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Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration

Creating Organizational Readiness to

Engage Boomers and the New Wave of Volunteers


While there has been extensive research into the  'Baby Boomer'  generation and the changes in how today's volunteers wish to be contributing, there is little concrete information about how volunteer leaders within organizations can be catalysts for changes internally to successfully connect with these potential volunteers, and recruit, retain and engage them in meaningful roles.  MAVA addressed this by:

 

  • Holding two symposiums for leaders of volunteers to build the base of hands-on knowledge for engaging and retaining Boomers as volunteers.
  • Turning the information from the symposiums and a review of the research into a curriculum for training of leaders of volunteers statewide.

MAVA has offered workshops at 10+ locations throughout Minnesota, reaching 500+ leaders of volunteers through training and an additional 3,000+ nonprofit leaders through electronic distribution of materials.

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Upcoming Events:

Engaging Boomers and New Generations of Volunteers

October 12, 2010
Crookston, MN

Watch for events to be posted soon:

-    Sept. 16 MAVA Connections - Marketing to Boomers

-  October session in Metro area for past Boom workshop participants to share progress and challenges

-  Additional workshops to be offered


Boomergistics:  Engaging Boomers and Future Generations of Volunteers

 

Attend MAVA's full day workshop to:

  • Learn and practice techniques for re-inventing volunteerism for today's volunteers
  • Explore how these methods can be used to tap into the potential wealth of volunteer resources offered by the Boomer generation
  • Gain knowledge from recent research on Boomers and civic engagement

You will leave the training with an action plan to re-tool your volunteer program!

12 Best Practices for Engaging Boomers and New Generations of Volunteers

  1. Understand volunteers’ deep-seated need to have impact and use that understanding in all facets of how you involve them as volunteers.
  2. Focus the volunteer interview on learning the prospective volunteer’s passions, mutually designing his/her volunteer role and helping the volunteer determine if your organization is the right place to realize the impact he/she wants to have.
  3. Offer a wide choice of volunteer opportunities in all aspects of the organization’s operations.
  4. Include some short term and seasonal volunteer positions to align with current volunteer availability.
  5. Offer skills-based volunteer opportunities to maximize what volunteers can bring to the organization.
  6. Develop volunteer position descriptions that are engaging and show impact.
  7. Move volunteers into project leadership roles. Be open to project ideas that volunteers propose.
  8. Develop appealing volunteer recruitment messages, working through your organization’s networks.   Cultivate prospects and be highly visible on the web.
  9. Re-frame traditional volunteer supervision to leading volunteers and offering collegial support. Identify high potential volunteers and cultivate them to take on additional responsibility.
  10. Also re-frame volunteer recognition to respond to the value current volunteers place on having impact and on being life-long learners.
  11. Be an instigator for these organizational changes. Identify your champions for change. Start small in a part of the organization open to innovation and then market the success with colleagues in other parts of the organization.
  12. Create systems to monitor changes in volunteer expectations and become a learning organization that adapts to changing needs of volunteers.

Why Change is Needed


Best Practices Just for Boomers or for All of Today's Volunteers?

 

Tips, Tools and Resources to Take and Use

Key articles and publications on engaging Boomers as volunteers

Tools and resources developed by participants at MAVA workshops:

 

Thank you

Thank you for funding for this initiative to the F.R. Bigelow, Initiative, Otto Bremer, Morgan Family St. Paul and Stevens Square Foundations

Thank you to the MAVA Task Force on Engaging Boomers as Volunteers for work to develop the content of this initiative

 
 

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Contact Us:
Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration
1800 White Bear Avenue North
Maplewood, MN 55109
Phone: (651)255-0469  Fax: (651)255-0460
office@mavanetwork.org