iVolunteer is a volunteer matching web site serving India. It describes itself as "a social enterprise that promotes volunteering with the mission to bring volunteers and organizations together to share time, skills, and passion to promote India’s social development."

Aarti Mahadevan is a Principal Consultant iVolunteer and is based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. In a recent LinkedIn post, she wrote about leverage the talent and time of employees from corporations who are willing to donate their expertise to nonprofit causes. She wrote in part:

Over these past years, we have continued to strive towards encouraging corporates to be more intentional with their employee volunteering. While hands on activities will always be a good first step, it does tend to sometimes become tokenist and treated as free labour. That is useful as a starting point for volunteers and leads to tangible outputs . However, when intentionality around engagement and cause get thrown in , then social impact as well as volunteer satisfaction peak.

She then provides two examples. Check out her LinkedIn post for more.

The India Welfare Trust (IWT) is launching a certificate course in Volunteer Management in September 2026 for NGOs who currently ALREADY have a volunteer component to their work.

Volunteer managers and coordinators at NGOs (this course is NOT for corporations) will be taught about volunteer recruitment, training, assignment, retention, tracking, impact measurement and growth. The course will have a focus on practical implementation rather than introductory concepts. It combines peer learning, practical assignments linked to participants' existing work, and mentorship from domain experts, with certification pursued through a credible academic/certification partner.

The batch size is 20 people, and the fees are expected to be very reasonable - below Rs20,000 per person. The programme costs 4-5X of this, which is being covered by IWT.

If you’re interested, you’ll need to make time for 4 hours on online learning a week, as well as some assignments to be completed at your time. 

After completing this course, you will be able to -
- Design volunteer opportunities that can engage volunteers at scale to create meaningful and tangible impact aligned to the organization's programmes
- Source, engage and deliver at least 10k hours of volunteering in a year 
- Measure and demonstrate outcomes of the volunteer work

IWT has a track record of doing this with more than 20 orgs over the last few years.

Please fill in this form at the earliest to express your organisation’s interest.

Improving the way you manage volunteers can have a huge positive impact on your outcomes, so invest in learning the best ways to do this from subject experts.

Private equity investors are buying up the specialized software that fire departments rely on and jacking up the price. This price-gouging is especially harmful to communities served by volunteer firefighters - and in the USA, 85% of fire departments are staffed by volunteers.

In this video, Robert Reich Explains the crisis and how this is putting so many communities in danger.

For several weeks, I researched how widespread this practice is & made a list of why I feel its unethical. This is the first in-depth research I've done in years, and I'm pleased with the result - this article for Engage.

Volunteers doing court-ordered community service at nonprofits, NGOs and charities was meant to be an alternative to fines and jail time. But there are nonprofits and probation officers offering another alternative: make a donation to a nonprofit and get a letter for the court saying the mandated hours have been completed.

Is this practice ethical? Is it legal? Should Volunteer Managers agree to collaborate on a unified statement about this practice? The answers are more complicated than you may think. This Engage feature by Volunteer Engagement expert Jayne Cravens explores these issues and their consequences on the Volunteer Engagement field. 

The article is behind a paywall at Engage, but you can access it by subscribing just one month to Engage, at a very affordable price. In the USA your local public library or university library may also have free access.

Hope probation officers & court officials in particular will read this.

I'm locking comments because I'd like people to read the article first before commenting. And you can comment on the Engage web site.

July 16 online event: Am I Making the Right Decision? The Role of Ethics in Volunteer Engagement

9:30 AM - 10:30 AM Eastern

Free.

We all encounter ethical dilemmas in our daily work with and for community, but rarely do organizations focus on ethics related to volunteer engagement. This session provides an opportunity for practitioners to understand the difference between personal, organizational and professional ethics. The core values and principles identified by the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration (CCVA) will be shared. Participants will learn a process for ethical decision-making that can be applied in any situation, and then practice this using real-life scenarios related to volunteers. Finally, several specific strategies will be offered for increasing awareness of ethics within an organization and helping both volunteers and staff become more effective at handling ethical dilemmas.

Association of Leaders in Volunteer Engagement.

Most of us in volunteer management support the observation that volunteering builds resumes, provides career exploration, and demonstrates each volunteer’s abilities, but can we make the case that volunteering directly affects employability? And is that the point?

