Topics Offered | Everyone Ready

The Learning Center is continually available to your learners, with 40 (and growing) Online Seminars and Self-Instruction Guides on the topics described below. Every other month, we offer an in-depth Featured Topic (see our calendar of upcoming Featured Topics) highlighted on the Everyone Ready^® Main Page and our faculty are available to answer learner’s questions and provide additional guidance.

Sample a Seminar

Sample a Self Instruction Guide

Bridging the Gap Between Volunteers and Employees: Keys to Effective Partnership

Online Seminar: One universal issue in volunteer management is how to get employees and volunteers who work together on a daily basis to be more enthusiastic and supportive of each other. This seminar examines the root causes of possible tension, attitudes and assumptions that hinder teamwork, and effective practices to grow partnerships among everyone.

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Budgeting for a Volunteer Program: Money Well Planned and Well Spent

Self-Instruction Guide: Tell a truer story of volunteer engagement by understanding the real costs and benefits of involving volunteers and include all aspects of volunteer contribution on the annual budget.

Building and Sustaining Strong Volunteer Leadership

Online Seminar: How can we recruit, encourage, and support potential volunteers to take on positions of leadership in today's commitment-averse world? This includes everything from volunteering to be board members and officers, special events coordinators, chairs of various committees, special project managers, and team/shift leaders.

Building the Foundation for Volunteer Involvement

Online Seminar: This seminar introduces the potential scope of volunteer participation, explores the basic principles of volunteer management including what needs to be in place to support volunteer engagement (establishing policies and allocating resources for volunteer and employee accomplishment), and the 12 elements of successful volunteer management. This seminar sets the stage for learning about volunteer management and prepares you to participate knowledgeably in all the learning opportunities Everyone Ready has to offer.

Challenges and Obstacles to Volunteer Involvement: Your FAQs

Online Seminar: Not just another pep talk about volunteers! This seminar accepts all the positives about volunteer involvement and then "gets real" about some of the hard challenges and serious concerns that often surface. Where to find the time? Is it OK to fire a volunteer? How to give volunteers a role in directing their work? When to say no? Join the dialogue.

Connecting Social Media and Volunteers

Online Seminar: Social media has radically transformed Internet communication and, increasingly, our lives. With a bewildering choice of social networks and new ways to access them on the run, we are all still figuring out how social media can help engage and support volunteers. This online seminar will provide a framework of principles you can use in deciding whether and which forms of social media (those that exist today and the next tools likely to evolve) you can successfully adopt in working with volunteers.

Cutting-edge Trends and Issues in Volunteerism

Online Seminar: There are all sorts of world events and social/cultural changes that impact volunteer involvement today. Because of the rapid pace of change, Everyone Ready periodically devotes a seminar to current key trends and issues affecting both volunteers and the organizations in which they serve. Many of the points considered in this newest seminar were identified by Everyone Ready learners themselves, particularly issues created by the global economic recession.

Demonstrating the Impact of Volunteer Involvement

Online Seminar: Counting heads and hours is a very limited way to measure the impact of volunteer service. Explore better options to assess and demonstrate the substantive difference volunteers make to the work of the organization. What is the real "value" of volunteering (way beyond financial return-on-investment)? Learn how to generate reports that impress, educate, and influence a wide range of stakeholders – and gain data that gives recognition to volunteers and attracts new recruits.

Designing Work for Today's Volunteers

Online Seminar: This seminar helps you identify and define tasks for volunteers that benefit the organization, provide the volunteer with a significant and appealing way to make a positive contribution, and still fit within the abilities of today's time-challenged population.

Educating Up: Gaining Executive Support for Volunteer Engagement

Online Seminar: There are many important decisions and actions necessary to maximize the contributions of volunteers, many of which cannot be made or taken unilaterally by front line staff or even a designated volunteer program manager. This seminar helps you gain (or provide) the necessary executive support to engage volunteers most effectively.

Effective Delegation Skills

Self-Instruction Guide: It is easy to give out work assignments — anyone can do it! What's not so easy is delegating in an effective manner. This Guide teaches you the proactive approach to delegating so that you can truly save time in the long run.

