Transforming Disruption to Impact: Rethinking Volunteer Engagement for a Rapidly Changing World

by Doug Bolton (Editor), Beth Steinhorn (Editor), Jerome Tennille (Editor), Craig Young (Editor)

Overview

For generations, engaging volunteers has been a vital strategy for communities to solve problems, but the events of 2020 disrupted how people work and volunteer. Unlike previous disruptions, when Americans rolled up their sleeves and volunteered in record numbers, the COVID-19 pandemic restricted traditional volunteering. While many organizations put their engagement strategies on hold, others saw the dramatic increase in demand for services, the increased spotlight on racial injustices, and the opportunities that technology offers. Instead of hibernating, these forward-thinkers actively adapted to engage community members despite the disruptions.

Transforming Disruption to Impact captures the many ways and different mechanisms used to engage people in volunteer service to address the world's most critical issues—made even more critical due to the pandemic. It's a collection of essays and contributions highlighting practical, future- focused, innovative, and inspirational volunteer engagement strategies, practices, and tactics that were born out of necessity but that are evergreen and, in many ways, the future of service we can expect for generations to come. In this book, you'll hear from globally recognized social impact professionals from across the nonprofit, governmental, and corporate responsibility sectors about the different ways they engage people in volunteer service during such a challenging time across the globe. This book brings together the voices of CEOs, funders, corporate engagement leaders, volunteers, and volunteer engagement professionals—a collection of exemplary stories from those who transformed the disruptions into impact. These stories are the key to unlocking that potential.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781637552865
Publisher:	Amplify Publishing
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	8.25(w) x 5.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Doug Bolton is a trained journalist with experience in print, broad- cast, digital, and all forms of media. He spent thirty years in the media business, including nearly fifteen years as a business journal publisher. In 2011, he was recruited to run a geographic division of what is now the world's second largest commercial real estate services firm. Community nonprofit leadership roles led Doug to begin working in 2018 with Inspiring Service founders Craig and Michael Young on deploying technology and services to more efficiently and effectively build volunteer ecosystem infrastructure for hands-on service to board-level leadership.


As president of VQ Volunteer Strategies, Beth Steinhorn partners with organizations and their leadership to increase impact through strategic and innovative volunteer engagement. Beth has authored multiple books and articles on strategic volunteer engagement and helped found The National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement to advance the national dialogue about volunteerism and engagement. Prior to becoming a consultant, Beth worked as an executive director and marketing director with education and faith-based organizations and spent years working with museums as an educator, manager, and anthropologist. She draws upon her anthropology experience still, helping organizations shift their culture to embrace volunteer engagement as a strategy to fulfill mission.


Jerome Tennille is a Corporate Responsibility and Social Impact strategist who works in the hospitality industry and advises on volunteerism independently. His work focuses on designing, planning, and executing corporate employee volunteer programming to create positive social and environmental impact. He has expertise in bringing corporations and nonprofits together to build strategies that help advance long-term community goals and drive employee engagement. Prior to his work in corporate responsibility, he was the Senior Manager of Volunteer Services for Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), a national nonprofit that serves military families experiencing loss. Jerome is also a social impact writer, and his work has been featured on Impakter, Business 2 Community Magazine, VolunteerMatch, Nonprofit Information.com and many other outlets. Jerome holds a Master of Sustainability Leadership from Arizona State University and is designated as Certified in Volunteer Administration (CVA). Jerome is also a veteran of the U.S. Navy.


Craig Young is President of the Craig Young Family Foundation and Board Chair/Volunteer Executive Director of Inspiring Service. He serves on numerous other nonprofit boards with annual budgets ranging from modest to nearly three billion dollars. He also serves on the National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement and Encore Network Leadership Teams. Technology companies he founded in the 1980s and 1990s were later sold to Siemens and Apple. Over the last two decades, Craig has parlayed his business success into tangible social impact through a variety of efforts by leveraging his continued interest in technology into creating solutions for what he sees as inane absurdities holding back the independent sector.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Section 1 Landscape of Disruption 7

Time of Crisis: Leadership for Volunteering and Community Resilience Nichole Cirillo Wendy Osborne 9

Connecting Volunteers to Organizations: Learnings from the COVID-19 Pandemic Laura Plato 21

Racial Equity in Volunteerism Wendy Vang-Roberts 33

Co-Generational Service: A Disruption to Increase Impact Phyllis N. Segal 45

Moving Beyond Transactional Volunteerism to Transformational Civic Engagement Natalye Paquin 57

