Travis Barker

A System's Thinking Approach to Volunteer Innovation Planning Travis Barker

Volunteering is a historical phenomenon beginning with faith-based organizations, advocacy and value-based initiatives, and efforts to give back to the community. These efforts have contributed to the welfare of others, to the growth of value-based systems, and the reinforcement of networks and community relationships.
Volunteer management has benefited as a result of the many innovations occurring across the research, leadership, technology, and consulting industries. With these advances, volunteer management has become more precise, scalable, and efficient. The impact and breadth of volunteering models have increased as a result.
The following course covers four primary areas in volunteer management:
The first section discusses the role of volunteering in history and explains why this model continues to gain traction in society. The second section discusses how to build a volunteer management framework and the basic elements needed to sustain value alignment across different initiatives.
The third section discusses the basics of volunteer management, often emphasizing the leadership models build upon Maslow's Hierarchy and the foundation strategies informed by Herzberg's hygiene factors. The fourth section discusses the business scorecard and data-driven approaches to volunteer and operations management.
The earlier process focused sections are strengthened with this last section with an exploration of the business scorecard, emotional intelligence models, and the role of disruption in continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. For those in operations roles, the last section also provides access to the strategic plan generator available online.