Essential/Favorite Resources Regarding
Volunteer Management and Volunteerism

Below are a list of my favorite resources relating to volunteerism and volunteer management. These are the books and online resources from trusted, established people and organizations, and I believe these should be required reading of anyone who recruits and supports volunteers.

This is a subjective list, not a comprehensive one, and I (probably) mean no disrespect to any resource I have not included.

These resources are listed in NO particular order of importance, and will be updated occasionally:

BOOKS:
To find purchasing information about any of these publications, visit Energize, Inc. or Amazon, or type the title into a search engine like Google

• Beyond Police Checks: The Definitive Volunteer & Employee Screening Guidebook
  by Linda Graff
  Provides details on all of the various methods you can use to ensure your volunteer program has everyone's safety in mind.

• Screening Volunteers to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse: A Community Guide for Youth Organizations
  Just 31 pages long, this guide should be read by every organization, not just those focused on youth.

• Kidding Around? Be Serious! A Commitment to Safe Service Opportunities for Young People
  By Anna Seidman and John Patterson
  It seems like there is a new initiative announced every week to promote volunteerism among youth. But ensuring youth safety in such programs seems to be largely ignored. This book helps to detail both possible problems and ways to prevent them.

• From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Volunteer Program Success
  By Susan J. Ellis
  This book changed the way I talk about the benefits of volunteering. "Bottom up" practice has been a buzz phrase for some time, and this book does not dispute its importance. Rather, its purpose is to help those who work with volunteers to be able to educate their organization's senior management to give real support to volunteers, beyond just lip service. It helps such in-house advocates to encourage senior management to look at the benefits of involving volunteers beyond "money saved in paying staff" and volunteer numbers.

• The (Help!) I-Don't-Have-Enough-Time Guide to Volunteer Management
  By Katherine Noyes Campbell and Susan J. Ellis
  This is, IMO, the best basic volunteer management book ever. Most people who manage volunteers have many, many other responsibilities; this book recognizes that, and provides ready-to-use resources and easy-to-use references to get you up-and-running immediately with the basics of managing volunteers. Best part: it helps a volunteer manager to enable volunteers themselves to take ownership of the volunteer involvement program and help run it.

 
ONLINE RESOURCES

• Energize, Inc.
  This for-profit company, lead by Susan Ellis, not only provides a massive library of books for sale relating to volunteer management, written by the best minds in the volunteerism field, but also features a number of free resources, such as Susan's "Hot Topic" each month. Be sure to subscribe to its email newsletters/updates.

• Volunteer Management Resources for the Involvement of Court-Appointed Volunteers
  The National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Association supports and promotes court-appointed volunteer advocacy for abused and neglected children in the courts system. Their web site provides an outstanding database of volunteer management resources, many of them by Steve McCurley, that are easily adapted to a variety of volunteer involvement scenarios. It's a complete volunteer management at your fingertips. In addition to general volunteer management resources and extensive resources on screening and supervising volunteers who will work with children are articles such as "Why Good Volunteers Do Bad Things," "Conflict Between Paid Staff & Volunteers," "7 Deadly Sins of Supervisors," ethics-related articles, and sample policies.

• How volunteer managers responded to the hurricanes in the USA Gulf Coast region 2005
  Nancy MacDuff hosted resources for volunteer managers involved in the relief efforts that followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Southern USA, reaching out to volunteer managers across the USA and putting together resources on her web site in a matter of hours and days. It's an excellent model for other volunteer managers to coordinate their response to a disaster -- and is especially recommended for preparation efforts (start planning now!). She and colleagues also provide news, techniques, ideas, and opinions unique to managing government volunteer programs: local, state, federal and military.

• The World Volunteer Web
  A site by the UN Volunteers program that promotes the benefits of involving volunteers and encourages people to volunteer, particularly in developing countries. In addition to being a cheerleader for volunteerism, the site contains links to several How To Guides, which go well beyond the basics of volunteer management and delve into complex, important issues such as "Safety and Security Guidelines for Humanitarian Volunteers in Conflict Areas." Subscribing to its email update is an excellent way to keep up-to-date about what's happening regarding volunteerism around the world.

• The National Service Resource Center
  Although focused on those participants, and those who work with them, in USA national service programs (Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, VISTA, etc.), these extensive resources can be helpful to any service/volunteering program. There's an extensive online library of sample forms and policies, as well as articles, profiles of suggested practices, and lists of conferences, online discussion groups, print materials and other related web sites.

• E-Voluntas
  Un espacio en red de intercambio de experiencias, información, reflexión y buenas prácticas de voluntariado.

• Topic of the Month
  By Merrill Associates
  For more than five years, up until her untimely death in February 2006, Mary Merrill produced a monthly topic that touched on various issues relating to volunteer management. The archive of these topics are available on her web site, and are worth multiple readings.

• workforceonline.com
  Although geared towards human resources manager, this web site and its weekly email update, Workforce Week, provide advice and legal updates that can be oh-so-helpful to volunteer managers: regarding policy, supervision, applicant tracking, legal issues, evaluation, and more.

• OzVPM
  An online discussion forum and resource center for volunteer managers in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and "right throughout the broader Australasian region."

• UKVPMs
  An online discussion forum and resource center for volunteer managers in the United Kingdom.

• ARNOVA E-News, a quarterly electronic newsletter that disseminates research findings that have application implications in the nonprofit sector. ARNOVA is the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action.

• ISTR-L, an electronic mail network for those researching, or interested in the work of researchers, regarding the Third Sector. International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR) is a major international association promoting research and education in the fields of philanthropy, civil society and the nonprofit sector. It provides a more international perspective regarding volunteerism.

• Yahoo Philanthropy and Volunteerism News
  Yahoo takes links to the latest news and feature articles off the news wires that relate to volunteerism and philanthropy and puts them together in this easy-to-read page. Updated more than daily.

 
Return to my volunteer-related resources index


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