Public Sector Volunteer Management: Best Practices and Challenges

In order to effectively and consistently provide services to citizens, local governments have had to come up with creative ways for offering services demanded by their citizens. One popular approach became the creation of volunteer programs as local governments became increasingly reliant on volunteers. Volunteers are one means by which local governments help to increase meaningful engagement with citizens and help meet the increasing needs for public services with limited resources. On a broader scale, volunteers in public agencies provide a variety of services to fill gaps in creating and sustaining collective societal goods that otherwise might have been limited due to fiscal stress on local governments or eliminated. Public Sector Volunteer Management: Best Practices and Challenges adds to the understanding of how management practices may affect retention of volunteers. It provides an opportunity to add much-needed data to any discussion concerning volunteering at the local government level from the perspective of volunteer coordinators and aims to provide in-depth research on local government volunteer management practices. This book focuses on best practices identified as necessary for successful volunteer management in the public sector, specifically in a local government setting, making it a valuable text for researchers, academics, and students in the fields of public and nonprofit management, leadership, and human resource management.