Book

Exploring Volunteer Space: The Recruiting of a Nation is Ivan Scheier’s exploration of the universe of volunteering. Ivan ponders much of what volunteering can be and a great deal of what would happen in volunteering in the future. While Exploring Volunteer Space is a highly conceptual work, it has great and continuing relevance to practitioners who think about the development of volunteer engagement.

The first booklet in PROVOL's Volunteer Management Made Easy Series, which includes: Research, Recruit, Retain, and Recognize.  This booklet on Research covers the work to be done before that new volunteer walks through the door for the first time, even when the pressure to recruit new volunteers can be pretty intense.

The 1989 edition of Steve McCurley and Rick Lynch's basic text on operating all facets of volunteer involvement. 

This short booklet outlines a five-step process to design volunteer engagement programs to be more attractive to volunteers. Author Nancy McDuff presents the methods for conducting a needs assessment, setting objectives, arranging and planning activities, developing an administrative plan to support new volunteer involvement, and evaluating the overall program. 

A toolkit from which to draw strategies for dealing with the many types of difficult behavior that can be exhibited by volunteers.

Written in 1960 primarily for the volunteer but also for professional social workers and those who work in the social realm, this book presents a collection of writings exploring the facets of volunteer service at the time. Contributors include executives, supervisors, professors, volunteer involvement directors, and individual volunteers themselves and, therefore, offering diverse points of view.

An interactive group activity for religious leaders for analyzing how their congregations work, conducting an organizational analysis of their organization, and identifying areas that deserve further attention. Though The Church Puzzle Game uses the word ‘‘church” in its title and instructions, the content of the Game was written with the intention to help any faith community, religious body, or house of worship.

How to incorporate  children into an adult volunteer program and find creative ways to use  children's fresh perspectives. Includes examples of actual volunteer  projects accomplished by youngsters, models of child-adult teams and  tips on family volunteering.  Learn how to recruit, train and design  assignments for volunteers under the age of 14. 

This Self-Assessment Process is an organizational change management tool for guiding staff, leadership, board, and other volunteers to examine the effectiveness of volunteer engagement. The Kit contains a Team Leader's Resource Book, a Team Member Book, and a survey.

By the People remains the only book available presenting the full scope and depth of volunteer activity throughout three centuries of American history. Originally published in 1978, Susan Ellis and Katie Campbell reissued this revised New Century Edition in 2005. The book challenges misunderstandings about the role of volunteers and illuminates the impact of volunteers throughout history.

This is the story of a young girl's search to discover what exactly is a volunteer. Written for elementary-aged children, the book explores the concepts that the image of volunteering can differ greatly, and the opportunities to help our community are endless.  

From the preface: The authors of this book are social scientists with practical and tested strategies for rebuilding collaborative communities. An important feature of this book is that the authors are not prescriptive-they don't tell you what should be done; they are descriptive - they tell you what has been done that you can draw on. They are reporting on their own action research, done while serving as consultants to eighty-eight communities. From this rich experience they are able to portray a variety of strategies adaptable to a variety of situations.

Helps employees and volunteers work together successfully by exploring the reasons for conflict between volunteers and employees. Scheier eases the all-too-common stresses of this relationship with a step-by-step process for analyzing tasks and work preferences for both paid and unpaid staff. Offers a great number of creative and practical solutions. Contains lots of useful planning guides.

This book was removed from the archive since it is still available for sale.   You can purchase at:  http://lindagraff.ca/books.html#BeyondPolice

Hundreds of ideas for recognizing the work of volunteers and thanking them for their contributions. Plus a discussion of what effective recognition really entails.   

A collection of volunteer engagement ideas including techniques for working with volunteers, leading engagement programs, and understanding the context of volunteerism in the U.S. and Canada during the 1990s.

The authors explore workplace-based volunteering by profiling the efforts of several corporations promoting community involvement, employee volunteering within small businesses, and volunteer involvement in labor unions. These profiles represent a variety of approaches, each respecting its individual organizational culture while responding to community needs and practicing social responsibility.

A resource for training volunteers to develop analytical and problem-solving skills, this book is a compilation of realistic situations that volunteers may face while volunteering. Leaders of volunteer involvement can use the case studies to prepare volunteers via group discussions or role playing.

Similar to the previously published 101 Ideas for Volunteer Programs, this book presents hundreds of ideas and thoughts, often in the form of lists, about fundraising (and friend-raising), all collected by Steve McCurley and Sue Vineyard, experts in volunteer engagement. 

A continuation of the previously published 101 Ideas for Volunteer Programs. Steve McCurley and Sue Vineyard collect even more practical ideas for engaging volunteers and, this time, include thoughts on improving the role of director of volunteer involvement: problem-solving skills, time management ideas, training techniques, and ways to manage organizational change.

Over the course of training more than 20,000 leaders of volunteers, volunteer engagement experts Steve McCurley and Sue Vineyard gathered this collection of odd ideas and useful thoughts about running a volunteer engagement program, including subjects such as recruiting, screening, interviewing, and supervising volunteers. In their words, the book “is, quite simply, a place to start from, a place to browse in, and a place, finally, to steal [ideas] from.”