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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Can We Reject a Volunteer? What do you do when someone applies to volunteer and you realize they will not work out? How can we justify rejecting anyone who steps forward and… more	Interviewing Volunteers, Staff Training	Fire, reject, complaints	2018
You Can't Fire Me, I'm a Volunteer! This quick read from Blue Avocado focuses on addressing volunteer dissatisfaction points to the right way to handle disgruntled volunteers.	Staff Training	Fire, disgruntled	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
Volunteers: More Work? or More Work Force? - Idaho Commission for Libraries This is a 30 minute archived webinar, presented May 15, 2017 by Sheila Winther, Volunteer Coordinator for the Idaho Commission for Libraries. This is… more	Staff Guides for Working with Volunteers, Capacity Building, Staff Training	volunteer coordinator	2017
ASCLA Library Accessibility ToolKits An excellent list prepared by ASCLA of links to resources that can help in a number of areas including: Autism Spectrum Disorders, blind, deaf,… more	Capacity Building, Staff Training	disabilities	2017
Volunteers are the Reputational Assets Your Organization is Overlooking A great reminder in a brief article by Erin Rebecca Spink.	Capacity Building, Staff Training		2017
ESL Conversation Circles Toolkit This wiki from settlementatwork.org could be useful for staff designing and implementing ESL Conversation Circles, and also for training ESL… more	Job Specific Volunteer Training, Staff Training		2017
A Different Kind of Volunteer Work: More companies are encouraging empoloyees to donate their professional expertise This brief September, 2017 Wall Street Journal article speaks to societal factors leading to the increase in corporate pro bono programs.	Capacity Building, Engaging High Impact Volunteers		2017
How to Turn Away Volunteers and Still Have an OK Day In this August, 2017 article, Elisa Kosarin shares her basics for making this difficult experience manageable.	Volunteer Screening / Interviewing, Interviewing Volunteers, Staff Training		2017
How Changing Our Volunteer Interview Approach Increased our Retention Rate by 30% Elisa Kosarin of Twenty Hats describes Behavior-based interviewing, and how its implementation in her situation helped to increased the quality of… more	Volunteer Screening / Interviewing, Interviewing Volunteers	interview, screening, retention	2017
The Volunteer Interview: Making the offer . . . or not This July, 2016 article from Verified Volunteers covers strategies for assessing candidates, how to handle when it's not a good fit, and… more	Volunteer Screening / Interviewing, Interviewing Volunteers		2017
Small Library VolunteerMatch Success -- Johnson City TX In this 4 & 1/2 minute video, Johnson City Texas Library Director, Maggie Goodman, shares her successful experience in posting a need for IT… more	Capacity Building, Engaging High Impact Volunteers, On-line Volunteer Recruitment, VolunteerMatch Tools and Resources	rural, small, maker space, LinkedIn, VolunteerMatch	2017
Small Library VolunteerMatch Success Story - Brownwood Texas In this 2 minute video, Brownwood Texas Library Director, Becky Isbell, shares her successful experience in posting a need for a skilled graphic… more	Capacity Building, Engaging High Impact Volunteers, On-line Volunteer Recruitment, VolunteerMatch Tools and Resources	rural, Skilled Volunteers, VolunteerMatch	2017
If Your Board Looked Like Your Community While written by an Arts organization, the 4 “Hurdles” described, along with strategies to consider and actions to take are relevant to all… more	Staff Training	diversity, inclusion, inclusive	2016