Effective Supervision: A Seminar for Busy Staff Who Partner with Volunteers

Online Seminar: Betty Stallings addresses the special challenges of supervising a volunteer work force. She provides a framework in which to consider the principles of supervision, including the attitudes, tasks, and skills needed to do it most effectively.

Fearless Fundraising for Volunteer Engagement (Learn to Do More with More)

Self-Instruction Guide: We all know volunteers are never "free". Lack of funds can significantly limit the potential impact of volunteer engagement in an organization, yet it seems hard to fundraise to support volunteers. Betty Stallings discusses the methods and mindset for securing adequate money to support volunteer involvement—creative yet practical ideas for generating the revenue you need.

First Days Count: Orienting and Welcoming Volunteers for Success

Self-Instruction Guide: Learn to prepare new and seasoned volunteers to succeed in new volunteer roles in a thorough, effective, and engaging way.

Focus on the Volunteer Program Manager: A Task Analysis of the Role and Significant Issues

Self-Instruction Guide: Shares an extensive delineation of the responsibilities, functions, and tasks involved in leading today's volunteer programs.

Formulating Organizational Policies that Support Volunteer Involvement

Self-Instruction Guide: For the involvement of volunteers to be effective, each organization must consider and make decisions about how volunteers will be treated and dealt with – in short, how volunteers will operate as members of the service delivery "team." This Guide walks the reader through these considerations, and offers sample policies created to address these issues.

Generations: Adapting to Volunteers of Different Ages

Online Seminar: The clock is ticking and seismic change is coming – is your organization ready to accommodate all age groups and their differences? Generation change affects everything, including volunteering. How will you adapt to the retirement of the Boomers? The GenXers who are being followed by Millennials? And what about volunteers who are even older and younger than the people in the paid workforce?

Handling Challenging Behavior by Volunteers

Online Seminar: Dealing with difficult volunteers is not an easy or pleasant task, and is one that is often uncomfortable for those who believe that tolerating poor behavior is necessary when it comes to volunteers. This seminar will stretch your thinking and give you practical suggestions. If you've encountered challenging behavior from volunteers, don't miss this opportunity to take a closer look at methods and examples for improving the situation.

Informal Volunteer Recognition: Creating a Culture of Appreciation

Self-Instruction Guide: This Guide looks at the art of informal volunteer recognition and explores a multitude of techniques that can boost the morale of volunteers and paid staff. Learn how to increase retention, improve quality of work, and develop a more pleasant work environment for both volunteers and employees by creating a "culture of appreciation."

Interviewing, Screening and Placing Volunteers

Online Seminar: Discover how an effective interviewing and screening process identifies the best volunteer applicants, minimizes agency risk, and is a key step to greater retention and volunteer program peace of mind.

It Takes Two to Tango: Building Successful Relationships between Volunteers and Paid Staff

Self-Instruction Guide - One of the most critical issues in volunteer management is how to get employees and volunteers to be more enthusiastic about and supportive of each other. This Guide, originally written for Everyone Ready by the late Ivan Scheier and now updated by Susan Ellis, examines the root causes of possible tension, acknowledges both the employee and volunteer perspective, and offers a process for building teamwork.

Just a Click Away: Making the Most of Volunteer Resources on the Web

Self-Instruction Guide: Discover the wide variety of volunteer management resources available online. Explore dozens of specific Web sites, and learn how virtual volunteering, social networking, and emerging technologies can benefit your organization's work and your own personal style of interacting with volunteers.

Keeping Volunteers Motivated (So They Stay!)

Online Seminar: Avoid the costly “revolving door” of people who lose their initial motivation and enthusiasm and ultimately stop volunteering. This Seminar will help you create an environment conducive to keeping volunteers motivated, committed, and onboard!

Managing Change (and Dealing with Resistance to It!)

Online Seminar: Change is inevitable and its pace is increasing. Organizations must adapt to today’s economic, social and political climate, requiring both paid and volunteer staff to be open to new ways of doing things. But change can be threatening. Explore how you can understand and minimize resistance to change and work with those who resist the most.

