Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers in Tough Times

Trying to find someone with just the right skills for your special project? Want to create a new volunteer recruitment brochure in Spanish? Can a banker in Madrid or a marketing speciHow does a financial crisis affect volunteering? Will volunteering go up or down, or change in other ways as the global economy worsens? One thing is certain: Because volunteers are real people living in real communities, tight budgets will have an impact. Therefore, here are eight recommendations that can help any type of organization looking to recruit and retain volunteers in tough times. More

Planning a Volunteer Position

This ‘worksheet’ is intended to assist you in deciding what types of volunteers could be of assistance to you. We hope that this information will make it easier for you to think of creative ways to involve volunteers and make it easier for us to recruit the right volunteer for you. In thinking about how and where volunteers might be involved in your area of responsibility, there are factors that you might want to consider. More

Organizational Culture and the Volunteer Program

The organizational work influences the culture of the agency and the character of the volunteer program as well. Many of the volunteers of the residential programs were relatives of agency clients. Hospice volunteers were noted for their ability to nurture others and their receptivity to the staff's "dark" humor that counter- balanced the deadly seriousness of their task. At a recreational program, the volunteers most appreciated were those who knew how to have fun and to play. At a program fostering independence for its residents, volunteers were sought who could function autonomously. More

Email Disclaimers to Protect Your Organization

Email is an essential business tool that not many organizations can do without. However, after several high-profile lawsuits with multimillion dollar penalties concerning the contents of emails in the corporate sector, nonprofit organizations, too, are increasingly aware that simply by using email, they may be exposing themselves to a number of legal threats. One of the ways these legal risks can be minimized is by adding a disclaimer to every email that is sent on or from the organization’s email network. This article discusses why email disclaimers are needed, the different types of disclaimers that can be used and how to add them. More

Creative Signage

The author feels very passionate about the need for retailers to have strong visual merchandising in their stores. Why? Because she’s seen sales increase as much as 40 percent after a store merchandising redesign - and who doesn't want a sales increase? More

Five Ways to Encourage Retail Purchases

Impulse buys. Add ons. Little extras. Call them what you like, these small purchases can add up to big money. The author of this article fell prey to a barker doing demonstrations at a trade show, coming away with something she didn’t need and several things you do - strategies on selling those impulse items. More

Action Ideas: Dealing with Difficult Customers

When was the last time you had to deal with a difficult customer? It was probably an external customer but perhaps it was an internal customer, such as a member of your team, a colleague or even your boss. The important thing to realize when dealing with an upset customer, be they internal or external, is that you must deal with their feelings, then deal with their problem. More

Which Computer-Based POS System Should You Choose?

There are two kinds of POS Systems available in the market: a web-based program and a software-based POS. Both types can be used in business although many believe that a software-based (or computer based) POS is the better choice. More