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Energize March 2005 Susan J. Ellis	Recruitment Maxims Volunteer recruitment does not mean wheedling, arm twisting, or asking for a favor. The best approach is that you are sharing an opportunity with prospective volunteers that you don't want them to miss!
Energize Susan J. Ellis	Prospective Volunteers Are Closer than You Think Ask yourself what you have done in the last year to make sure that you are really issuing an invitation to become a volunteer to the people in greatest proximity to you.
Energize July 2006 Susan J. Ellis	"I Don't Have Time" It's still possible to engage people in more intensive volunteer service, if we pay attention to their needs.
Energize December 2014 Susan J. Ellis	What Did You and Volunteers Do Well this Year? 2014 is rapidly coming to an end. Before you consider making any resolutions for the new year, use December as an opportunity to reflect on the past 12 months.
Energize October 2014 Susan J. Ellis	Whom Don't We Ask to Volunteer? Consider where you recruit and what your expectations are of what applicants will look like. Don't limit your outreach and you'll be rewarded.
Energize May 2006 Susan J. Ellis	Online Spying Can Improve Your Volunteer Management Skills Use the Internet to be a quiet explorer, observing carefully what other non-profit organizations are doing. Educate yourself about approaches and models that you might follow, adapt, or even avoid.
Energize March 2010 Susan J. Ellis	AmeriCorps and Senior Corps Targeting Volunteer Management The most popular capacity building option among both charities and congregations with social service outreach activities is the addition of a one-year, full-time volunteer with a living stipend (like an AmeriCorps member), with responsibility for volunteer recruitment and management.
Energize March 2013 Susan J. Ellis	Why Social Media Is Not the Cure-All for Building Volunteer Engagement You can become very successful at recruitment if you are able to brainstorm where you are most likely to find the right people -- not just people -- and where your message will not compete with thousands of others.
Energize April 2013 Susan J. Ellis	Revisiting the Seven Deadly Sins of Directing Volunteers In the early 1980s, Energize produced a mini-poster with the dramatic title of "The Seven Deadly Sins of Directing Volunteers," which proved extremely popular. We are reappraising them for 2013.
Energize July 2014 Susan J. Ellis	I Really Want to Know: What's Going on Out There? Here are a few of the ideas from the past few years that I really love as concepts. Have you (or someone you know) tried any of them?
Energize October 2012 Susan J. Ellis	Practicing What We Preach: Volunteers Helping Us, Too One of the enduring mysteries of the volunteer management field is how often those who lead volunteer efforts do not build a team of volunteers to help them in their important work.
Energize September 2004 Susan J. Ellis	Workplace Volunteerism: Have We Thought this Through? It should trouble us that most employee volunteer programs focus on the lowest level employee and do not encourage middle management and higher to participate as well.
Energize November 2011 Susan J. Ellis	Part-time Volunteer Management Means Equally Limited Volunteer Involvement, It is hardly news that the majority of people who lead volunteer involvement are expected to do so part-time.
Energize July 2013 Susan J. Ellis	Breaking through the Glass Ceiling for Volunteers Fully capable people may already be serving in your existing volunteer corps and ready to be promoted to a higher level of volunteering for the organization (only if they want to).
Energize September 2006 Susan J. Ellis	What’s in a Name…or a Title? What's the best title for the person who is designated as the leader of volunteers?
Energize September 2013 Susan J. Ellis	What Volunteer Resources Managers Can Teach Human Resources Managers Volunteer resources managers are constantly being told what we can learn from professionals in personnel or human resources. Maybe it's time we tell HR what they can learn from us.
Energize June 2012 Susan J. Ellis	Why Do We Love Volunteer Satisfaction Surveys? How did we arrive at this particular method of assessing success with volunteers? Do such surveys reveal anything meaningful about the value of volunteer contributions?
Energize November 2013 Susan J. Ellis	Education through Celebration on International Volunteer Managers Day It is important to let professional volunteer managers know that the spirit of volunteerism is enhanced and enabled by them -- and it is important to thank them.
Energize May 2012	Three Things Volunteer Managers Can Learn from the Social Media Revolution Quick Tip: Recruit what Susan Ellis calls `cyber deputies.' These are volunteers who perhaps have more knowledge or comfort with social media than you.
Energize December 2009 Susan J. Ellis	When the Ax Falls: Budget Cutting and Volunteers Can an organization turn to volunteers to fill gaps when budgets are cut and employees laid off?
Energize May 2010 Susan J. Ellis	The Self-Directed Volunteer The author discusses what is meant by the "self-directed" volunteer and what this means for philanthropic organizations.
Energize August 2011 Susan J. Ellis	I'll Never Understand Why Executives Still Don't Understand Here is the most succinct set of arguments for not ignoring volunteer involvement.
Energize June 2010 Susan J. Ellis	Reimagining Service: Is Corporate HR Management What We See? If you see volunteer management as just HR management, then you will love Reimagining Service, which promotes the idea of applying private sector human resources practices to nonprofit organizations.
Energize January 2014 Susan J. Ellis	Virtual Volunteering Revisited Some people will volunteer solely online, others will combine a virtual component with an onsite placement, and others may do their service totally hands on.
Energize September 2011 Susan J. Ellis	Addressing Volunteerism Issues in the Blogosphere The following blogs are listed randomly with no particular hierarchy, but they are all written by authors who are willing -- in fact, determined -- to address philosophy, ethics, and the "big questions" facing the volunteer field.
