
Welcome to the Volunteer Nation Podcast!
Weekly interviews, big hat thinking, quick wins, and smart strategy to help you
engage your community and make a bigger impact.

Welcome to the Volunteer Nation Podcast!
Weekly interviews, big hat thinking, quick wins, and smart strategy to help you
engage your community and make a bigger impact.
About the Show
Nonprofit leadership author, coach, and expert Tobi Johnson shares weekly tips to help charities build, grow, and scale exceptional volunteer teams. Discover how your nonprofit can effectively coordinate volunteers who are reliable, equipped, and ready to help you bring about BIG change for the better.
Rather than continuing to “do more with less,” achieve abundance for your organization by engaging community talent that helps you do more with more.
Society is evolving and so, too, is volunteerism. With over 25 years of experience working in nonprofits, public sector agencies, and grassroots campaigns Tobi is known for her modern “big hat” thinking and straight talk about what it takes to achieve success in today’s world.
You will learn how to coordinate volunteers, improve the volunteer experience, recruit volunteers, appreciate volunteers, and do it all more efficiently with the right volunteer management software and digital tools. It’s a mix of interviews and solo shows you’re not going to want to miss.
So, if you’re ready to ditch the stress and harness the power of people to fuel your good work, you’re in exactly the right place. Hit subscribe and let’s DO this!
Your Host
Tobi Johnson, MA, CVA is an internationally sought-after expert, consultant, advisor, and master trainer in volunteer engagement. She is known for her modern thought leadership, highly practical evidence-based strategies, and innovative, “big hat” thinking around engaging, supporting, and acknowledging the work of volunteers. She is the President of Tobi Johnson & Associates, a consulting firm whose mission is to help nonprofit organizations make connections with remarkable volunteers. In 2015, she founded VolunteerPro, an online training and networking community for leaders of volunteers. She is also co-host of the Time + Talent Podcast with Jennifer Bennett of VolunteerMatch.
Tobi has over 30 years direct experience in nonprofit management, program development, program coordination, training delivery and learning design across a wide range of charities and government agencies. She wrote Chapter 1 of Volunteer Engagement 2.0: Ideas and Insights for Transforming Volunteer Programs in a Changing World. Each year, her firm also conducts the Volunteer Management Progress Report, a global state-of-the-industry survey. In 2022, over 1,300 professionals from 28 countries participated.
A native of the Pacific Northwest, Tobi is a graduate of the University of Washington and has a master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She now lives in East Tennessee with her husband and feline office assistant, Bailey.

Latest Episodes
050 – How to Use Volunteer Quotes to Inspire Leadership & Resilience
March 23, 2023 Episode #050: How to Use Volunteer Quotes to Inspire Leadership & Resilience In our 50th Volunteer Nation episode, and in honor of upcoming National Volunteer Week celebrations, Tobi shares some fresh ideas on how to effectively use volunteer [...]
049-Behind the Scenes at Our VolunteerPro Membership Makeover!
March 16, 2023 Episode #049: Behind the Scenes at Our VolunteerPro Membership Makeover! In this week’s episode, Tobi offers a peek behind the curtain at the process of developing new VolunteerPro curriculum – in this case, for our newly updated VolunteerPro [...]
048-New Statistics on Volunteering & Civic Life with Dr Mary Hyde
March 9, 2023 Episode #048: New Statistics on Volunteering & Civic Life with Dr Mary Hyde In this week’s episode, we welcome guest Dr. Mary Hyde from AmeriCorps to share some fascinating results from the most recent Volunteer Engagement and Civic [...]
047-The State of Volunteer Engagement with Dr. Sue Kahl and Dr. Nathan Dietz
March 2, 2023 Episode #047: The State of Volunteer Engagement with Dr. Sue Kahl and Dr. Nathan Dietz In this week’s episode, we welcome guests Dr. Sue Carter Kahl and Dr. Nathan Dietz to discuss two fascinating new studies on the state [...]
046-Save Time with Better Volunteer Management Systems
February 23, 2023 Episode #046: Save Time with Better Volunteer Management Systems Anyone who knows Tobi knows that she is a HUGE soccer fan. In this week’s episode, she shares the concept of one-touch and two-touch ball passes – basically taking [...]
045-Build a Smarter Volunteer Retention Strategy
February 16, 2023 Episode #045: Build a Smarter Volunteer Retention Strategy What do volunteers experience while serving at your organization? Why do volunteers want to stay? And why do some volunteers decide to leave? In this episode, Tobi offers a closer [...]
044-6 Creative Ways to Recruit Volunteers
February 9, 2023 Episode #044: 6 Creative Ways to Recruit Volunteers When we think about recruiting volunteers, too often we focus on pushing out a big appeal as many times as possible on as many platforms as possible. But...what if you could [...]
043-How to Tap AmeriCorps Grants & Resources with Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom
February 2, 2023 Episode #043: How to Tap AmeriCorps Grants & Resources with Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom In this year’s Volunteer Management Progress Report, both time and volunteer recruitment were top challenges for leaders of volunteers. Just imagine if you could bring more [...]
042-Why Your Volunteer Recruitment Isn’t Working
January 26, 2023 Episode #042: Why Your Volunteer Recruitment Isn't Working (And What To Do Instead) We often think that, just because our marketing isn’t delivering the results we want, people in the community aren't interested in our cause or volunteering [...]
041-Volunteer Management Trends for 2023, Part 2
January 19, 2023 Episode #041: Volunteer Leadership Challenges and Trends for 2023 – Our New Data with Jamie Gaylor, Part 2 In this week’s episode, Tobi continues her conversation with VolunteerPro’s Marketing Manager Jamie Gaylor, discussing the top trends revealed by [...]
040-Volunteer Management Trends for 2023, Part 1
January 12, 2023 Episode #040: Volunteer Management Trends for 2023 – Our New Data with Jamie Gaylor, Part 1 Ever wondered how the results for VolPro’s annual Volunteer Management Progress Report are tabulated and analyzed? In this week’s episode, Tobi is joined [...]
039-Predictions and Trends in Volunteerism for 2023
January 5, 2023 Episode #039: Predictions and Trends in Volunteerism for 2023 Who else is excited to welcome 2023 and to say goodbye to 2022? It just feels like a fresh start and a great place to put a stake in [...]