The Volunteer Management Handbook [Paperback]

Tracy D. Connors (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471371424 | ISBN-13: 978-0471371427 | Publication Date: September 21, 1999

"Until now, we and other nonprofits had to find out the hard way by trial and error that garnering the energies of today s volunteers means answering their special needs. That s where The Volunteer Management Handbook comes in, with helpful, practical, and proven solutions to the often overlooked problems of effectively managing volunteer efforts."
—From the Foreword by Kathleen Behrens Executive Director, New York Cares

The VolunteerManagement Handbook

Drawing on the experience and expertise of recognized authorities on nonprofit organizations, The Volunteer Management Handbook offers the nonprofit manager a complete guide to establishing and maintaining an active and effective volunteer program. In one handy reference volume, the Handbook offers practical guidance on such essential issues as:

• Motivating people to volunteer their time and services
• Developing a detailed Volunteer Management Policy Manual
• Recruitment, orientation, and retention
• Training volunteers
• Recognition and reward systems for volunteers
• Volunteers and the law: liabilities, immunities, and responsibilities

Designed for all nonprofit and fund-raising professionals as well as volunteer leaders, The Volunteer Management Handbook is an indispensable reference that is unsurpassed in both the breadth and depth of its coverage.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This handy desktop reference contains all the information a nonprofit manager needs in order to establish and maintain an active volunteer program. Provides crucial material on legal issues ranging from standard employment law to risk management and such management practices as recruiting, training and integrating volunteers into the general organizational structure. Features guidelines, suggestions, checklists and sample forms plus proven strategies and techniques from experts in the nonprofit sector. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

Despite the challenges and pressures of the U.S. economy, Americans are still volunteering in record numbers. With nonprofits struggling to provide services that directly affect our quality of life, volunteers have become even more vital to nonprofit organizations. Now more than ever, effective management of our splendid volunteer resources is imperative if we are to evoke, focus, and sustain their motivation, resources, and skills into providing the growing array of human services offered by our people-helping agencies and organizations.

Covering all aspects of the management of volunteer programs, the Second Edition of The Volunteer Management Handbook has been completely updated to reflect the latest in volunteer resource management (VRM): best practices; effective policies and policy making; demographics and social evolution; planning and analysis (program and participant) in volunteer programs; recruiting, orienting, and training volunteers; volunteer evaluation (program and volunteer); ethics and professionalism; and state, national, and international programs.

Edited by nonprofit expert Tracy Connors, this practical volume provides useful perspectives and guidance for volunteer resource management issues, as well as highlighting and explaining the trends, issues, and developments that lie ahead. Contributions are featured from visionary nonprofit professionals, outlining the present and future of more successful volunteer resource management, to explain how to:

• Manage more effectively within dynamic, fluid organizational and program environments, including managing performance in both a strategic and tactical context to achieve impressive results.

• Use advanced information management technology and networking to change "technology walls" to "program bridges" at every stage of the VRM process—from recruiting, marketing, and orientation, to coordination, scheduling, evaluation, and recognition.

• Understand—and change—organizational culture to establish a growth-filled environment for volunteers and staff.

• Reassess your organization's volunteer resource management model and planning to develop VRM policies that help protect your organization from risk, yet promote involvement, quality programming, increased productivity, and greater volunteer satisfaction.

• Use creatively and effectively the growing number of potential volunteer options offered by social media, economic conditions, cultural and technological advances to expand and enrich your VRM program offerings.

Now available as both an online and print publication, this invaluable guide offers seventeen additional online chapters, exclusively through the new edition's companion website. Learn to get, develop, and keep the right volunteers for your nonprofit with the proven guidance found in The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition, the must-read every nonprofit needs to create a volunteer-happy organization. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 407 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (September 21, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471371424
• ISBN-13: 978-0471371427
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 1 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #86 in Books > Business & Investing > Job Hunting & Careers > Volunteer Work

More About the Author

Thirty years after his publication of the Nonprofit Organization Handbook, the first handbook focused exclusively on better management of nonprofit organizations, Tracy D. Connors continues to share that visionary perspective through consulting, teaching and publishing in the field of management of nonprofit organizations.

For over thirty years Connors has maintained an unsurpassed publication record in the field of not-for-profit management, a field that he himself largely defined in his break through Nonprofit Organization Handbook, the first of its kind, published in 1979 by McGraw-Hill--establishing for the first time that regardless of the specific public service provided, not-for-profit organizations shared seven areas of management--from fund raising to volunteer administration (First and Second Editions, McGraw-Hill, 1980, 1988).

These pioneering works compiled the fundamental management information needed by NPO leaders in one volume for the first time.

At the time, few would have agreed there was such a professional area as "nonprofit management" or a "nonprofit executive." Since then the number of nonprofit organizations in the United States has doubled, even as the field of nonprofit management has emerged and evolved to support improved professional development.