Energize July 2005 Susan J. Ellis	Save a Life, Win a Car! When Do Incentives to Volunteer Cross the Line? Perhaps the diehard volunteers who want to give back to someone that has helped them will continue without perks, but the casual or more transitory volunteer will be siphoned off.
Energize May 2008 Susan J. Ellis	It's Volunteers and Money We need to see the issue of resource allocation for volunteers as integral to our work and develop the skills to "make the case" for spending money on volunteers.
Energize December 2006 Susan J. Ellis	Together We Stand: Volunteers and Volunteer Resource Managers Connected Frontline volunteers and boardroom volunteers are more alike than different, and the principles of effective volunteer administration apply to each group.
Energize January 2007 Susan J. Ellis	Should Volunteer Program Managers Be Volunteers, Too? There's never been a better time to volunteer for a volunteer management network - and that's true in a range of countries around the world, many of whom are nurturing embryo associations right now.
Energize June 2013 Susan J. Ellis	Stop Volunteers from Being Their Own Worst Enemies Maybe we need to educate volunteers about who they are and how they fit into our organizations. If we wrongly assume that volunteers "get it," we open ourselves to potential problems of various sorts.
Energize June 2006 Susan J. Ellis	Wouldn't It Be Nice to Really Know.... Trends in volunteering are reported largely based on observation and anecdotes rather than on hard data.
Energize August 1, 2007 Susan J. Ellis	The Big Merger: Many Unanswered Questions The merger between the Points of Light Foundation and Hands On Network has the potential for a positive impact on volunteerism. But, there are more questions than answers about the new entity.
Energize October 2011 Susan J. Ellis	What Leaders of Volunteers Can Do To Gain Executive Attention This month, I am turning the spotlight 180 degrees to examine how leaders of volunteers contribute to the problem of not getting enough attention from higher-ups.
Energize August 2014 Susan J. Ellis	Identifying Who Is and Is Not a "Volunteer" I suspect that every reader has engaged in this sort of discussion/debate/argument more than once.
Energize May 2013 Susan J. Ellis	Strategic Volunteer Management: Expanding Your Organization's Brain The problem in volunteer management is not that our organizations are without strategies of various sorts; it's that volunteers are not naturally integrated into those strategies even as an operational tactic.
Energize December 2012 Susan J. Ellis	End-of-Year Reports Can Illuminate Volunteer Achievements The invisibility of volunteers in many agency reports is matched only by the presentation of generally useless information about volunteers in other reports.
Energize February 2006 Susan J. Ellis	The Fair Labor Standards Act and Other Obstacles to Progress As advocates for volunteer engagement, we need to approach specialized counselors as equal team members, remembering that we, too, have expertise to offer.
Energize October 2007 Susan J. Ellis	The Moral Obligation of Volunteer Recruitment Promises Recruiting volunteers to contribute their time and effort to your organization puts you in the middle of an implied promise.
Energize May 2005 Susan J. Ellis	Why Be Boring When You Can Celebrate in So Many Ways? It's your chance to enlighten, amaze, surprise, and educate everyone. Remember that only the volunteer program manager sees the full cumulative effect of volunteer involvement for the past year. Paid staff, volunteers, and administrators only see their small part of the larger picture.
Energize July 2011 Susan J. Ellis	Needed: A Multi-level Approach to Credentialing Volunteer Management Volunteer management has been an "emerging profession" ever since I've been in the field -- which is now 40 years.
Energize November 2004 Susan J. Ellis	Interns: The "Acceptable" Volunteers? All too often interns are elevated above mere volunteers unjustifiably and/or the "internship program" is separated administratively from the volunteer resources office, to the detriment of both groups.
Energize February 2008 Susan J. Ellis	The Power of Difference For best success, look for volunteers that offer a different skill set than the paid staff.
Energize November 2006 Susan J. Ellis	Encouraging Entrepreneurial Volunteering Whether we are dealing in social entrepreneurship, civic engagement, donated professional services, pro bono work, or volunteering, our mission is to mobilize as wide a spectrum of community members as possible to meet real needs.
Energize May 2011 Susan J. Ellis	Short Attention Spans versus Long-term Causes How can we reconcile the long-term demands of most causes with the "what's-new-today?" push of media attention? How do we continue to recruit the volunteers we need for the long haul?
Energize April 2011 Susan J. Ellis	Celebrate Collective Accomplishments, Not Volunteered Time Volunteer recognition is a powerful tool for leaders of volunteers that remains largely underutilized.
Energize Susan J. Ellis	Should We Cap the Number of Hours a Volunteer May Serve Each Week? New volunteers may start off gung-ho and promise many hours before they know what they will experience. So I like the practice of setting an initial limit of maximum time until the situation evolves and looks to be successful.
Energize October 2006 Susan J. Ellis	The Middle Management Barrier Middle managers are vital to how effective the organization's volunteer engagement will be.
Energize October 2010 Susan J. Ellis	Good Intentions Going Nowhere -- Again We've seen initiative after initiative all pushing to "get people to volunteer" as if that was the problem. It is not.
AFP eWire March 1, 2004	Many Nonprofits Using Volunteers Ineffectively A joint study by the UPS Foundation, the Corporation for National and Community Service and the USA Freedom Corps has revealed that 80 percent of nonprofits rely on volunteers for critical activities, but admit they do not have the resources or knowledge to manage them as they might like.
Job Journal November 6, 2005 Susan J. Ellis	Volunteer Work Can Give Your Job Search a Boost Whether you're looking into a first career or interested in switching professions, volunteering can be a marvelous way to explore your options.