and elsewhere. Its chapters provide thoughtful but practical 'how to' advice for all key elements of operating a volunteer program. Chapter authors are outstanding leaders in the field. I strongly recommend this book to anyone concerned with starting, running, or improving a volunteer program." David Horton Smith, PhD, Harvard University; Research and Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Boston College; Visiting Professor of Nonprofit Research, City University London, UK; founder of ARNOVA and of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
"The new edition of The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition is an exciting resource for leaders searching for strategies for success, on their journey to leadership. A great addition to a leadership library." Frances Hesselbein, President and CEO, Leader to Leader Institute
"In an era where volunteers are an increasingly important part of more and more nonprofits, Connors has again gathered the most current data from experts and then provided the tools to help nonprofit managers do their best with this key resource. Well organized and well sourced, this book should be part of any nonprofit leader's toolkit." Peter Brinckerhoff, author of Mission-Based Management
About the Author
Tracy D. Connors has published eight nonprofit management handbooks—an unsurpassed publication record in the field of not-for-profit management—a field that he helped advance and define beginning with the first NPO handbook in 1980. He is an NPO management consultant, a Leadership Faculty Member for HandsOn University, and a PhD student in Nonprofit Organization Management at Capella University completing a Dissertation focused on achieving and sustaining excellence in human services management.
Table of Contents
Preface.
Part One Volunteer Resource Program Assessment, Analysis, and Planning.
Organizational Assessment/Planning.
Chapter 1 Volunteer Models and Management (R. Dale Safrit, Ed.D. North Carolina State University and Ryan Schmiesing, Ph.D. Ohio Community Service Council).
Chapter 2 Volunteer Demographics (Harriett C. Edwards, Ed.D., R. Dale Safrit, Ed.D. and Kimberly Allen, North Carolina State University).
Chapter 3 Preparing the Organization for Volunteers (Jeffery L. Brudney, Ph.D., Cleveland State University).
Chapter 4 Shaping an Organizational Culture of Employee and Volunteer Commitment (Judith A. M. Smith, D. M., HandsOn Jacksonville, Inc.).
Operational Assessment/Planning.
Chapter 5 Maximizing Volunteer Engagement (Sarah Jane Rehnborg, Ph.D. and Meg Moore, MBA, University Of Texas at Austin).
Chapter 6 Assessment, Planning and Staffing Analysis (Cheryle Yallen, MS, CNY Enterprises, Chicago, IL and Barbara Wentworth, MS).
Chapter 7 Policy Development for Volunteer Involvement (Linda L. Graff, BSW, MA, Linda Graff and Associates Inc.).
Part Two Strategic Deployment and Implementation.
Accession.
Chapter 8 The Latest Approach to Volunteer Recruitment Competency-Competence Pathways and Volunteer Resource Management Systems (Stephen Hobbs, Ed.D., WELLthLearning.com).
Chapter 9 Orientation.
Welcoming New Volunteers into the Organization (Harriett C. Edwards, Ed.D., North Carolina State University).
Training.
Chapter 10 Training Volunteers (Mary Kay Hood, M.S., Hendricks Regional Health).
Communications.
Chapter 11 Volunteer and Staff Relations (Nancy Macduff, MACE, Macduff/Bunt Associates).
Chapter 12 Communicating with Volunteers and Staff (Denise Sevick Bortree, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University).
Program Management.
Chapter 13 Volunteer Performance Management.
The Impact Wheel (Julie Cross, Ph.D., Stratagem, Inc. and Stephen Hobbs, Ed.D., WELLth Learning Network).
Chapter 14 Risk Management in Volunteer Involvement (Linda L. Graff, MA, Linda Graff and Associates Inc.).
Part Three Results and Evaluation.
Chapter 15 Evaluating the Volunteer Program.
Contexts and Models (Jeffrey L. Brudney, Ph.D., Cleveland State University and Tamara G. Nezhina, Ph.D., Depaul University).
Chapter 16 Evaluating Impact of Volunteer Programs (R. Dale Safrit, Ed.D., North Carolina State University).
About the Editor.About the Contributors.
About the Website.
Index.