Week 7, Annotated Bibliography

This week we did our annotated bibliographies. I have to say this was harder for me than I thought. I find restating why I find a source to be credible to be a bit tedious, but I also see the value in this. My husband who is in a Masters program was teasing me, because he has to do this for all of his papers.

The problem I am having is keeping my research narrowed down to just my research question. I am finding a lot a valuable information that goes a bit off track that distracts me. I seem to be getting lost in the information that may not be relevant to my topic, because of my interest in the subject matter as a whole.

I picked out two new sources, which I found on JSTOR. They both take a bit of a more international approach to my research question: How can nonprofit leadership motivate and maintain a strong volunteer force? I think this is helpful since we live in an global world and a lot of nonprofits are now international. I was excited to see how culture plays a strong role in what motivates an individual. 

Here is my annotated bibliography: 

Herman, M. L. Managing Risk in Nonprofit Organizations: A Comprehensive Guide. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.

            I choose “Managing Risk in Nonprofit Organizations: A Comprehensive Guide,” because I found this to be a valuable resource. This book was written by Melanie Herman the executive director of Nonprofit Risk Management Center, which assists over 20,000 nonprofits annually. I found that her experience and expertise makes this source reliable and trustworthy. In Chapter 8 she describes risks that a nonprofit might have with its volunteer workforce. She goes into detail about how certain policies and procedures make it harder for volunteers to return or even want to volunteer in the first place. She also describes the changes in what volunteers are looking for in their volunteering compared to volunteers fifty years ago. Even though she doesn’t come right out and say “motivators” I can use the information she gives to discover what is motivating volunteers and how I can create an atmosphere that motivates my volunteers through volunteer risk management. I found her book to be full of great tips and guides to building a successful volunteer workforce and nonprofit organization.

Hyejin Bang and Stephen D. Ross (2009, May). Volunteer Motivation and Satisfaction. Available from: http://www.hrsm.sc.edu/JVEM/Vol1No1/VolunteerMotivation.pdf

The University of South Carolina sponsored this journal and I feel like they lend credibility along with all the credible sources cited for this article. This journal was written about motivating volunteers with their sporting programs. This article is relevant, because a lot of the tools for motivating these volunteers work for volunteers in all nonprofit organizations. I learned a lot about setting up systems to guarantee volunteers remain motivated to continue with a nonprofit and what they need personally for their continued support. This source satisfied all of the CRAPP test criteria.

Pynes, J. (2004). Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

            I was able to google the author of this book to make sure she was a credible source and to make sure she was trustworthy. The author explains a lot of the similarities between motivating volunteers and paid employees. I found this book to open new approaches in my research after I saw these similarities. This source fits all the criteria set in the CRAAP test.

Shye, Samuel. The Motivation to Volunteer: A Systemic Quality of Life Theory. Social Indicators Research, Vol. 98, No. 2 (September 2010), pp. 183-200

            The author of this journal is a well-educated professor. I find his peer reviewed journal to be well written and to be credible. His work on this opens up new theories on the motivation of volunteers that is quite different than all my other sources. I find this to be helpful to see this all through another person’s eyes. He is well researched and has had his work cited many times.  

Thomas, V.B., Slevadurai, S, &Moorthy, R. (2011). Factors Influencing Commitment of Volunteers’ in Neighborhood Watch Organization.  Journal of Social Sciences, 7 (4): 569-574

            This source provided a lot of information on what motivates volunteers working in an urban setting. The journal was published by the “Journal of Social Sciences” and is peer reviewed and credible. The authors of this journal are both experts in the field. This source helped show that motivators for volunteers can be different depending on the location of the nonprofit.

Yeung, Anne B. The Octagon Model of Volunteer Motivation: Results of a Phenomenological Analysis.  Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March 2004), pp. 21-46

            This is an interesting peer reviewed journal written by an expert in the field of nonprofit volunteerism on an international level. I found that this article was well written and the research done on this was wonderful and trustworthy. I learned how to motivate volunteers in different cultures if I am ever working for an international nonprofit. The article showed that people need different motivators based on their cultures. This article was well written and available with other translations. This article has also been cited by other credible sources and was published in a reputable journal.