Volunteer management has many challenges, not the least of which is how we study it and view it. Academics examine it from a variety of disciplines and practitioners experience it in a variety of contexts. However both approaches have limitations. In academia we go to public administration schools to learn about public and nonprofit management, to business schools to apply the principles of private enterprise to nonprofit management, to sociology departments to study the phenomena of volunteerism, to psychology departments to understand the motives of volunteers, and economics departments to examine the value or economic worth of volunteerism. The liability of the academic approach is the segmentation of study and research into departmental areas. The study of volunteers and volunteerism needs to cross all of these organizational and discipline boundaries to be fully appreciated and understood as a field of interest. In contrast, practitioners view volunteer management from their own unique experiences. They try to gauge success in volunteer management based on what they have encountered in particular organizations, towns, cultures, and countries in which they work. As important as these insights are, they are difficult to generalize beyond local settings. Just because an individual has been successful in working with volunteers, it does not mean that the lessons learned in one situation can be translated to others under all conditions. The target audience for this volume is anyone who manages volunteers. The goal of the volume is to demonstrate the breadth of thought on volunteer management, both across disciplines and a wide range of settings in which volunteers work.

In order to effectively and consistently provide services to citizens, local governments have had to come up with creative ways for offering services demanded by their citizens. One popular approach became the creation of volunteer programs as local governments became increasingly reliant on volunteers. Volunteers are one means by which local governments help to increase meaningful engagement with citizens and help meet the increasing needs for public services with limited resources. On a broader scale, volunteers in public agencies provide a variety of services to fill gaps in creating and sustaining collective societal goods that otherwise might have been limited due to fiscal stress on local governments or eliminated. Public Sector Volunteer Management: Best Practices and Challenges adds to the understanding of how management practices may affect retention of volunteers. It provides an opportunity to add much-needed data to any discussion concerning volunteering at the local government level from the perspective of volunteer coordinators and aims to provide in-depth research on local government volunteer management practices. This book focuses on best practices identified as necessary for successful volunteer management in the public sector, specifically in a local government setting, making it a valuable text for researchers, academics, and students in the fields of public and nonprofit management, leadership, and human resource management.

Completely revised and expanded, the ultimate guide to starting—and keeping—an active and effective volunteer program Drawing on the experience and expertise of recognized authorities on nonprofit organizations, The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition is the only guide you need for establishing and maintaining an active and effective volunteer program. Written by nonprofit leader Tracy Connors, this handy reference offers practical guidance on such essential issues as motivating people to volunteer their time and services, recruitment, and more. Up-to-date and practical, this is the essential guide to managing your nonprofit's most important resource: its volunteers. Now covers volunteer demographics, volunteer program leaders and managers, policy making and implementation, planning and staff analysis, recruiting, interviewing and screening volunteers, orienting and training volunteers, and much more Up-to-date, practical guidance for the major areas of volunteer leadership and management Explores volunteers and the law: liabilities, immunities, and responsibilities Designed to help nonprofit organizations survive and thrive, The Volunteer Management Handbook, Second Edition is an indispensable reference that is unsurpassed in both the breadth and depth of its coverage.

Volunteers play a critical role in serving communities and delivering public services. Volunteers serve across many areas — in schools, human service organizations, emergency services, and more. By providing services to those in need, volunteers expand the capacity of organizations and can devote extra time to the populations they serve. While research on volunteering has shifted from a focus on recruitment and motivation to management and retention, the focus is largely on universal, one-size-fits-all prescriptions. Volunteer management only recently moved to a contingency perspective focused on organizational needs. However, volunteer management should adapt to meet the needs of organizations and volunteers. Taking a strategic approach, this book provides an overview of volunteer management from planning and recruitment to engagement and evaluation, considering both organizational and volunteer needs and capacity. We develop a strategic volunteer management approach for volunteering to benefit not only the organizations and communities served, but also volunteers and society more broadly. This book advances research on volunteer management by combining the organizational and volunteer perspectives, provides a guide for volunteer administrators and coordinators, and serves well as a text for courses in volunteer management, nonprofit management, and human resource management.

The core resources and capabilities of any nonprofit organization lie in their human capital; their knowledge, skills and behaviors are critical to the achievement of the organization's mission and performance. Thus, effective management of this key resource is integral to the nonprofit organization's success. This book focuses on the unique characteristics, challenges and contribution of human resource management to the strategic objectives of the nonprofit. It explores contemporary issues that place the management of people at the intersection between the mission, strategy and performance of the organization. The book: * Uses the latest theory to build models that explain the determinants and dimensions of strategic HRM within the nonprofit sector * Examines the core HRM functions in the context of the nonprofit sector to provide insight into how nonprofits can optimize HRM contributions to performance * Provides a step-by-step process to develop, implement and manage HR practices that are aligned with the strategy of the nonprofit organization * Demonstrates how to integrate volunteer management into strategic HRM Using examples from around the world, as well as cases to facilitate learning, this book is ideal for students and professionals interested in strategic human resource management, and nonprofit management.

As society continues to experience increases in technological innovations, various industries must rapidly adapt and learn to incorporate these advances. While there are benefits to implementing these technologies, the sociological aspects still need to be considered. Technology Adoption and Social Issues: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is an innovative reference source for the latest academic material on the various effects of technology adoption, implementation, and acceptance. Highlighting a range of topics, such as educational technology, globalization, and social structure, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for academicians, professionals, and researchers who are interested in the latest insights into technology adoption.

Recent years have seen an explosion in research on tourism volunteering. Volunteers are an essential part of tourism, whether they are volunteering in their local museum, at a sporting mega-event, as an airport ambassador, or travelling the global as a volunteer tourist. Managing Volunteers in Tourism reviews the latest research to highlight the key management issues and relate them to the tourism volunteering context. It includes previously under-researched forms of tourism volunteering such as meet-and-greeters, surf life-savers, conservation, festival, and information centre volunteers and volunTourists. The book develops through three distinct sections, the first of which begins by introducing the concept of volunteering and considering the variety of volunteer forms and settings within tourism. The next part picks up the organisational approach and examines volunteer program design and planning, volunteer motivation, recruitment and selection, training and development, reward and retention, and diversity management. The final part consists of ten case studies from leading international researchers and practitioners identifying best practice and key management challenges. Real-life examples and case studies throughout this book provide an in-depth examination of the challenges facing those managing tourism volunteers, making this book indispensible for current and future managers in the tourism industry.

The SAGE Handbook of Sport Management draws together the best current research on the major topics relevant to the field of sports management, including leadership, gender, diversity, development, policy, tourism, and media. Edited by two of the most respected figures in the field, the handbook includes contributions from leading sport management academics from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA, the UK and Europe.