Nonprofit organizations provide the majority of human services in the United States--collectively called "quality of life." Better management and leadership within these organizations directly contributes to an improved quality of life for millions of Americans.

In 1995, Connors published the first Volunteer Management Handbook (John Wiley & Sons), a work that he is now expanding and updating into a second edition.

The first edition of the Volunteer Management Handbook offered " a wealth of practical, how-to information in the art and science of volunteer development, administration, and law-related areas. Particular attention is given to pointing out the similarities and differences in volunteer policy and law in various states."

Professional staff members of all nonprofit organizations found the groundbreaking new management handbook useful, particularly those having responsibilities involving volunteers. For the first time, they had available, in one volume, the fundamental principles of volunteer management explained and illustrated using examples and case studies specific to nonprofit organizations.

When the second edition of the John Wiley & Sons Volunteer Management and Leadership Handbook is published in 2010, it will be his eighth major nonprofit management handbook (not including annual supplements or foreign language editions)--nonprofit organization management being a recently recognized field that he himself defined when he published the first such management handbook in 1979.

He has also published two major works of military history--Truckbusters From Dogpatch: the Combat Diary of the 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing in the Korean War, 1950-1953 (BelleAire Press, 2005) and Baited Trap, the Ambush of Mission 1890 (BelleAire Press, 2008).

Successful careers and senior management experience in all three sectors of the American economy--for-profit/business, government (both military and civilian), and the "Third Sector," nonprofit, public service organizations--give Connors a unique perspective on management and effective leadership.

Captain Tracy D. Connors, USN (Ret), attended Jacksonville University, and earned degrees from the University of Florida (BA) and the University of Rhode Island (MA), with additional graduate study at the University of Maryland and Bowie State University.

Connors is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Florida. He is designing and teaching several new course offerings, including: Volunteer Management for Nonprofit Organizations and Leading to Excellence for Nonprofit Organizations.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Volunteers don't have to make contributions. But if you manage them appropriately, then they will continue to help you., December 24, 2007

By 

Jeff Lippincott "JLIPPIN" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Volunteer Management Handbook (Paperback)

I loved this book. It is very well written and extremely well outlined. And the list of contributors to this book is impressive. They bring much credibility to the ideas and concepts presented. What this book does is provide helpful, practical and proven solutions to anyone who needs to be able to effectively manage volunteer efforts at nonprofits. Are you an executive director at an NPO, a member of a BOD of an NPO, or a consultant providing capital campaign direction to an NPO? Then this book is for you.

Volunteers have always been and always will be an important resource for nonprofits of all types and sizes. As a result, this is a very important book. It has the following 18 chapters:

1. Metaphors and visions for the voluntary sector
2. Motivating people to volunteer their services
3. Preparing the organization for volunteers
4. Recruitment, orientation, and retention
5. Training and development of volunteers
6. Training volunteers in quality management techniques and tools
7. Policies for volunteer programs
8. Administration of volunteer programs
9. Episodic volunteering
10. Volunteer and staff relations
11. Reward and recognition systems for volunteers
12. The role of volunteers in fundraising
13. Managing corporate and employee volunteer programs
14. General liabilities and immunities
15. Board member liability and responsibility
16. Risk management strategies
17. Volunteers and employment law
18. National service: 20 questions and some answers

And these chapters are grouped into three parts:

I. Volunteer Development (chapts 1-6)
II. Volunteer Management (chapts 7-13)
III. Volunteers and the law (chapts 14-18)

Volunteers work for nonprofits in many ways. Some are members of boards of directors. Some help run programs offered by nonprofits. Others help run fundraising activities such as special events and capital campaigns. And yet others make major gifts to NPOs and do "asks" in major gift campaigns and capital campaigns. This book is about how to keep these people helping your organization.

Volunteers sitting on a BOD expect something different from an NPO than volunteers helping to put on a special event or volunteers leading a capital campaign. But all volunteers consistently expect their NPO to provide a worthy cause and be credible. This book does an outstanding job of explaining how an NPO and its leadership can attract, manage, and keep wonderful volunteers. If lead and managed appropriately (professionally), volunteers will continue to volunteer their time, services, and money. Read this book and find out how this is done. 5 stars!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Guide, February 2, 2007

By 

Work of Life (Miami, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Volunteer Management Handbook (Paperback)

This is a very comprehensive manual for the management of volunteer based groups. I used this book extensively for two years as president of a 100% volunteer based non-profit org. Frankly, it was indispensable as both a guide and reference in countless situations, from rewriting the bylaws and policies, to managing/inspiring/leading a board of 12 directors and over 60 volunteers/500+ members. This group went from a dwindling, unorganized, under-funded lot to a vibrant, well organized, and well funded group during my time of service. I owed a lot of that success to this book.