In 2013, a report from the Corporation for National and Community Service, Volunteering as a Pathway to Employment: Does Volunteering Increase Odds of Finding a Job for the Out of Work? was releaed. It found evidence of strong correlation between volunteering and employment. The report acknowledged the inability to prove causation but, people quickly began using the report to promote volunteering as important to finding a job.

Susan Ellis decided to explore this report and others, including one of my research projects, in her August 2013 blog. It's a worthwhile read, as are the comments.

Feel free to comment further here.

Watched the Secrets of Hillsong, a four-part FX series from 2023 on Hulu & Disney+ (at least in the USA), based on Vanity Fair reporting. There's a LOT about the church's exploitation of volunteers - both violations of labor practices & related to sex. Very worth the watch for anyone that cares about volunteerism.

#Philanthropy #Volunteers

There's a subreddit, r/FIFAVolunteers/, where people who volunteered with the World Cup are sharing their experiences. It's fascinating.

Here's one, Completed my shifts, here’s everything I got as a volunteer.

Here's some others: Who had the worst volunteer program?.

Toronto FIFA Volunteering was an absolute joke. Incompetent staff, broken promises, and zero respect.

Would you volunteer again?.

It sounds like experiences varied HUGELY from city to city.

The Parliament of Ghana passed a Community Service Bill last week. The legislation introduces community service as a non-custodial sentencing alternative to prison for individuals convicted of specified minor offenses.

Its impact will depend on how quickly the necessary institutions and policies are established for its effective implementation. Calls have been made for the establishment of a National Community Service Secretariat and capacity building for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to supervise and manage non-custodial labor uniformly across the country. There are no reports on if there will be training for agencies expected to host people doing community service.

One of the people who has long advocated for non-custodial sentencing reforms in Ghana describes passage of the bill as a landmark achievement for equity, human rights and justice for indigent offenders who are often imprisoned for minor offenses because they cannot pay fines.

More from:

https://www.modernghana.com/news/1509260/expedite-implementation-of-community-service-law.html

I am on a volunteer team at a non-profit and we have a very specific mission within the non-profit. My team has decided to create a community partner program to try to get more volunteers from our community who have the specific skillset we need for our projects. I think we need to offer some sort of benefit for being a community partner. We can link our website to theirs and can print a certificate. That feels like it isn't enough, though.

I would love to see examples of perks or reciprocity offered by non-profits to the businesses and other organizations that help them out so that my team can get some ideas of what else we can offer to our community partners.

Individual Consultant Opportunity – UNV Learning Podcast Series

The United Nations Volunteers program is seeking an Individual Consultant (IC) to design and deliver a podcast series that showcases the learning and development experiences of UN Volunteers. The consultant will lead the end-to-end production process, including concept development, research, scriptwriting, recording, editing, and mastering, while creating engaging content that highlights UNV's learning offer and volunteer impact.

Location: Home-based
Duration: 32 working days over 9 months
Application Deadline: 21 July 2026 (noon New York time)

https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_negotiation.cfm?nego_id=47315

Note: You first have to register as a supplier before you can submit your proposal, and it is a very complicated and time consuming process, but once you register, you are in the system and won't have to do it again if you apply for another IC position.

The World Cup (soccer). Formula One. Even things like baseball and basketball which "let" nonprofit organizations staff food and drink booths, unpaid, in exchange for a part of the proceeds.

How do you feel about volunteers being leveraged for multi-million dollar sporting events?

What do you say to those who say, "These volunteers are involved only so multi-million dollar companies don't have to pay staff for these activities"?

Thoughtful Thursday discussion...

In Why Campaign Volunteers Are Critical, a person who volunteers for political campaigns talks about why her volunteer role is so critical to campaigns:

A sign doesn't answer a question. A mailer doesn't look a voter in the eye. A Facebook post doesn't replace a conversation with someone whose judgment you trust.

That’s why volunteers matter...

Volunteers multiply reach. More important, they multiply trust.

And, yet, the Independent Sector and the Points of Light Foundation and way too many other nonprofits reduce volunteer value down to number of hours or monetary value.

Have you asked the volunteers at your agency lately why they volunteer?

