Tracey O'Neill Consulting

Tracey O'Neill Consulting I help bold leaders reimagine volunteering as a powerful, community-centred strategy for real impact.

I love International Volunteer Managers Day! And this year I get to celebrate with colleagues from across the world, as ...
20/08/2026

I love International Volunteer Managers Day! And this year I get to celebrate with colleagues from across the world, as I'm hosting one of the IVM Day events with Lindsay Baker, CVA.

Join your colleagues across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the West Coast of North America... and everyone else who is prepared to stay up late or get up early to join us.

There will be networking and breakout room discussions, tools and resources, and prizes!!

An amazing way to expand your network and to celebrate the amazing work that you do as a leader of volunteer engagement.

Thursday 5 November, 1pm - 2.30pm AEDT
(Get out your time converters, and make sure you select the actual date in Melbourne, Australia to get the correct time in your time zone)

Will you come join me? Drop a comment below to let me know if you'll be able to make it.

Link to register - https://lnkd.in/gWSGs9Kb

If this time doesn't work for you, or you want to go to multiple events to meet even MORE colleagues from around the world, check out the other dates for celebration in European time zones with Stuart Garland and Ruth Buchanan Leonard, and North American time zones with David Horwitz, MA, CVA and Karin Henderson, CVA head to the IVM Day website events page - https://www.volunteermanagersday.org/events

04/08/2026

It’s time to party!
 
Balloons, a room full of people, someone making a speech that goes on too long. What I’ll actually do is take myself for a hot chocolate between work and the school run, but I’ll take it.
 
Because one year ago today I started Tracey O’Neill Consulting. And a year ago I wasn’t sure I’d make it to here at all.
 
I’d been talking about starting this for eight years. EIGHT! I finally stopped waiting to feel ready and just took the leap.
 
This year people invited me into their work in ways I wasn’t expecting. Someone in Italy wrote to tell me my work made them feel less alone, from the other side of the world. A coordinator in Canada told me she’d completely changed the way she thanks the people who volunteer with her organisation. A leader here in Australia started putting volunteer stories in front of her board and watched them finally understand what volunteering actually makes possible.
 
I’ve kept all of these messages. They ‘re how I know I made the right decision. They’re why I keep going.

💚🩷
 

I’m a recovering perfectionist. I’ve mostly eliminated it. I have experimented more these last 12 months in my business ...
03/08/2026

I’m a recovering perfectionist.

I’ve mostly eliminated it. I have experimented more these last 12 months in my business than I think I ever have before.

But I realised today that those tendencies creep in when it comes to posting on social media. I wait until I have a perfect caption or Canva graphic or case study. I spend way too much of my time trying to make something look pretty + professional + on brand.

And it’s doing my head in. So I l’ve decided you can get more selfies of me and less perfect Canva graphics.

So be prepared for more candid shots… because I have too much to say to wait for perfect!! 💚🩷



Image description: a selfie of me smiling with short brown and grey hair in a charcoal t-shirt holding a lemon beside my head, the size of my head!

20/07/2026

I felt sick when I read the news this week about the sporting club CEO convicted of child s*x crimes. Then I felt worried — would my kids’ clubs have known?

For many organisations, the honest answer is no.

In this video: the key gaps in the screening system nobody tells you about, and three things your club, group or organisation can do this week.

Beyond this week, check out the 11 Victorian Child Safe Standards, especially the Practical guide to choosing, supervising and developing suitable staff and volunteers.

Every state has its own scheme and verification. Search “[your state] verify working with children check.”

Same principle in every state and territory: verify it yourself, don’t trust just having the card number.

I review whole volunteer engagement systems — DM me if you’re wondering what else is running on autopilot.

Grassroots Volunteering CommunityOrganisations

On 4 August, Tracey O'Neill Consulting turns one — and I'm asking you to help me write my impact report.For a year I've ...
16/07/2026

On 4 August, Tracey O'Neill Consulting turns one — and I'm asking you to help me write my impact report.

