Baby Boomers are not giving up on work when they retire. But, they often would like to work and provide a societal good at the same time. Volunteering is not always the best choice.

Now a wonderful organization called ReServe is helping to match aspiring retirees with staff needs in nonprofit and governmental organizations.

• ReServe Recruits Baby Boomers and Seniors to Work In Nonprofits

Sometimes we get a question about which we haven't a clue. This one seemed a good opportunity to ask our readers to share their expertise.

Michael Hobson of SundayFriends.org asks:

"Thanks so much for your column. I read it avidly every time. I also recommend it to every Board member and my ED.

The subject of in-kind donations and volunteer labor evaluation came up recently. We talked about how, or even if, we could reflect the value of thousands of hours of volunteerism on our P&L. I know that in-kind donations can be included in the P&L as long as they are off-set as both income and expense. But can the same be done for volunteer hours?"

Please reply to Michael by leaving a comment in our comment section below.

Photo by Nicola Evans/Getty Images

I have to admit that I have been concerned about the environment since Silent Spring, and you know how far back that goes.

But I think I had lost my spark, despite global warming, until I got an email from Eddie.

Eddie is the oh-so-cute spokesdog for Pets for the Environment, an offshoot of the Environmental Working Group.

I've been a lifelong animal lover and currently have three granddogs and three grandcats that I love almost as much as my grandchildren. Well, I'm allergic to the cats but still....

Eddie, with his blog, Cute Pets (for the Environment), his sad comic strip "story" about Feathers who succumbed to an overheated Teflon skillet, and a gallery of pet friends, has re-inspired me and opened my heart and pocketbook.

It's one thing to poison adults, but don't fool with my grandchildren...animal or human!

MarketingSherpa, an online marketing information source, recently ran an article about how UNICEF has used social networking and video-sharing sites to gain supporters and inform people about its mission (article will be publicly available only until May 7th).

Here are some tips from the article.

Stephen Cassidy of UNICEF had already posted 2-3 minute videos on the UNICEF home page but wanted to spread them virally. Cassidy's team experimented with a MySpace page and then tried other video sharing sites...all for free. Within a year, the number of views on all those sites exceeded the views on the homepage, essentially doubling the agency's exposure.

Cassidy and his team installed videos on YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, AOL Video, blinkx, and Truveo. Crucial to the video success was using appropriate titles and tags. These allow web searchers to find the content on the major search engines and on the video sites.

Cassidy suggests considering carefully what terms a consumer might use to find your video and use those for the tags. The videos do no good if people cannot find them.

For UNICEF's MySpace page, the agency just jumped in without much of a plan. The idea was to learn and then use that knowledge later to upgrade the page. At first, the page was disorganized, but it drew 10,000 friends.

At that point the team followed a well-thought out process to rebuild the page. They analyzed the available sources to build and grow the page. These included wallpapers, banners, badges, icons, videos, podcasts and news.

In addition they used their relationships with the celebrities who work on behalf of UNICEF (Goodwill Ambassadors). Some of these people had MySpace pages and were willing to ask their friends to check out the UNICEF page or to place a UNICEF banner on their page.

An important part of the MySpace success is the constant updating done by UNICEF. They post to the blog frequently and upload new videos and podcasts each week.

They also created a clean, well organized page that represents the UNICEF brand successfully. Cassidy says that there are a lot of limitations to building a MySpace page...it is not like creating a Web page. You'll need a Web developer to help you get a really good looking page.

Cassidy points out that because the demographic of MySpace is young, his team worked very hard at not sounding like a "stuffy, institutional, old-fashioned organization preaching top down."

Within just four months after the MySpace page update, friends jumped 40% and the number of comments on the page increased by 20%.

It is too early to say whether UNICEF's activities on social and video-sharing sites will pay off in more donations, but, so far, it has been a public relations bonanza.

It must be the years of graduate school that have resulted in my current love for small, easy-to-read, even "sassy" books.

I just found another one, Ask Without Fear: A Simple guide to Connecting Donors with What Matters to Them Most, by Marc A. Pitman (2008, Executive Books). Pitman is a fundraising consultant and maestro of FundraisingCoach.com.

Read our review for the full effect:

• Fundraising Simplified and De-Scarified: A Review

Peter Drucker will be one of the most enduring business minds of the 20th Century. But Drucker was also in love with nonprofit organizations, seeing in them the best of our democratic society.

Now, Drucker's classic, The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Nonprofit Organization, has been reissued and updated. Enjoy his sage advice once again along with commentary from a range of today's business and nonprofit thinkers.

• Planning Is Not an Event: How Nonprofits Can Achieve Results

There is endless advice about leadership, but little of it sticks. Or we follow the advice for a few shining moments only to lapse back into our lazier ways.

