January 2010

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Speed Dating Meets Volunteer Recruitment!

Submitted by Lindsay Liprando
on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 00:00

Here’s an idea: why not have a volunteer recruiting event for singles on Valentine’s Day? It’s fun, unique, and – trust me – it’ll be more interesting than what most of us singletons end up doing on February 14th. Check out this excerpt from A Toolkit for Volunteer Speed Matching to spur your thinking. The Toolkit was developed in England for volunteer centers who want to help a number of organizations showcase their volunteer opportunities; it could work equally well for one organization anywhere with a number of different volunteer roles. I’m sure there’s lots of other great ways to play off this concept to design a fun, memorable, and effective recruitment event. If you’ve done an event like this before, or you’re going to try it this year, leave a comment and let us know!

Excerpt from A Toolkit for Volunteer Speed Matching by Volunteer Centre Dacorum, ©2005.

Why Speed Matching?

  • It offers a new way of recruiting volunteers, which is fun & upbeat.

Evaluating the Success of your Day of Service

Submitted by Lindsay Liprando
on Mon, 01/18/2010 - 00:00

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service (MLK Day) is the most widely known and supported single day of service in the US. I’m sure many of your organizations are hosting a group of volunteers today.

“Planning and Executing Successful Large-Scale Days of Service,” training material developed by HandsOn Network, is featured in the new issue of e-Volunteerism. I wish we could have offered it to you before MLK Day, because it has lots of great information on carrying out a successful day of service – including the important and often-forgotten goal of raising awareness about your issue and providing entry points to ongoing ways to serve. But since there are many other events like this around the world, it’s not too late for this material to be useful – or plan ahead for next year!

As this issue’s Training Design feature, “Planning and Executing Successful Large-Scale Days of Service” is a complete toolkit including a 28-page guide, a Facilitator Agenda, and a full set of PowerPoint

Put Social Networking to Work for Your Volunteer Program

Submitted by Lindsay Liprando
on Tue, 01/05/2010 - 00:00

Are you looking for ways to re-energize your recruitment and retention efforts? Our online journal, e-Volunteerism, has recently published two really interesting articles on the possibilities that social networking holds for volunteer engagement.

The first article is “Using Social Media in Your Volunteer Engagement Strategy” by Joshua Fixler. This Training Design article will help you and your nonprofit or government organization identify opportunities for using social media in your volunteer engagement strategy. Use it as the basis for in-house training (it even includes a ready-to-use Microsoft PowerPoint presentation!) or just read it yourself to jump-start your thinking. (This article presupposes a bit of familiarity with social media tools on your part. Need some basics? Read this free article from JFFixler and Associates (and be sure to check out the resources and definitions at the end!). Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Some Tips on Using Social Media (The Five Bs)

  • Be

Volunteer Management News before July 2009 is archived on the Energize site.

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