About the Members
Everyone Ready Volunteer Management Skill-Building Program member organizations have a system-wide interest in strengthening volunteer involvement and maximizing their organization’s reach in the community. They are concerned with preparing staff (and key volunteer leaders) at all levels to be effective supervisors and liaisons with volunteers.
Who Are the Organizational Members?
Our members are nonprofit organizations and units of government. They have many different missions, causes, and services, but their common denominator is that each accomplishes its goals with, through, or by volunteers. Some deploy volunteers alongside employees, others engage far more volunteers than employees.
Everyone Ready began in 2005 with 13 major national organizations signing on for “charter” membership. A number of these original members remain enrolled and, in total, 28 Large Organization Members in the United States, Canada and Australia have been involved for anywhere from one to seven years (see list in column to the right). In 2012 we launched the "Small to Mid-Sized Organization Member" plan for up to 350 learners.
Members continually provide valuable feedback on all the elements of the program and have helped to evolve Everyone Ready into an effective and easy-to-administer training plan.
Who Are the Learners?
Each organization contains a range of potential target audiences for the Everyone Ready program and Energize provides material for as many of these as possible. Training may be needed for:
- Anyone in the system charged with being a coordinator of volunteers.
- Newcomers with little background in volunteer management.
- Newcomers to the organization, but already skilled in volunteer management in other settings.
- More advanced people.
- Very advanced people.
- Frontline supervisors of volunteers (people who hold many different jobs but come in contact with volunteers on a day-to-day basis) at all levels.
- Those with supervisory skills already (with employees).
- Those who do not supervise other employees.
- Affiliate or branch directors – who need to know how to support volunteers and maintain the national standards.
- Middle management: department heads, unit supervisors, and others who will have volunteers within their area of work and have to support the frontline people who are the supervisors of volunteers.
- Boards of directors – not for generic boardsmanship topics (though needed, too!), but on how to govern the volunteer-related aspects of the national and local levels.
- Staff on the national, regional, or state level who act as consultants to local people on volunteer issues (once removed, but need to be knowledgeable).
- Key leadership volunteers who may be project leaders, committee chairs, fundraising chairs, etc.
What is the "Learning Community"?
When it comes to volunteer management best practices, the staff of volunteer-involving organizations have much more in common with each other than differences. Therefore, one goal of Everyone Ready is to create a “learning community” to share experiences and cross-fertilize ideas. Each month, participants in the training session have the chance to interact through the Discussion Board available 24/7 on the Featured Topic. That month's expert trainer publicly answers questions posed by all learners, no matter to which member organization they belong. So the Discussion Board allows learners to ask questions specific to their own setting and situations, while gaining insight from what others are experiencing in different organizations.
In addition, we strongly encourage all member organizations to form study teams of people from the same site (such as a unit, affiliate, or branch office), allowing key staff to consider volunteer-related material together and engage in collective strategizing.
Are There "Individual" Members?
Yes, there are membership options for individuals, who also interact on the Discussion Board with organizational members. Currently, such individual learners come from diverse organizations in several countries:
- Hospitals, health systems, medical centers and auxiliaries
- Hospice care organizations
- International assistance organizations
- Libraries
- Literacy organizations
- Meal delivery organizations
- Parks and recreation programs
- Performing arts organizations
- Public radio stations
- Residential and community care services
- School districts
- Science centers
- United Nations Volunteers
- Universities
- Women’s and domestic violence centers
- Zoos and aquariums