CloseUp

Volunteerism Closeup

Nancy Macduff is an internationally recognized trainer, consultant, and author on volunteer management and administration. She served 14 years as executive director of a nonprofit agency and nine years as the coordinator of a government volunteer program. Nancy is currently the President of Macduff/Bunt Associates, a training and consulting firm, in Walla Walla, WA. She is also on the faculty at Washington State University teaching online and face-to-face courses in the management of volunteer programs, at the basic and advanced level.

She is the author of nine books on volunteer management, chapters on various aspects of volunteer administration in three different college textbooks, and numerous juried journal and magazine articles on volunteerism. Nancy is senior editor and publisher of the free online newsletter, "Volunteer Today." http://www.volunteertoday.com
Today there are millions of people volunteering through nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and corporations around the world. 61 million people are giving services in a variety of ways and places in the US. But, the traditional patterns are changing and our knowledge of the shifts in volunteering are in their infancy.

The first articles on "episodic" or short term volunteering began to appear in the early 1990s. This year the International Journal on Volunteer Administration will devote an entire issue to the topic. Spontaneous volunteering, youth service, the impact of service learning, the health impact of voluntary service, and virtual volunteering are only some of the changes taking place.

Much of the research and knowledge on these new forms of volunteering is coming from non-academic sources. This does not mean the information is not rigorous in regard to data capture and analysis, quite the contrary some of the best sources of information on the newer forms of volunteering comes from the world of government and practice. As examples, VolunteerMatch, a US based online recruiting service for volunteers partnered with a foundation to study the volunteering patterns of the "baby boom" generation and the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a booklet to guide organizations in establishing a well organized management process for spontaneous volunteers at the time of a disaster.

April's IssueLab focuses its lens on the topic of Volunteerism, in its broadest definition of the term. Research material comes from studies done in the US and abroad. You will find government reports and statistics, foundation studies, opinion pieces on the new forms of volunteering, and practice advice on managing volunteers. Whether you are writing a newspaper article, an academic paper, or searching for background on the shifting grounds of volunteerism, IssueLab likely has an article that addresses that issue.

Readers are also urged to upload articles that are copyright free for use by others in the field. If you know of studies, reports, demographics that should be on this site, please get in touch with IssueLab staff. And if you work for a nonprofit that is doing research in this area, please register your organization today to share your work with a broader audience.

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