These governance and volunteer management trainings are open to all nonprofit organizations and volunteers.
For cost and descriptions of each of our workshops, click on each link below.
Please bookmark our training calendar as we will add future trainings.

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Zero.  Volunteer program managers don’t screw in light bulbs, they recruit and train others to do it.  As a volunteer program administrator, I can laugh at this joke.  I do think it’s funny.  But it also gives me pause.  I think there are often too many tasks or metaphorical “light bulbs” that we could recruit and train volunteers to take on, but we don’t.  We end up doing an overwhelming amount of volunteer management work ourselves.  I don’t think sharing work is a problem unique…

Teen Feed is a Seattle-based organization that works with the community to offer support to meet basic needs, build strong relationships, and ally with homeless youth as they meet their future off the streets.

Teen Feed recently went through the Volunteer Impact Program (VIP) to strengthen their volunteer engagement capacity. Teen Feed has used volunteers to run an evening meal program for homeless teens in the U-district for a long time. Through VIP, Teen Feed realized they could be doing more with these volunteers so they developed

The holidays are here.  And with the holidays comes a spike in volunteering.  Families, businesses, community groups and individuals all want to engage.  The holiday season brings out the spirit of generosity and nurtures concern and compassion for others.  All share a common desire to enrich their own lives and the lives of others.  The holidays are a time of giving and receiving.  What better way to express the season than to give a gift of service.  Even those experiencing difficult times themselves, feel…

Why do you engage volunteers? I ask this question at every workshop I deliver on effective volunteer management.  It is an important question to ask.  As volunteer managers, we are in the business of engaging people with our organizations.  But why?  The most common answers I hear: we don’t have enough money to pay for staff; to get work done; to educate the community; to build community connections; and to raise money.  There is one answer that encompasses all of the rest. We involve volunteers…

Celebrate International Volunteer Managers Day on November 5^th!

Have you thanked a volunteer manager lately?  Well…November 5^th is the day to celebrate your favorite volunteer manager!  We all recognize the contribution of volunteers – they are involved in just about every aspect of service delivery in our communities.  Behind this army of volunteers lies an equally dedicated group of individuals who are responsible for the coordination, support, training, administration and recruitment of volunteers.  They are an often unrecognized group of professionals who skillfully transform individual…

Over 10,000 United Way Day of Caring Volunteers! All I can say is “Wow!”  From the feedback I’ve received since Friday from agency staff about the incredible work done last Friday, there is definitely a lot to celebrate!  Just check out the photos of Day of Caring volunteers in action and you really get a feel for the energy and excitement that infused the day. 

I want to take a moment to celebrate the staff and volunteers at 281 agencies that submitted their Day…

Well…it turns out the  “heated feelings” in volunteer management circles about Reimagining Service may be cooling down.  My post on July 30 Reimagining Service: What’s All the Fuss, shared some frustrations I’ve been hearing in the field.   But in a July 15 post on Jayne Craven’s Blog, she expressed “STUNNED surprise” at receiving an e-mail from the folks at Reimagining Service with a very different message than their initial report [Reimagining Service Report, 2009]. After more research, the focus on…

There are some “bad feelings” spreading through volunteer resource professional circles over the Reimagining Service initiative (see Susan Ellis’, Reimagining Service: Is Corporate HR Management What We See? and Jayne Craven’s Don’t let them equate volunteer management with HR management).  The Reimagining Service initiative is described as a self-organized community of individuals from nonprofits, government and the private sector…inspired by the renewed call to service.  Reimagining Service calls for an investment of critical resources and dollars to build the volunteer management infrastructure.  Hallelujah! …

Here at United Way of King County, we’ve taken the “throw noodles at the wall and see what sticks” approach to social media thus far, experimenting with different tools and projects. While some strategies have seen more success than others, each is a learning experience. In the spirit of social media and social networking, I thought I’d share some of the social media resources I have found to be most valuable. There are so many great ideas and resources out there, it’s hard to narrow the…