Lead Volunteers with Confidence, Clarity and Care
Discover the tools, insights and real-world stories to help you inspire and organize the people who choose to serve.
Framework and Fundamentals
Understand why volunteers serve, what keeps them engaged and how leaders can cultivate purpose and alignment.
Leading and Managing
Clarify the difference between managing tasks and inspiring people, including the critical dynamics between board chairs and executive directors.
Tools of Leadership
Learn to use process, planning, agendas, and teamwork to drive results without losing sight of mission.
Good
Practices
Explore proven methods for committees, communication, crisis planning and healthy organizational culture.
Personnel Challenges
Gain practical insight for navigating difficult personalities, delivering unwelcome news, addressing ethical lapses and sustaining trust.
Leading Volunteers is the most pragmatic resource l’ve seen for presenting practical issues nonprofit volunteer leaders face. Dr. Cohen uses his vast experiences as CEO and board chair to identify important real-world leadership moments.
Robert M. Smith Ph.D.
Senior Advisor, Lighthouse Counsel
Chancellor Emeritus, University of Tennessee at Martin
President Emeritus, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
About the Book
In Leading Volunteers, Howard Cohen—Chancellor Emeritus of Purdue University Northwest and Senior Associate at Lighthouse Counsel—invites readers into a series of insightful conversations about what it truly means to lead when authority depends on trust and mission rather than position.
Across twenty-six concise, story-rich chapters, Cohen explores the art of guiding volunteer boards and nonprofit teams through both the inspiring and the difficult: clarifying roles, fostering engagement, handling conflict, planning strategically and sustaining healthy collaboration between board and staff.
Drawing on decades of executive experience, he offers clear frameworks and practical wisdom for leaders who must motivate without commanding and influence without imposing.
Accessible, conversational, and deeply grounded in real-world practice, Leading Volunteers is an essential guide for board chairs, executive directors, pastors and anyone working where people give their time and talent for a cause greater than themselves.
Lead with clarity. Manage with empathy. Inspire through purpose.
Unlike in other guides to leadership and management, Howard Cohen includes you in the discussion about how leadership of nonprofit agencies actually works.
Michael Feldberg, Ph.D.
Executive Director, The George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom
PODCAST: A First Look at Leading Volunteers by Howard Cohen
In this special episode of The Beacon Podcast, senior advisor Dr. Karen Baldwin sits down with fellow Lighthouse Counsel senior advisor Dr. Howard Cohen for an engaging preview of his newly published book Leading Volunteers. Drawing on more than five decades in higher education and nonprofit leadership, Howard explains why leading volunteers requires a different mindset than leading employees and why persuasion, respect and process matter so deeply.
Karen and Howard walk through real examples, including a powerful dialogue featured in the book, and explore the approaches every board chair and executive should master. If you work with volunteers or serve on a board, this conversation offers practical insight you can put to use right away. A thoughtful introduction to a timely and compelling new resource for mission-driven leaders.
About the Author
Howard Cohen, Ph.D. is a philosopher, educator, and higher education leader with more than five decades of experience guiding mission-driven institutions. A former chancellor and provost, he has served at universities including Purdue University Northwest, SUNY Buffalo State and the University of Wisconsin system. Through his consulting and writing, Dr. Cohen helps organizations strengthen leadership, governance and moral clarity.
With Leading Volunteers, Cohen brings his deep institutional insight and philosophical grounding to the nuanced challenge of leading those who opt in rather than being obliged. The book offers tools, frameworks and moral perspectives suited to nonprofit boards, advisory bodies, and volunteer-driven organizations—where leadership depends on persuasion, legitimacy and continuous consent rather than top-down mandate.
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