Friday, April 01, 2005

Recruitment of volunteers - young and old

I've come across two really interesting papers on engaging different populations in nonprofit work. If you are interested in keeping your volunteer pool full, take a look.

The first is from the Harvard School of Public Health and is called "Reinventing Aging, Baby Boomers and Civic Engagement" It deals with how to get people of my age group more involved in civic matters as we retire. It's a .pdf file and is long, but densely packed with great data and observations.

On the other end of the age change, and from the other side of the Atlantic comes The Russell Commission report entitled "A National Framework for Youth Action and Engagement" which was published just about two weeks ago. This report deals with the serious lack of volunteering by young people in the U.K. and has several interesting and controversial recommendations including paying youth volunteers a small salary for "volunteering". My reaction to that one was "Huh. Thought they were volunteers," but my friends in the U.K. seemed nonplussed by it.

At any rate, two pieces of important reading.

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