Transforming Disruption to Impact: Rethinking Volunteer Engagement for a Rapidly Changing World

For generations, engaging volunteers has been a vital strategy for communities to solve problems, but the events of 2020 disrupted how people work and volunteer. Unlike previous disruptions, when Americans rolled up their sleeves and volunteered in record numbers, the COVID-19 pandemic restricted traditional volunteering. While many organizations put their engagement strategies on hold, others saw the dramatic increase in demand for services, the increased spotlight on racial injustices, and the opportunities that technology offers. Instead of hibernating, these forward-thinkers actively adapted to engage community members despite the disruptions.

Transforming Disruption to Impact captures the many ways and different mechanisms used to engage people in volunteer service to address the world’s most critical issues―made even more critical due to the pandemic. It’s a collection of essays and contributions highlighting practical, future- focused, innovative, and inspirational volunteer engagement strategies, practices, and tactics that were born out of necessity but that are evergreen and, in many ways, the future of service we can expect for generations to come. In this book, you’ll hear from globally recognized social impact professionals from across the nonprofit, governmental, and corporate responsibility sectors about the different ways they engage people in volunteer service during such a challenging time across the globe. This book brings together the voices of CEOs, funders, corporate engagement leaders, volunteers, and volunteer engagement professionals―a collection of exemplary stories from those who transformed the disruptions into impact. These stories are the key to unlocking that potential.

Doug Bolton is a trained journalist with experience in print, broad- cast, digital, and all forms of media. He spent thirty years in the media business, including nearly fifteen years as a business journal publisher. In 2011, he was recruited to run a geographic division of what is now the world’s second largest commercial real estate services firm. Community nonprofit leadership roles led Doug to begin working in 2018 with Inspiring Service founders Craig and Michael Young on deploying technology and services to more efficiently and effectively build volunteer ecosystem infrastructure for hands-on service to board-level leadership.

As president of VQ Volunteer Strategies, Beth Steinhorn partners with organizations and their leadership to increase impact through strategic and innovative volunteer engagement. Beth has authored multiple books and articles on strategic volunteer engagement and helped found The National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement to advance the national dialogue about volunteerism and engagement. Prior to becoming a consultant, Beth worked as an executive director and marketing director with education and faith-based organizations and spent years working with museums as an educator, manager, and anthropologist. She draws upon her anthropology experience still, helping organizations shift their culture to embrace volunteer engagement as a strategy to fulfill mission.

Jerome Tennille is a Corporate Responsibility and Social Impact strategist who works in the hospitality industry and advises on volunteerism independently. His work focuses on designing, planning, and executing corporate employee volunteer programming to create positive social and environmental impact. He has expertise in bringing corporations and nonprofits together to build strategies that help advance long-term community goals and drive employee engagement. Prior to his work in corporate responsibility, he was the Senior Manager of Volunteer Services for Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), a national nonprofit that serves military families experiencing loss. Jerome is also a social impact writer, and his work has been featured on Impakter, Business 2 Community Magazine, VolunteerMatch, Nonprofit Information.com and many other outlets. Jerome holds a Master of Sustainability Leadership from Arizona State University and is designated as Certified in Volunteer Administration (CVA). Jerome is also a veteran of the U.S. Navy.

Craig Young is President of the Craig Young Family Foundation and Board Chair/Volunteer Executive Director of Inspiring Service. He serves on numerous other nonprofit boards with annual budgets ranging from modest to nearly three billion dollars. He also serves on the National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement and Encore Network Leadership Teams. Technology companies he founded in the 1980s and 1990s were later sold to Siemens and Apple. Over the last two decades, Craig has parlayed his business success into tangible social impact through a variety of efforts by leveraging his continued interest in technology into creating solutions for what he sees as inane absurdities holding back the independent sector.