Nonprofits and public sector organizations often rely on volunteerism and community involvement to fulfill their missions, yet, many organizations lack the tools to examine their engagement with these valuable resources. The Index for Volunteer Involvement (IVE), an organizational self-assessment tool developed at UT Austin, is helping organizations better engage volunteers and community groups in their work.
The initial research for the tool was a collaboration between the RGK Center and the School of Social Work, and was funded by a grant from AmeriCorps (formally the Corporation for National and Community Service) in the early 2000’s. Today, The IVE is connected with the Association of Leaders in Volunteer Engagement (AL!VE), which utilizes the assessment for over 150 organizations nationwide who participate in their Service Enterprise Program. According to Dr. Sarah Jane Rehnborg, principal investigator for the IVE project, the IVE is still “the only research-based and reliable tool in the field.”
In 2019, Dr. Rehnborg and Dr. Noel Landuyt, Director of the Institute for Organizational Excellence (IOE) at the Steve Hicks School, came together to lead a cross-college team in revamping the IVE tool. Five years later, the “IVE 2.0” was released. The new version of the tool includes improved assessment questions and an updated online tool with computer-generated and more user-friendly reports for organizations.
“Our job is to take fairly large and complex data systems and put pretty pictures to them,” Dr. Landuyt said. “[The RGK Center] is attempting to make a very impactful tool. We're attempting to automate it and make the data and the reports as useful as possible.”
UT students have also played a critical role in developing the IVE 2.0, as grad students and research assistants are involved with just about every piece of the tool. Currently, Huajian Gao, a PhD candidate in the college of education, is building an interactive dashboard using the data visualization software Tableau. The dashboard aims to help organizations compare their assessment results with other similar groups and organizations. For instance, if an animal shelter underwent IVE testing and wanted to compare its volunteer activity to that of other shelters, the dashboard would enable them to select specific criteria and evaluate their performance relative to peers, Dr. Landuyt explained.
On Nov. 21, the team will travel to Washington, D.C. to present their work on the IVE 2.0. at ARNOVA, an annual conference for volunteer-sector academics. The goal: to generate interest, encourage additional partnerships and users, and get some useful feedback.
“To take the show on the road every once in a while,” Dr. Landuyt said, “It helps us understand the design better. People raise concerns or questions or suggestions, you get a broader dialogue with individuals that might have really useful input that you didn't consider.”
The IVE team encourages organizations who may have questions or are interested in future partnerships to visit their website or contact Dr. Noel Landuyt at nlanduyt@austin.utexas.edu.
