At long last - an event that promises to concentrate on the needs of our Volunteer management profession - Let us see!

The 2017 National Summit on Volunteer Engagement Leadership: Mapping Our Future, Strengthening Our Voice, is scheduled for July 26-28 in St. Paul, Minnesota

(www.mavanetwork.org/2017summit).

Even though this is an American conference, they really hope to attract participants from many countries.

Click into the Summit Web page and you can read about the event’s vision and goals as well as logistical information. While the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA) is the official sponsor, the conference is being planned by colleagues from more than a dozen states and they do want to gather a national (even international) audience.

I have long wished for a similar conference here in Australia so I am hoping that we can gain some valuable learning from this conference. With an expected attendance of 500 it will be a wonderful opportunity to bring together some thought leaders from our sector.

The few other major conferences in our field scatter attention to diverse tracks, of which the skills of volunteer engagement are simply one of many choices. But this will be an event that proposes to put the profession of volunteer management front and centre. 

Let’s hope too that it will be a major success thus driving other nations to do the same. Our sector deserves something new and bold. Lets hope this conference delivers.

Footnote: I am going to keep a close watch of this. If I see that its the same topics and workshops run by the same people with the same message that they have been sprouting for 20 years I am going to call it. The problem with the sector in its high turnover can be advantageous for some as so called experts can rehash the same mantra year after year. Not any more. Be brave, be different, be ground-breaking and lets hear some new voices to advance the sector because if you are doing the same workshop on advancing the sector that you were doing ten years ago then I'm calling that. Watch This Space!