August 2006 Archives - Volunteer Management News from Volunteer Today efforts

JOB Vacancy

Volunteer Services Coordinator (20 hours/week), Washington, DC
Community Family Life Services assists low-income and homeless individuals on the road to permanent self-suffiency. Programs include emergency assistance, employment support, transitional housing and youth development and advocacy. We are seeking a part-time Volunteer Services Coordinator to recruit and successfully integrate volunteers into the our work. Experience in volunteer management strongly preferred, this program is ready to grow bigger. Responsibilities include overseeing annual walkathon participation, educational presentations, holiday donations and various one-time group projects as well as tracking of volunteer hours, recognition and maintenance of records. Click here for full job announcement. Send cover letter and resume to Carol Daugherty, cdaugherty@cflsdc.org, 305 E St. NW, Washington, DC, 20001 telephone: 202-347-0511 x405 or fax: 202-347-0520.

International Journal of Volunteer Administration

The maiden issue of the International Journal of Volunteer Administration is available for free online. It is the "next generation of the former Journal of Volunteer Administration." The new journal is a referred publication of the Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family and Consumer Sciences at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina. Under the leadership of Dr. R. Dale Safrit, Editor, (North Carolina State University) and Dr. Ryan Schmiesing (Ohio State University), and an internationally representative editorial board, the new journal provides to managers of volunteer programs information critical to successful management now and into the future.

Thanks to a generous grant from IMPACT: A Fund for Change Through Volunteerism, the first year of the journal is available via public domain, free of charge. In July 2007 the Journal will move to Web-based subscription only publication. An individual subscription rate is $40. Special rates are available for organizational subscription with 101+ members.

Topics for this quarterly issue include:

In mid-June those interested in forming a new professional association for managers of volunteers, following the demise of the Association for Volunteer Administration in the spring of 2006, met to discuss needs and future direction. That meeting, hosted by the Points of Light Foundation during their conference in Seattle, resulted in a second meeting, the results of which can be found at Susan Ellis's Web site, Energize, Inc. (http://www.energize.inc.com/hot/2006/Mar06HT2). She has an opinion piece and then the report from the meeting.

The meeting revealed extensive work done by a group of managers of volunteers called the VRM Roundtable. This group has formed committees, selected chairs, and created a leadership team to form an association. The group had previously conducted an online survey of needs before the Seattle meeting. During the meeting it was decided to repost the survey, publicize it during the conference, in order to gather more data. That has been completed and is available at http://vrm-roundtable.org/.

In addition, a meeting to discuss progress is planned to coincide with the Points of Light conference in Philadelphia in July of 2007. There are no immediate details for that yet.

According to a report in the June 29, Chronicle of Philanthropy, giving by Americans is up. Giving USA, an annual report on philanthropy, said donations were up by 2.7% after inflation. The largest increase came in response to the disasters of 2005—Indonesian tsunamis, Gulf coast hurricanes, and Pakistan’s earthquake. It accounted for $7.4 billion of the $260.3 billion donated overall.

A new report pulls together information on volunteering in the US, based on studies by the US Department of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau. "Volunteering in America: State Trends and Rankings," is available in free download at http://nationalservice.gov/about/volunteering/index.asp here are some quick highlights from the report.