The following is a guest post written by our new ELN Social Mavens, Yasmin Rampuri and Liz Hallett. Thank you Liz and Yasmin for hosting this very successful Fall Mingle, and for stepping up and sharing your skills and enthusiasm. It was a great event!

Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) Fall Mingle

After enjoying the lovely summer weather when it finally happened, the ELN ushered in the new season with a bang at the Fall Mingle.

The event hovered at full from days after it was posted, until the day of the event on September 15th, and we had 29 enthusiastic networkers attend in the end.

Veneto Café provided a most excellent ...

[Continue reading Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) Kicks Off Another Successful Year!]

I’m pleased to introduce guest blogger Zuzanna Szkudlarek, a Volunteer Victoria board member and member of our Emerging Leaders Network. In this post, Zuzanna writes about her great experiences (so far) as a member of the ELN. We’ve been truly fortunate to have Zuzanna participate in this Network as she is a true leader in action in our community.

Recently I was at a retreat with like minded people interested in bettering the community in Victoria. At the retreat were individuals from all sectors (nonprofits, government, and industry) ages ranging from 25-50 whereby five of us all had the commonality of being part of the [Continue reading VV’s Emerging Leaders Network: Engagement in action]

Our sector, in fact all sectors are experiencing an era of profound change. In many ways, this is a period of great uncertainty. We are seeing new non-profit leaders emerging, and long-term leaders starting to transition out. Community leadership is also evolving and changing. While there are many challenges within this shifting environment, there are also opportunities. History has shown us that times of great change frequently spark new ideas, creative leadership and inspired vision.

Within this context, this year’s theme for our 35th anniversary Annual General Meeting emerged. Our three panellists (Beth Cougler Blom, Mitchell Temkin and Sandra Richardson) gave a brief glimpse toward the ...

[Continue reading Embracing the Future – Leading for Change: Three perspectives.]

In early May we held a workshop taught by facilitator Martin J. Cowling, CEO of People First – Total Solutions and an expert in volunteer management.  Martin hails from Australia; we first welcomed him to Victoria three years ago when he taught two half-day workshops for us on topics related to managing volunteers.

Since Martin was very well received here in 2007, (his first time training in Canada!) we asked him to come back this year.  He delivered a full-day workshop entitled “How to Turn Your Organization into a Volunteer Magnet” to 37 participants, who all have roles managing volunteers at their organizations.

The ...

[Continue reading How to Turn Your Organization into a Volunteer Magnet]

Executive Director Val Green & Employee Campaign Chair Lori Elder proudly accept the Community Partner Spirit Award on behalf of their staff and volunteers. Photo credit: www.elighphoto.com

Volunteer Victoria's staff from left to right: Val Green, Lori Elder, Bonnie van Volkenburg, Tara Macdonald, Nick Lyons, John Kay. Front left to right: Louise Keith and Lornna Olson. Missing: Beth Cougler Blom and Bob Gilmour.

For over ten years our amazing staff, board and volunteers have come ...

[Continue reading Volunteer Victoria has Spirit – Wins Gold for 10th Year in a Row!]

 This post first appeared in Volunteer Victoria’s E-Link newsletter.  Sign up for E-Link and keep current with news and information from Volunteer Victoria. We welcome your feedback and suggestions.

As most of us already know, there will be a significant exodus of long term non-profit leaders over the next 2-5 years as the Boomers move toward retirement. This is true, not only of our community, but also throughout North America.

So how prepared are we for the next generation of leaders to take the helm? Well, according to recent studies, forums and on-line discussions – not very.   There are ...

[Continue reading Investing in Emerging Non-profit Leaders]

In the Youth Program , we work with people under 30. Our approach to connecting with them generally relies on meeting face-to-face in classroom presentations, at career/volunteer fairs or when they drop by the office. Over the past year, we have realized that we need to start connecting with youth where they are at. Knowing that many youth under 30 are using Social Media made our decision to start the Social Media Project a no-brainer!

There are so many tools to choose from, but our research suggests that Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube and Flickr are good tools to get ...

[Continue reading Social Media Project]