On 5 June 2026, Ismael Paez Civico, Confederation of European Senior Expert Services (CESES) Executive Director, participated in the POWER webinar on Disability and Volunteering, promoted by Pour la Solidarité - European think & do tank, as part of the POWER Erasmus+ Project. During the event, participants had the opportunity to learn from the experience that both CEV and CESES have gained through the TEAM IV and VIEWS, projects, in promoting inclusive volunteering for people with disabilities. 

The POWER project aims to strengthen the inclusion of adults with disabilities in France, Belgium and Italy through volunteering. It responds to a major social need: fighting against ableism, changing the perception of people with disabilities and recognizing their role as full actors in social life. POWER aims to support the creation of inclusive environments where people with disabilities in France, Belgium and Italy can engage, develop their skills and fully exercise their citizenship.

POWER is funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union.

https://pourlasolidarite.eu/project/power-promouvoir-les-opportunites-dengagement-des-adultes-en-situation-de-handicap/

The tone of the President's Freedom250 campaign contrasts with one of America250’s tentpoles: America Gives. The initiative aims to strengthen volunteering habits by encouraging Americans to serve with its nonprofit partners and log those hours in an online tracker.

The America Gives tracker counted just over 38 million hours volunteered entering the holiday weekend. It’s unclear how many hours would set the single-year record. Americans recorded 4.99 billion service hours in a one-year span from 2022-2023, according to an AmeriCorps analysis of Census Bureau data.

More from the Associated Press.

The ruling of the Court in the United Kingdom regarding HM Coastguard Rescue Officers "raises important questions for the entire voluntary sector about where the line between volunteering and employment should be drawn," according to Victoria Dickinson. "This decision resolves the legal issue for the Coastguard, but it also highlights a wider challenge facing many volunteer-involving organisations."

The Court found that because Coastguard Rescue Officers were entitled to claim hourly payments for attending incidents and training, they were legally classed as "workers" while carrying out those duties. In response, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency has announced it will move to a revised volunteer model, removing those payments while retaining reimbursement for certain expenses.

The legal difficulty in the UK, where laws regarding employment are substantially different than in the USA, is that once there is an entitlement to payment beyond genuine expenses, the relationship between a volunteer and the host agency may begin to look more like employment than volunteering. This leaves UK organizations facing a difficult balancing act.

Read her entire analysis on LinkedIn. Even if you aren't in the UK, there are really important points raised here.

Today is publication day for Rahim Hirji's new book, SuperSkills, and it's been the inspiration behind my latest blog post.

Rahim writes about "zombie work," tasks that keep us busy but don't need our judgment, and what's left for us to do once AI starts absorbing it.

My new blog article, inspired by Rahim's work and published to mark his book launch, digs into all of this from a volunteer engagement perspective.

Have a read and let me know what you think

https://robjacksonconsulting.wordpress.com/2026/07/03/ai-ve/

If you are looking for examples of online volunteering roles, or programs to refer people at your organization looking for online volunteering roles in case you don't have such or you want your clients to volunteer outside of your organization, or because you yourself are interested in learning about virtual volunteering, first hand, here is the most comprehensive, largest resource of where to find virtual volunteering opportunities. Authored by me. Suggestions for additions welcomed.

"I’ll admit to conflicted feelings about tapping volunteers to become employees. On one hand, this naturally feels complimentary, since it sends the good message that the organization views volunteers as a talent pool of equal merit to its employees. On the other hand, I see three possible concerns..."

This is an excerpt from Susan Ellis' June 2001 blog ("Hot Topic") on volunteers at an organization becoming paid employees at that same organization. She got almost 30 comments on it! The blog, and the comments, are terrific (and make me miss how much more engaging the Internet used to be).

https://www.energizeinc.com/hot-topics/2001/june

Pista Magica - VOICE Toolkit

Provides practical tools and concrete examples that support the use of Structured Volunteering as a tool in the context of Supported Employment, supporting inclusion and empowerment in employment.

You can access the toolkit here in English and Portuguese.

The person in charge of volunteer engagement at a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school or other civil society organization or mission-based program - usually called the volunteer manager or leader of volunteers - primarily recruits and manages volunteers that are supporting other staff: the program staff, for instance, may need mentors for clients or people to clean up a public space or to foster animals. The fundraising staff may need volunteers to staff a donor event. The marketing manager may need volunteers to accurately caption the nonprofit's videos on YouTube.  