Section 2 Rethinking Strategy 65

Evolution of Corporate Volunteer Engagement Jerome Tennille 67

Why We Invest in Volunteerism: A Funder's Perspective Rina Cohen 79

All Together: Volunteers and Staff Pull in the Same Direction to Achieve Results Lauren Spero Cyndi Zagieboylo 91

Disruptions Move Skills-Based Volunteering into Mainstream Danielle Holly 103

The Power of Informal Volunteerism Karmit Bulman 113

Volunteering as a Mechanism to Develop Empathy Chris Jarvis Angela Parker 123

Section 3 Rethinking Engagement 135

Service Days: Changing the Conversation Beth Steinhorn Jerome Tennille 137

Technology and Services Are Poised to Create WIDER Nonprofits Doug Bolton 147

Students Self-Organize for Impact Amay Aggarwal Mary Zhu 157

The Mentoring Field: A Lesson in Persistence and Evolution Elizabeth Santiago, PhD David Shapiro 165

Redefining Community in a Hybrid World Beth Steinhorn 177

Section 4 Rethinking Impact 187

Purpose-Driven Volunteer Impact Sue Carter Kahl, PhD 189

The Multifaceted Impacts of Service Kaira Esgate 199

Disruption Exposed Our Lack of Infrastructure; It's Time to Build It Craig Young 213

About the Editors 225

Editorial Reviews

"The pandemic brought us face-to-face with an inevitable conclusion: volunteer engagement is a vital strategy for organizational sustainability, especially during times of disruption. Spotlighting organizations that had the courage to take novel approaches—engaging community members in innovative ways and delivering on their missions by providing critical new services and scalable solutions to boot— Transforming Disruption to Impact offers inspiration for achieving a deeper, more meaningful impact and the impetus to keep evolving now and during any times of unsettling change." - Karen Reid, CVA, CEO, Kaber Communications; leadership team member, The National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement

"This timely publication will launch important conversations among the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors about how best to convert the disruptions we face into opportunities by leveraging volunteer talent—a critical renewable resource. Our foundation believes that strategically deployed volunteer energy increases our return on investment with all our grantees." - Jane Leighty Justis, president, The Leighty Foundation

"Transforming Disruption to Impact is a collection of voices that sing a powerful, poignant song: The lyrics tell us that, yes, our world has been dramatically disrupted . . . but we have within our reach the tools, the techniques, the principles, the practices, and the people who will show us how to transform this disruption into something positive and enduring. Service to others is what binds us together as humans; it is what propels us forward, even (perhaps especially) through the darkest times. This book reminds us that our darkest moments can eventually create the brightest light—again, through service to each other and to our communities. This book is what the world needs, precisely when the world needs it." - Kristin Clark Taylor, author, editor, and journalist; former White House communications strategist; member of USA TODAY's original creation and launch team

From the Publisher

2022-10-19
Experts in volunteer engagement discuss post-pandemic strategies in this essay collection, edited by journalist Bolton, consultant Steinhorn, corporate strategist Tennille, and tech businessperson Young.

Like many other sectors throughout the world, the “intricate tapestry of volunteerism” was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and by national conversations on social justice and systemic racism. Events of 2020, the editors assert, “transformed that fabric—completely unraveling some sections, fraying other areas, and adding entirely new threads throughout.” This book offers 19 essays by people who responded to this fact by approaching the sector from a “new perspective.” The authors range from community activists to academics, and the essays are roughly divided into four thematic sections. The first, “Landscape of Disruption,” stresses the lasting consequences of 2020 that will reverberate for years to come, from economic crises to racial inequity. “Rethinking Strategy” and “Rethinking Engagement” center on new strategies and practices related to volunteerism; for instance, in Steinhorn’s essay, “Redefining Community in a Hybrid World,” she urges volunteer coordinators to foster a sense of community in the face of challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. The book’s final section, “Rethinking Impact,” highlights the need for engagement with volunteers, who, “when leveraged effectively,” are essential to building “an organization’s capacity to accomplish its mission.” Despite its range of authors, the book’s prose style is consistently engaging, drawing on real-life examples and best practices, and it’s accompanied by a rich network of footnotes. Some may find it a bit heavy on corporate perspectives, but those engaged with faith-based organizations and civic engagement will still find representation. The book’s emphasis on issues pertaining to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color as well as immigrants and refugees is particularly noteworthy. As volunteer training director Wendy Vang-Roberts notes in her essay on racial equity, “achieving racial equity is lifelong work,” and it’s shown to be central to volunteerism’s long-term viability.

An important guidebook to rethinking volunteer work in the 21st century.

Kirkus Reviews