Larry Checco, nonprofit consultant and writer, gives us a story about leadership that does stick, in the way that stories often do, and a simple but eloquent path to leadership success.

• The Hero's Journey: Six Steps to Enlightened Nonprofit Leadership

Photo by the Palma Collection/Getty Images

The Independent Sector says that the estimated value of a volunteer hour almost kept up with inflation during 2007, increasing nearly four percent. A volunteer hour jumped by 74 cents, from $18.77 in 1006 to $19.51 in 2007.

That increase makes volunteers' time worth 3.3 times the minimum wage which is at $5.85 per hour. The new figures were released in time for National Volunteer Week, April 27-May 3.

The value of volunteer time varies across the country with the highest in Washington, D.C. ($30.10) to the lowest in Montana ($13.51).

Diana Aviv, president and CEO of the Independent Sector said, "Our nation's volunteers play a vital role in helping America's 1.4 million charitable organizations improve lives across the country and around the world....Quantifying the value of their time gives us yet another indicator of how important volunteers are to communities."

More about volunteers:

• Before You Recruit Volunteers
• Recruiting Volunteers - Three Approaches
• How to Keep Boomer Volunteers Coming Back

A number of well endowed universities have recently been criticized for harboring endowments in the billions of dollars, but not providing enough scholarship money to students.

Today, the NY Times ran an article about how many university endowments contain funds that are even more restricted by the donors. Some of the gifts are downright quirky and create problems in using the funds for other purposes.

All of this, plus a shaky economy, is enough to scare some nonprofits away from setting up their own endowments. But, since setting up an endowment is a long-term effort, nonprofit organizations should not hesitate to start putting the bricks in place for an endowment that can bring stability, diversification in funding, and options to donors.

• How to Start an Endowment for Your Nonprofit

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The stock market fell dramatically on Friday as more bad news came in from the economy. It's been a harrowing time since the first of the year if you hang on all the economic news and the gyrations of the market.

What does it mean for nonprofits and their fundraising? I did some research and found that, overall, nonprofits needn't panic, although some sectors may indeed suffer more than others. Corporate giving is likely to be down but philanthropists might actually have more money to donate as they shelter their investments from the storm.

Caroline Gallagher, in an article at OnPhilanthropy.com, pointed out that usually plain vanilla recessions don't affect philanthropic giving. The best known retreats in recent history were caused by unusual and unprecedented events such as the OPEC oil embargo in the 1970s and the 9/11 attack in 2001. Gallagher says that there is no correlation between business cycles and a retreat in philanthropy.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in an end-of-year article that fundraisers were experiencing disparate results depending on the nature and size of their nonprofit. Institutions and larger nonprofits, such as colleges, hospitals, arts organizations, and community foundations, seemed fine or even to have experienced increases in giving. Social service organizations, on the other hand, were being squeezed by an increase in demand from their clients and a shortfall in support, not only from contributors, but also from state and city governments that lose tax revenues and cutbacks from the federal coffers.

What to do?

Everyone seems to agree that a return to the basics is important. Here are five suggestions to consider:

1. Don't pull back on fundraising. Just as companies need to keep advertising during a downturn to keep their names before the public, nonprofits will gain nothing by retreating. Not only should you not retreat, you should become even more focused in your efforts. Look at your lists again, sharpen your case, get more personal, and cultivate within an inch of your life.

2. If you are in the social services, let your donors know that times are hard and those you help are in more need than ever. No matter how a donor may be hurt by an economic downturn, the disadvantaged are hurt far more and have less opportunity to recover.

3. Find the stories that will touch the hearts of your donors. Now, more than ever, search out the personal testimonies of your clients and let them speak to your donors in their own words. Don't sink into begging, but show the shared humanity between donors and those served.

4. Take the opportunity to lower fundraising costs. For instance, eschew an expensive fundraising event and go directly to your donors for their help. Wrap a simple, low-cost mailing around the fact that you are lowering overhead by skipping the event, and ask for a direct gift that will put more services and money into your clients' lives. Do the same with your publications. Ask donors to help you devote more of their donor dollars to direct service.

5. Take a new look at projects you intended to raise money for. If the project is not "essential," perhaps it should be postponed. A new building project, while desirable, might not be the best project right now.

   Think, rather, about services that go on despite a recession or even intensify. Perhaps scholarships would be an easier thing for donors to support, or medical research in a significant health area. Books for children in under served areas and playgrounds in the inner city seem more worthwhile than an endowment fund in uncertain economic times.

   Don't worry about changing course. Let your donors know, and explain why. If your reasoning is good and heartfelt, your donors will come along with you. You will not only do more good, but keep donors engaged until better times come along.

Weathering a bad economy should not send your nonprofit skittering to the bunkers, but it should sharpen your focus and improve your efficiencies.

Illustration by Simon Fell/Getty Images