The Leadership Ladder: Fostering Volunteer Engagement and Leadership at New York Cares

The Leadership Ladder: Fostering Volunteer Engagement and Leadership at New York Cares offers new perspectives and strategies to improve volunteer recruitment and engagement. The study was commissioned by New York Cares, authored by Cynthia Gibson, Ph.D., and conducted by researchers at the Baruch College Survey Research Unit.

The report details our strategies for recruiting, engaging, cultivating, and retaining volunteers to maximize their impact. We then surveyed thousands of New York Cares volunteers to better understand their motivations for volunteering and other forms of civic engagement, enabling us to develop enhanced volunteer engagement strategies that have made our organization more effective.

The New York Cares Volunteer Engagement Scale (VES) categorizes volunteers by commitment level and assesses their evolution from episodic to more engaged participants. This new tool can be used to measure success in fostering deeper commitment among volunteers through improved communication, better orientation, leadership training, and outreach. Download a copy of the report.