[RESOURCE] Volunteer Management: Developing Leaders

Posted on by

By Adam Froiran and Meg Davis

This is the final part from our manual on volunteer management.

In order to run your organization successfully, a core leadership group can have many advantages. Training volunteers and employees to develop strong leadership skills bolsters your organization’s opportunity for growth and sustainability.  Encouraging leadership at all levels of your organization allows for a greater sharing of responsibility and translates to work or projects being consistent, even if somebody has to drop out.

(more…)

[RESOURCE] Managing Volunteers and Avoiding Burnout

Posted on by

By Josh Clarkson and Meg Davis

This is part four of our manual on volunteer management

It’s not easy to keep up motivation among volunteers, that’s why positive management is essential to making effective use of your organization’s volunteers. Some of the steps detailed below can also help to avoid volunteer burnout.

(more…)

[RESOURCE] Is Your Project a Waste of Time?

Posted on by

by Meg Davis

After advising other organizations on how to create their own strategic plans, Asia Catalyst sat down in a conference room on Sunday with ten or so of our best friends and engaged in the annual exercise to plan our own work. Every year, we seem to find this a little more difficult, as our projects multiply and become more complex.

Fortunately, we had on hand our new board advisor, John Santoleri, who stopped us and said, “I don’t have a sense of the cost and benefit of each program — how much time each one takes, versus how hard or easy it is to raise funds for that program, versus the impact each program has.” With his help, we created a form to track just that.

(more…)

[REPORT] Death and Taxes in Yunnan

Posted on by
800px-Yuanyang-terraces.jpg

 

By Gisa Hartmann

 

Last month, I went on my second trip to China for Asia
Catalyst. As we’ve previously discussed in this blog, Asia Catalyst is spending
several years “incubating” or building the internal management skills of
Phoenix, a nonprofit organization of sex workers living with HIV/AIDS. Phoenix
is based in Gejiu, Yunnan, on China’s borders with Vietnam. My main objective
during my two weeks there was to help Phoenix to develop their staff management
system, as well as improve their understanding of budgeting and financial
reporting. We spent an intense two weeks tracking down and discussing every
single receipt for the past two quarters.

 

One morning, as I was preparing for another day of office
work, I received a call on my cell asking me to come to the office as soon as
possible. The husband of a Phoenix member had died the previous day.

(more…)

[REPORT] China’s Environmental NGOs

Posted on by
Factory_in_China.jpg

By Adam Froiran

China’s environmental issues
increasingly command domestic and international attention – what’s the role of
civil society in promoting environmental protection?

(more…)