Mandated Service: A Human Resource Opportunity

Self-Instruction Guide: Learn about the many situations in which individuals are required to provide community service and how your organization may benefit from them.

Methods of Volunteer Program Evaluation

Self-Instruction Guide: Discover the best method for evaluating your volunteer program to determine its effectiveness, focus on needed improvement, and recognize volunteer achievements.

Middle Managers: Their Vital Role in Volunteer Success

Self-Instruction Guide: Decisions about involving volunteers are often made at the top executive level and carried out in daily work by staff members on the front line. In the middle are department heads, branch managers, and unit supervisors who are vital to the success of volunteer engagement. This Guide explores the often-overlooked role of middle management in setting expectations for each unit, coaching both paid staff and volunteers, advocating up the chain of command, and monitoring that benefits outweigh effort.

New Approaches to Recruitment

Online Seminar: Despite many new online tools, the fundamentals of the recruiting process have not changed. Revisit how you find and attract the volunteers you most want by designing appealing volunteer work, looking in the right places, presenting your opportunities well, and making the most of social media.

OUR Volunteers: The Management Team Approach to Enhancing Volunteer Engagement

Self-Instruction Guide: Explains why a strong Volunteer Involvement Management Team is critical to successful volunteer engagement, defines its purpose, and how to develop or enhance a team approach.

Pro Bono Service: Get Ready for the Highly-Skilled Volunteer

Self-Instruction Guide: Pro bono volunteering – in which people donate their professional expertise to nonprofit and government organizations to build management capacity – is getting lots of buzz right now. This Guide considers what’s driving this trend, why it is especially appealing to corporate workplace volunteering efforts, how "highly-skilled" volunteering may differ from other sorts of donated service, and how to leverage this type of assistance to achieve organizational goals.

Reports with Clout: Showing the Impact of Volunteers

Self-Instruction Guide: Reports about volunteers are too often limited to "how many" people and hours served. Explore the potential of using the reporting process to highlight volunteer and staff accomplishments and to meet program goals.

Risk Management Issues and Insurance for Involving Volunteers

Self-Instruction Guide: Learn to identify potential risks in volunteer activities, how to reduce or eliminate the most serious ones and discover some of the basics about insurance designed specifically to address risks in volunteer involvement.

Tapping Into Corporate Volunteer Programs

Self-Instruction Guide: Workplace volunteering is a growth industry. How can tapping into this valuable resource help your organization?

The Power of Integrating Volunteers throughout Your Organization

Online Seminar: The power and the potential of volunteer involvement in organizations are limitless. But many organizations restrict how, where and when volunteers are "allowed" to be involved. How can these barriers be removed?

The Principles of Volunteer Management: No Matter What Your Job Title

Self-Instruction Guide: This introductory Self-Instruction Guide offers an overview of the different skills it takes to involve volunteers in the most productive way. Focusing on the "frontline," it will help you become intentional about the way you interact and supervise volunteer team members. It gives you an approach to volunteer management – the fundamental mindset and expectations necessary for success.

Turning Single Days of Service into Longer Volunteer Involvement

Self-Instruction Guide: Learn how to encourage volunteers to extend their commitments beyond the universal trend of serving for a single day or one-time event. If your organization is still attached to long-term volunteer positions, think about ways your organization can adapt and even thrive in the current era of short-term volunteers.

Volunteer Performance Assessment

Self-Instruction Guide: Many volunteer-based programs assess only the level of success that the overall program achieves, and they tend to overlook the performance of the volunteer individuals who ultimately drive program success. This Guide examines how volunteer performance evaluations can open avenues of communication and mutually benefit the volunteers and the organization alike.

Volunteer-related Issues in Risk Management

Online Seminar: The seminar defines risk management, with special attention to the risks that arise out of the implementation of a volunteer program and out of the actual work done by volunteers.

Welcoming Diversity in Volunteer Participation

Online Seminar: This seminar looks at the critically important topic of diversity from the perspective of inclusion: assuring that all volunteers are invited and welcomed into your organization, using their differences to strengthen your work.