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Service-learning courses offer a unique experience to students by reinforcing typical school curriculum with experiences outside the classroom, where the emphasis is on learning by doing accompanied with reflection (Conrad & Hedin, 1981). Studies show that the quality of the service-learning experience has the potential to impact student outcomes; however, few have looked at the relationship of quality with engagement and self-efficacy (Holland et al., 2009). Thus, this study focused on the effects of the quality of service-learning experience on student engagement through leadership self-efficacy and community service self-efficacy. A survey of 105 students showed a significant mediation model of quality of service-learning on affective student engagement through leadership self-efficacy and community service self-efficacy. Significant direct effects were found between quality of service-learning and leadership self-efficacy, community service self-efficacy, and student engagement. These findings on quality of service-learning courses have implications for students, educators, and universities.

Volunteers are essential to the operation of many nonprofits, but some experience challenges in retaining their volunteer workforce. The Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA) seeks to address this issue by helping organizations to identify strengths, growth areas, and recommendations for improving volunteer experiences. To maximize the effectiveness of VPA's mission, the organization is moving toward a collective impact (CI) approach. Although not developed as a CI effort, the program currently exemplifies many of its characteristics, which have been instrumental in expanding reach to more organizations. We examine VPA's alignment with collective impact and outline how VPA will continue to improve efforts.

The Volunteer Program Assessment at UNO (VPA-UNO), a faculty-led student group, partners with nonprofit and governmental agencies to provide free assessments and consultations to enhance volunteer engagement, organizational commitment and retention. Three recent initiatives are discussed representing an intentional effort of a metropolitan university to extend love of place to love of state through outreach efforts to rural volunteers and to promote inclusivity to Spanish-speaking volunteers by translating the VPA assessment into Spanish.

Collective impact is a recently developed concept and approach to solving social problems that rectifies many of the issues associated with isolated impact. We compared collective impact and the formal definition of collaboration and made integrations between the two concepts. Specifically, we explored effective assessment and facilitation methods and applied them to collective impact initiatives in order to facilitate more purposeful implementation of collective impact. We concluded that collective impact is a specific form of collaboration.

Volunteers are an essential part of the economy and impact our communities by helping nonprofit organizations provide services to those in need. Finding practical strategies to facilitate engagement within volunteer workforces is one way to address how nonprofit organizations can retain their volunteers. We hypothesize that meetings between volunteers and organizational members (e.g., volunteer resource manager) are an avenue through which exchange relationships between organizations and their volunteers may be generated and strengthened, thereby influencing volunteer engagement. Results suggest high-quality meetings positively influence volunteer engagement and voice. Practical suggestions for human service managers are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]