BOOKS: Volunteer Management for Animal Care Organizations
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:
Volunteer Management for Animal Care Organizations by Betsy McFarland
Humane Society Press (c/o Humane Society of the U.S., 2100 L Street,
NW, Washington, DC 20037), 2005. 120 pages, paperback. $15.95.
Volunteer Management for Animal Care Organizations opens with
the results of a Humane Society of the U.S. survey of humane
organization volunteer managers which found in late 2002 that
volunteers are considered twice as helpful, on average, as boards
of directors.
Author Betsy McFarland does not state the findings quite so
bluntly. She adds a disclaimer that the survey was not “a
representative sample.” With 289 respondents, proportional
weighting could have made the sample as representative as any–and
perhaps it already is.
Worth a mention might have been that boards almost always serve on a
voluntary basis. In effect, they are volunteers who supervise the
paid staff, opposite to the role of paid staff in supervising
volunteers.