You've heard it before and you'll hear it again: Canadians are a giving bunch. With one of the largest nonprofit sectors in the world, it's estimated Canadians volunteer approximately two billion hours yearly, and an average of 168 hours each....
When homeless guests enter the Mustard Seed in Calgary Alberta, they receive more than coffee, a bagged lunch or a shaving kit. They receive a warm welcome from staff and from a volunteer who truly "gets" their situation. Like the...
Evaluating volunteer programs is essential to benchmarking our progress in providing the best service to our stakeholders, but it is also an area of the volunteer management cycle that we tend to skip over. Sometimes you just don?t have the...
The topic of policies and procedures is not one that most administrators of volunteers find exciting. It is probably one area of volunteer management that most struggle with, and with no wonder. Policies are certainly not exciting or "sexy", they...
According to some observers, the vast majority of internships at nonprofits and elsewhere may well be illegal. "There is widespread mischaracterization of interns as persons receiving training," says Andrew Langille, a lawyer and blogger in Toronto who specializes in employment,...
This article is my ode to David Letterman. Let's call it the list article. Where are the top 10 places to find volunteers? I will make it more interesting and give you the top ten most common sources to search...
Is your volunteer program successfully welcoming and integrating new Canadians? According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, between 240,000 and 260,000 new immigrants will arrive in Canada in 2011. Our country continues to be a major recipient of new immigrants worldwide...
When meeting others, we are often asked "What do you do for a living?" For most people the answer is clear. There are so many positions that make sense, but I find I hesitate before answering this question. Am I...
So many nonprofit organizations face challenges turning members into active volunteers. Here are ten steps for effective volunteer engagement. 1. Member needs The first and most important step is to identify your members' needs, including those of the volunteers in...
Millennials — the next generation of community leaders, philanthropists, staff, board members — have been described, and describe themselves, as passionate, connected, optimistic, and wanting to make an impact. Imagine Canada lists seven drivers facing the voluntary sector in Canada,...
