Training Materials | Get Involved! Resource Clearinghouse

Learn more about best practices in volunteer recruitment and engagement, and how to get the results you need.

NOTE: These are examples from public libraries and should be reviewed and modified to ensure fit with local policies and culture.

Title	Keyword	Tags	Year
Online Book Sales & Research Training #1: Bookbinding Styles - Mesa AZ The Mesa Public Library in Arizona utilizes volunteers to support their huge online booksale operation. This Training Outline is one of three shared… more	Job Specific Volunteer Training, Engaging High Impact Volunteers	online booksales	2020
Walking the Walk: Engage Library Volunteers in your Volunteer Engagement Program This 1-hour webinar by Jennifer Bennett of VolunteerMatch (recorded on August 29, 2019) focuses attention on how to engage volunteers in the work of… more	Engaging High Impact Volunteers, Capacity Building	Skilled Volunteers	2019
Do's and Don'ts of Supervising Library Volunteers This July 2019 article from Public Libraries Online provides an excellent overview of working with volunteers in large and small libraries.	Capacity Building, Staff Training	supervision	2019
Arizona's Buckeye Library Shares it's Experience with Get Involved In this 6 minute video, Krista Cornish, Buckeye Library's (AZ) Volunteer Engagement Coordinator shares her library's experience and best… more	Capacity Building, Engaging Staff and Unions		2019
Controlling Complaint Conversations This quick read provides quick tips to being a better listener and sorting through ‘provable facts’ from emotions and hearsay when a volunteer… more	Staff Training	Complaint, problem, unhappy	2019
Beware of These 6 Trends Lurking in Your Volunteer Program This brief article from November 2019 delineates troubling trends about volunteer engagement programs gleaned from the most recent Volunteer… more	Capacity Building		2019
Shelving with Dewey - Illinois This 1 hour self-paced course from LibraryU, a program of the Illinois State Library and the regional library systems is archived by WebJunction. It… more	Job Specific Volunteer Training	shelve, book shelving, shelver	2019
Recruitment Success Story - Flagstaff Arizona In this 4 minute video, Claudine from the Flagstaff library talks about her successes in finding a volunteer to serve as her assistant volunteer… more	Capacity Building, Engaging High Impact Volunteers	online booksales, Book sale	2019
Volunteer Appreciation Guide is Volunteer Appreciation Guide is a free resource developed by Wild Apricot to offer tips and advice for volunteer programs just getting started… more	Capacity Building	recognition	2019
Want to Write a Volunteer Program Annual Report? Here's How to Start VolunteerMatch blog guest post by Elisa Kosarin. This post originally appeared on Twenty Hats. Your volunteers tell a compelling story. It’s time to… more	Capacity Building		2019
Skills Based Volunteering Toolkit - Common Impact Since 2000, Common Impact has supported nonprofits in effectively utilizing skills-based volunteering to build internal capacity to better serve the… more	Capacity Building, Engaging High Impact Volunteers	Skills Based Volunteers	2019
Playing by the Rules: Creating an Effective Volunteer Handbook. This one hour archived webinar was presented by Jennifer Bennett of VolunteerMatch in conjunction with the 4 state Get Involved: Powered by Your… more	Volunteer Handbooks	policies, handbook	2019
Building Capacity: Strategic Volunteer Engagement In this Points of Light blog post, the point is made that organizations that build a culture of volunteerism, and purposefully embed volunteerism… more	Capacity Building, Staff Training	Strategic	2018
The Essential Guide to Managing Volunteers at Your Nonprofit A free comprehensive overview for volunteer management from VolunteerPro.	Capacity Building		2018
Build Staff Buy-In for Volunteer Engagement Often one of the biggest challenges to a new model of volunteer engagement is the resistance of paid staff. Often attitudes and fears of our co-… more	Staff Guides for Working with Volunteers, Capacity Building, Engaging Staff and Unions	Staff Resistance, staff buy-in	2018
Volunteer Background Checks: Giving Back without Giving Up on Privacy How do nonprofit organizations screen volunteers? There are several options. The choices depend largely on the volunteer job involved and the… more	Volunteer Screening / Interviewing, Capacity Building, Staff Training	background checks, screening	2018
Grow Staff Volunteer Harmony Tips from Energize Inc. on helping staff to work more productively with volunteers.	Engaging Staff and Unions	staff buy-in	2018
Three Things We Know About Engaging Millennials in Your Cause A quick read on what Millennials are interested in to help you in your recruitment efforts.	Millennials	Millennials	2018
Getting the Highest Visibility on VolunteerMatch – How to RePost Your Listing Keeping your volunteer opportunity near the top of the list in your zipcode is critical to keep it visible to potential volunteers. One of the… more	VolunteerMatch Tools and Resources	RePost	2018
GenerationOn Projects, Ideas and Resources Looking for possible library volunteer projects for kids, teens and/or families? Check out GenerationOn's projects and resources to get some… more	Millennials	Teens, family volunteering	2018