Smarter Impact Starts Here
Meaningful Meetings
January isn’t even over, and already I have spent five full days and one half-day in meetings with staff and volunteers together. In New York, Kansas, and Colorado, I facilitated trainings and retreats each with a mix of staff, volunteers, national service members,...
Transforming Holiday One-Timers into Ongoing Volunteers
‘Tis the season. Not just for celebration… but for people to show up in droves to volunteer over the holidays. Together with an increase in required community service for students and the spike in employee engagement, these holiday volunteers are part of a national...
When Counting Hours Really Counts!
Anyone who has heard us at VQ Volunteer Strategies talk about the importance of measuring volunteer impact has undoubtedly heard us say, “We have to get beyond counting hours!” In fact, most people have heard us say that many, many times. And, yet, while the field...
From Workshop to Workin’ It: One Colleague’s Strategic Planning Journey
There is nothing more inspiring and energizing than hearing firsthand how a workshop or tool or webinar equipped someone in the field to successfully make a change and enhance engagement. I had that opportunity recently when I encountered Rachel Ohlhausen at a...
The Power of Citywide Engagement – Learning Opportunities
Six years ago this month, I was awakened in the middle of a rainy night by my husband’s phone exploding with texts. He volunteers with a local search and rescue team and was being called out to help with flash flooding and a mudslide in a town outside Boulder, CO,...
Beyond Retention: How to get better data to inform your volunteer engagement strategy
“How do I know if my volunteer engagement strategies are working? I keep looking at our retention numbers and I don’t understand why some people stay with us and why some don’t.” This was my first conversation with Hannah, a volunteer program manager at a local nonprofit addressing food insecurity.
Lessons from the Road
Last month and for the third year in a row, I completed a series of 10 business trips in 10 weeks (#10TripsIn10Weeks). It’s a period I fondly refer to as “conference season.” While waiting in security lines and spending four hours squeezed into an aircraft seat...
Be Bold… Lessons for Volunteer Engagement Professionals
by Beth Steinhorn, President, VQ Volunteer Strategies This morning, after nine months of research, design, and preparation, I excitedly sat in the launch of a three-day training for engagement specialists of the American Red Cross – all designed around the theme of...
Reinvent the Wheel or Develop Something New?
To Reinvent the Wheel – or to Develop Something Totally New? That is the question. These days, when someone asks a question about a best practice or tool, all it usually takes to find the answer is a quick online search… or, perhaps, a phone call to colleagues. But...
X, Y, and Introducing Generation Z!
Many different things can indicate “coming of age” … but when it comes to a generation as a whole, one factor could certainly be the act of receiving a distinct generational name. That just happened for the generation after Millennials – those born after 1996 – who...
