Smarter Impact Starts Here
A Grateful Note to End 2020
The end of the calendar year is traditionally a time of reflection – looking back on the year’s achievements, challenges, joys, and losses. While 2020 is no different in that regard, our reflections are paired with an urgent desire to put this difficult year behind...
The Power of Plans, Peers, and Pivots
At the start of 2020, we at VQ Volunteer Strategies were training and coaching four different cohorts of organizations. While each was designed to help organizations engage volunteers to deliver on mission, the focus of each cohort varied significantly, including one...
Redefining Leadership: Finding Balance in Recovery and Renewal
In our recent blog, we explored the importance of making the case for volunteer engagement as a strategy to sustain your organization. An important part of making the case is demonstrating how engaging volunteers (and doing that well) can continue to support and...
Leveraging Engagement to Sustain Our Organizations
The most common topic of discussion in meetings lately and the theme of many sessions during this unusual fall conference season is the need to advocate for volunteer engagement as a strategy to help sustain organizations during these challenging times. While...
A 2020 Time Machine
2020 hasn’t turned out as any of us expected. Just for a moment, imagine what you would say if you could magically travel back and provide some advice or pose questions to your January self… What would you ask? What advice might you give?
Do you Have a Seat at the Leadership Table?
Now, more than ever, volunteer engagement professionals need a seat the leadership table to help organizations leverage this vast resource of skills and passion that volunteers can offer — even if only offering it remotely due to safety concerns of the Coronavirus...
Zoom Fatigue, Volunteers, and Some Aha! Moments
Over the last few days, a common theme emerged from several seemingly disparate conversations. A virtual coffee with a colleague this morning. Listening to a book on leadership while I was walking outdoors yesterday. And, yes, even a call with my mother a few days ago.
What was the theme? Fatigue.
Engagement as a Path to Inclusion and Justice
Just as organizations began to explore reopening models after months of pandemic-induced closures or adaptations to services, millions of people have been coming together (virtually and physically) in demonstrations, discussions, and reflections on racial justice and...
Top Three Tips for Selecting Volunteer Management Software
We were recently asked to share our top three tips for selecting volunteer management software to provide some context for software comparison tool developed by Better Impact. Our tips - along with those of other volunteer engagement experts - are featured on the page...
What To Say, What To Send… Part 2
Last month, I wrote about proactive communications with volunteers during the pandemic and the importance of emphasizing transparency, versatility, humanity, and strategy. While all of that still applies, in recent weeks, the focus of conversations among nonprofit and...
