Volunteer Management

Abstract

This chapter reviews the universal approach to elaborate the fundamental elements of volunteer program management. The concept of volunteer management remains relatively new, with the first widely recognized model of volunteer administration developed by Harriet Naylor in 1967. Naylor focused on leadership of volunteers who worked alongside paid staff to achieve a common organizational mission. Jeffrey Brudney highlighted the centrality of volunteer administrator or manager to provide leadership in a volatile public sector. The universal model is the most widely accepted and utilized model of volunteer administration. Meijs and Ten Hoorn propose a different contingency approach. They argue that the universal approach to volunteer management reflects too narrow a view of the volunteer administrator's job and fails to appreciate the contingencies affecting volunteer management. The ratchet model proposes that volunteer management varies between two poles: employment model and participation model. The volunteer manager must adjust organization's volunteer program to achieve a balance between employment and participation models of volunteer management.