November 02, 2022
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June 21, 2022The majority of nonprofit organizations serve clients from vulnerable, marginalized communities. These people are more likely to be racialized clients who experience complex challenges and issues related to racism, poverty, mental health, the criminal justice system, and domestic violence. It is imperative that volunteer leaders are reflective of these populations served. Specifically, it is important that racialized individuals, and internal racialized volunteers, are provided with opportunities in paid volunteer management leadership positions.
July 22, 2022I recently googled “Volunteer” on Google images and got 972,000,000 pictures. The first two pages of images, since I didn’t look at all 972 million, displayed 30 images, and 11 (just over 1/3) of those pictures were like the ones below. The following graphics are used by many organizations to promote their volunteer opportunities. When you click on the image, you are linked through to the website of the organization that is trying to recruit volunteers. As I looked at many appeals for volunteers, I asked, “What is wrong with this picture?” The answer? Twenty-first century volunteers do not want to raise their hands.
July 25, 2022Volunteer Success is pleased to share this wonderful volunteer policy primer created by Volunteer Toronto. As this primer makes clear, and the Canadian Code for Volunteer Involvement (CCVI) advocates, organizations should have an integrated human resource management approach that includes paid employees, students and volunteers. The Human Resources standard of the CCVI recommends that “most policies and practices apply equally to all people in the organization”, apart from some obvious exceptions such as compensation and recognition. COVID has motivated many of us to re-evaluate our policies, but as this resource states: “the world of volunteer engagement constantly evolves, and your structures should adapt as things change.” So what volunteer-specific policies should you have? And what kinds of revisions should you undertake?