But the person in charge of volunteer engagement should also be thinking about how volunteers can help with volunteer engagement - with the recruitment, onboarding, training, support and recognition of volunteers.

That can not only help the person in charge of volunteer engagement have more time for creating strategies, addressing critical needs and engaging in professional development, as well as leveraging far more talent and experiences than any one person can have, it also is leading by example: if you want more staff to create roles and tasks for volunteers, and to be effectively supporting them, you need to be leading by example! 

Roles for Volunteers to Support Volunteer Engagement.

What would you add?

With summer breaks looming in the Northern Hemisphere, here are three books I recommend you check out over the holiday season.

**Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence **
An excellent, easy to read primer on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Mollick explains what it is, how it works, and why we should all be engaged with AI in some way. His core principles for AI use are wise and practical. If AI is a mystery to you, start here.

**Rahim Hirji, Superskills**
OK, I haven’t read this yet because it isn’t out until the 3rd July. I am, however, a massive fan of Rahim’s newsletter, Box Of Amazing, which I recommend all the time. Like the newsletter, his book will help us all think on what it means to be human in an age of technology, including why the soft skills of old are so vital today. Expect to be challenged and inspired.

**Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow**
One of the best fiction books I have read in years. I quickly ploughed through this a year or two ago, and it was top of my list to include as an alternative to work related books in this year’s reading list. Don’t miss it.

This is an image by United Nations Volunteers. What do you think of it? Would it be a different image if it was from the host organization's point of view?

Two months ago, the Points of Light Foundation released a Progress Report regarding the first iteration of its National Volunteer Strategy for the USA. 

The Points of Light Foundation has now released the first iteration of the National Volunteer Strategy as the next step in Reimagining Service 2035.

I'm very glad to see the emphasis in the report about how volunteering can help rebuild trust, strengthen belonging and create shared responsibility. This is something I have been advocating for a while:

• The Trust Crisis (2019)
• the growing youth & loneliness crisis (& lack of empathy crisis) – could volunteer engagement help? (2019)
• Volunteer management is community engagement (2016)
• Volunteering & social cohesion in a post Brexit world (2016)
• Volunteer engagement is the pursuit of building empathy & many find that idea dangerous. (2025)

So, Points of Light - welcome to the movement.

I'm reading the National Volunteer Strategy now. Some things I like:

I like that, under "What makes volunteering possible", #1, is CAPACITY and that underneath that are these goals

• Broaden Access to Volunteer Engagement Training
• Advance Career Development for Volunteer Engagement Professionals
• Reinforce Volunteer Engagement as a Strategic Function
• Curate a Shared Volunteer Engagement Resource Hub

These are points that so many volunteerism experts, long before me, have been pushing - Susan Ellis championed these four points for YEARS, while most organizations, including POL, were still focusing on recruitment campaigns or the dollar value of volunteer service. I'm so happy to see them first in the strategy.

As page 28 of the report says:

Organizations frequently cited a lack of time, training, and systems needed to recruit, onboard, support, and retain volunteers effectively. Broader research also emphasizes that volunteer engagement professionals are often overstretched, undervalued, and operating without clear professional pathways, even as they are responsible for translating public willingness to serve into safe, meaningful, and continued participation.13 In another report, nearly half of volunteer managers reported not having enough time to manage engagement effectively.

Page 29 offers a summary of what each of the four bullet points mean.

I'm also very glad to see this comment on page 30.

volunteer engagement and infrastructure are chronically underfunded. Only 0.19% of private funding supports volunteer engagement, and recent public funding cuts have further reduced organizations’ ability to mobilize volunteers... By investing in what it takes for volunteering to succeed — including skilled leadership, practical tools and training, technology, evaluation, accessibility, and local infrastructure — funders, policymakers, businesses, and institutions can help organizations engage volunteers more effectively, expand participation, and strengthen the civic infrastructure communities need to thrive.

So many of us have been saying this for many, many years.

Will we finally be heard? Or will this report result in some tech bros announcing yet another volunteer recruitment app?

Once you have read the report, your comments about it here will be welcomed.