Volunteering NZ leads the national initiative that would aid the professional development of volunteer managers. This arose from a proposal put forward by a large number of those who attend the Volunteering Conference in October 2009 which called for the steps to progress the development of volunteer management.

The Professional Development Working Group was formed shortly after the Conference and includes VNZ Chair Gillian Peacock, VNZ Board member Olwen Taylor, Claire Teal, Services Manager, Wellington Central City CAB and Volunteer Wellington Board member, Pauline Harper, Co-Manager Volunteer Wellington, Sue Hine, retired Volunteer Manager with a keen interest in volunteer management development, Graham Witts, Project Manager with Skills Active, the Sport and Recreation Industry Training Organisation and Tim Burns, VNZ Director. The group is working on bringing in some more experts into the initiative.

The group believes that volunteer services should be well run to be fully effective and this requires good management of the volunteer services. They see two main focuses for the development of volunteer management:

• Gaining recognition of role and value of volunteer managers – To raise the awareness of governing bodies, management and others who influenced the delivery of volunteer services about the need for good management of these services and the importance of the role of volunteer managers in achieving this.
• Development of educational programmes for volunteer management – To provide the education, other resources and effective support networks for those with volunteer management responsibilities.

So far the group had discussion with number of Industry Training Organisations about the possibility to build the training in volunteer management into an existing management courses such as the First line management course at the Massey College of Business.

The group also liaised with Karen Smith and Carolyn Cordery from Victoria University who conducted a first National Research on Volunteer Management in late 2009 and early 2010. The research report "Managers Matter" has been published during the Volunteer Awareness Week 2010 and can be downloaded from our Research webpage.

Since May 2010 VNZ Update features a new regular section on management of volunteers which aims to inform the managers across the sector about the new developments related to the profession. It includes regular reports from the Professional Development Working Group, articles featuring Managers of Volunteer Services and other developments in different parts of New Zealand and beyond. Any other contributions are welcome, as well. If you have any interesting information that might be useful for other mangers of volunteers, please send your contributions to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Sue Hine also blogs about the work of the group and management of volunteers in general. Check out her Management 4 Volunteers blog!