For Profit with a Purpose: Honouring the Risk-Takers Who Helped Build Our Field

The theme for International Volunteer Manager’s Day (IVMDay) 2026, celebrated on November 5th is “Legacy and Leadership: Honouring the past, present and future.”

It’s a terrific theme and one I know will inspire due recognition of the work of so many important leaders in our field, with the likes of Susan J Ellis, Steve McCurley, Rick Lynch, Mary Merrill, Linda Graff and Arlene Schindler sure to get a mention.

But there is an aspect of their legacy, and that of many others, that we seldom fully appreciate, and that is that much of their influence on volunteer leadership came through work conducted in the capacity of a ‘for-profit’ entity of some kind.

They worked as company owners, contractors, consultants and trainers.

A significant share of volunteerism’s growth and professional development has come from this cohort, and while these pioneers are often recognised individually, their collective contribution has rarely been recognised as such.

This is not to diminish the contribution of the established volunteering network and the important place it has held in supporting volunteer leaders; rather, it is to widen our understanding of who helped build volunteer leadership practices and to shine a light, for once, on those people who used commercial structures to advance our important field.

In those early days, the place of for-profit operators in a landscape dominated by volunteer centres, charities and not-for-profit organisations rested on somewhat shaky ground. Often viewed as interlopers, they were not always welcomed by the established volunteering sector, where some assumed they were ‘just in it for a quick buck’.

For most, however, nothing could have been further from the truth.

I can speak to this firsthand.

In 2002 I started ‘OzVPM’, which I ran successfully as a small company for some fifteen years. We provided consulting and training but also significantly partnered with the Energize team in Philadelphia to bulk import major North American and UK volunteer leadership books into Australia. This allowed local leaders the chance to quickly purchase professional development materials locally, without exorbitant overseas postage costs. It was a great success and led to other partnerships and initiatives like the hosting of training tours and the establishment of the Australasian Retreat of Advanced Volunteer Management, which I ran with Martin J Cowling for nearly a decade.

That commercial structure allowed me to take financial risks which the more established volunteer sector organisations could not, often because their funding was limited or tied to specific grant outcomes.

Making enough money to pay the bills was important, but profit was not the purpose. My real motivation was to strengthen volunteer engagement practices in my part of the world. I know the same has been true for many company owners and independent consultants who have made a lasting difference over the years. Commercial viability did not displace their commitment to the sector; it often enabled that commitment to endure.

The pattern becomes clearer when we consider some other examples.

These days I happily work with Better Impact, whose founder, Tony Goodrow, took similar risks at the turn of the century to develop online software at a time when cloud-based database systems were practically unheard of. I know there were periods when he nearly went broke. Yet that willingness to accept commercial risk has, over time, supported tens of thousands of organisations in their volunteer leadership pursuits and enabled innovative outcomes, including a now annual hybrid conference that has run for more than a decade.

In Australia, AON have been at the forefront of volunteer insurance specialisation for decades and they’ve always been staunch supporters of the established volunteering sector. AON’s contribution extended well beyond sponsoring the occasional conference: it helped advance important thinking, drove critical discussion and aided in developing policy that safeguards volunteering organisations across the country.

ENGAGE (formerly e-Volunteerism), the first online journal dedicated to volunteer leadership, was established by independent consultants Susan J Ellis and Steve McCurley in 2000. It was the first of its kind and has since published many hundreds of articles and continues to lead with thought-provoking content. Its endurance is another reminder that independent enterprise can build shared infrastructure for an entire field.

Even IVMDay itself grew from the initiative of people who came together in North America some twenty-seven years ago. Many of its early founders and others who followed in the years after used income from their own side projects to help sustain and grow the Day.

The boundary between mission and enterprise has therefore never been as neat as we sometimes imagine.

So, this IVMDay, let’s continue to laud established volunteering sector agencies and practitioners for the work they do. But let’s also broaden the story of the leadership we tell. The risk-takers, pioneers, company owners and independent consultants did not stand outside our sector’s mission; in many cases, their willingness to stake their own time, money, reputations and livelihoods helped move that mission forward.

If this year’s theme asks us to honour the past, present and future, then their legacy belongs squarely within that recognition.

About the Author: Andy Fryar, Better Impact

Andy has more than 40 years of experience in volunteer management and is passionate about moving the profession forward. He founded OzVPM, is a former President of Volunteering Australia, and co-authored Volunteer Program Management: An Essential Guide. He has spoken at volunteer management conferences around the world and was awarded a Centenary Medal as a part of the Australian Honours System in 2001 for his contributions to volunteering.