A study evaluated the beginnings of the Minnesota Press Council in 1971, particularly the thinking of those involved in the earliest stages of the formation of the council. Oral history interviews with two people involved in the establishment of the council were supplemented with minutes of meetings and compared to an earlier study of the council…

Because of publicity given to volunteerism by the Reagan administration, increasing attention is being paid to the role of voluntary programs in human services. National volunteer agencies have become critical of professional social workers' resistance to dealing with volunteers. Social work schools are being urged to include more courses on…

Volunteerism is increasing today and helps to fill in the gaps created by funding and staff cutbacks in service-oriented agencies. It is critical not only to recruit new volunteers but to retain volunteers. This study examines hospice volunteers for motivation and rewards. Previous studies have found motivations to include altruism and…

Using a needs assessment conducted for the Girl Scouts of Greater Philadelphia as a test case, this article analyzes the conditions facilitating the collection of information needed for strategic planning in a voluntary organization and the related conditions influencing whether or not the information would in fact be used. (TJH)

Vendors frequently compete to have their technology adopted as part of a voluntary consensus standard, and this paper reports the results of an empirical study of the factors that influence the choice of technologies by voluntary technical standards committees. Participation in standards committees is viewed as an aspect of the product development…

This paper explores the differential development of Connecticut's voluntary Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) projects as they move from grass-roots organizations that are akin to social movements to street-level bureaucracies and finally to managed professionalized agencies. The federal government has identified an appropriate continuum…

This speech promotes student involvement in community service activities. The notions of traditional American volunteerism and community spirit support the idea of students devoting their afterschool talents and energy to helpful endeavors such as tutoring, visiting nursing homes, planting trees, cleaning up ocean shores and river banks, clearing…

The staff of a nonprofit music support organization plagued with low morale initiated a process of change that the executive director, with the help of a consultant/adult educator, agreed to continue. The change process included seven phases: discovery of need, the helping relationship defined, the change problem identified, goals established,…

Possible long-term consequences of changes in the provision and financing of health programs and implications of "New Federalism" for child health care advocates are explored. Preliminary discussion focuses on general problems of resource scarcity, describing how the new awareness of scarcity affects thought patterns and attitudes.…

This model was developed to provide a systematic, staged approach to volunteer personnel management. It provides a general process for dealing with volunteers from the point of organization entry through volunteer career stages to the time of exiting the organization. The model provides the structural components necessary to (1) plan, coordinate,…

Teen Outreach is a school-based teenage pregnancy prevention program designed to decrease the incidence of teenage pregnancy and to increase the number of at-risk teenagers who successfully complete their high school education. Begun in 1981 in St. Louis, Missouri, Teen Outreach was implemented as a national replication study in 1983. There are…

This paper delineates the exact methodology developed by the Sports Institute for Research/Change Agent Research (SIR/CAR) for applying a systems analysis technique to a voluntary mutual benefit organization, such as a school or amateur athletic group. The functions of the technique are to compare avowed and actual behavior, to utilize group…

Voluntary organizations offer a unique opportunity to interpret participant relationships, leadership influences, and organizational effectiveness unencumbered by employment relationships. Regardless of organizational structure or purpose, all organizations are affected to some degree by their leadership and their membership. Based on the…

Lake Charles, Louisiana established a language bank capable of providing interpreters for 20 foreign languages. All participants are volunteers who offer to help free of charge in case of emergencies arising because of the considerable numbers of foreign visitors in the area. Smooth operation of the language bank depends on the following: (1) an…

Although 60% of the children served by foster care programs are black, none of the child welfare agencies in New York City are black-controlled. Control of child and family agencies would enable knowledgeable black entrepreneurs to define the kind of services to be delivered and where they are to be placed. In this way, the issues underlying the…