For a year I've been telling organisations the same thing: your numbers aren't your impact. Find the evidence by asking the people the work touched. Let them define what is important and what changed.

Which means I can't write this report on my own. Impact isn't what I say happened. It's what you say happened.

So, one question.

What's one idea from my work this year — the podcast, a post, a workshop, a conversation — that changed how you think about volunteer engagement?

And if an idea travelled — you sent an episode to a colleague, shared a post with a friend, took something to your CEO — tell me that too. The ripples are the part I can't see from here.

Big or small, it counts. One sentence is plenty.

Drop it in the comments. Everything shared appears in the report only with your permission, named or anonymous.

To make the report when it publishes on 4 August, comment by Thursday 30 July. Everything after still counts — I'm adding to it until 13 August.

What's in it depends on you.

💚🩷

Page 13 stopped me in my tracks.I read a lot of national volunteering strategies. Most of them don't make me stop.The ne...
14/07/2026

Page 13 stopped me in my tracks.

I read a lot of national volunteering strategies. Most of them don't make me stop.

The new US National Volunteer Strategy from Points of Light did. One principle stated more plainly than I have ever seen it.

It names what our sector has been arguing for decades. And it explains why organisations can follow all the standard advice — invest in the tools, fund the training — and still not create the conditions for volunteering to thrive.

The difference comes down to one question. Most organisations have never been asked it.

New episode of Making a Ruckus, out now. Link in bio. 🎙

What's the last strategy document that actually made you stop?

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I've spent the past few months developing a new way of thinking about volunteer engagement.I call it the Campfire Model....
03/07/2026

I've spent the past few months developing a new way of thinking about volunteer engagement.

I call it the Campfire Model.

It's not quite ready to share in full yet, but there's one idea it keeps bringing me back to.

What if some of the most important work we do happens before anyone ever volunteers?

Before recruitment. Before onboarding. Before screening.

Before any of that, there are the conversations that help people feel welcome, the moments that build trust, and the connections that make someone feel like they belong.

This week's episode of Making a Ruckus is the first glimpse into the thinking behind the Campfire Model, and why I believe there's a whole category of hidden impact we've been overlooking.

If you've ever felt like your impact reports only tell part of the story, I'd love you to have a listen.

🎙️ Hidden Impact of Volunteering is streaming now. Spotify and Apple links to the episode is in the comments.

💚🩷

doesn't work in volunteer engagement.He's a cultural placemaking consultant who writes for The Guardian. But in this e...
24/06/2026

doesn't work in volunteer engagement.

He's a cultural placemaking consultant who writes for The Guardian. But in this episode of Making a Ruckus, he's someone who tried to volunteer, to connect, to belong.

What he found is the conversation we share: why so many invitations feel like applications, what it would mean for volunteer-involving organisations to ask differently, and why he still believes the pull towards each other hasn't gone anywhere.

Streaming now, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

💚🩷

"What gets measured gets managed."It's one of the most quoted phrases in leadership.But what if it's causing us to look ...
18/06/2026

"What gets measured gets managed."

It's one of the most quoted phrases in leadership.

But what if it's causing us to look in the wrong places?

In this episode of Making a Ruckus, I explore what happens when volunteer engagement is reduced to hours, headcounts and retention rates.

Not because those things don't matter.

But because some of the most important things volunteering creates don't fit neatly into a report.

Relationships.
Confidence.
Trust.
Perspective shifts.
Moments that change the trajectory of a life.

What if the challenge isn't collecting better data?

What if it's learning to notice what the data can't see?

🎙️ Episode 16: Measuring What Matters in Volunteer Engagement is available now.

What's something you've seen through volunteering that mattered deeply but would never appear in an annual report?

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Not everything that matters can be counted.And not everything that can be counted is what matters most.Sue Carter Kahl w...
09/06/2026

Not everything that matters can be counted.
And not everything that can be counted is what matters most.

Sue Carter Kahl was always going to be my first guest this season. And this conversation did not disappoint — it sparked more ideas than I know what to do with.

We went way beyond numbers, hours, and dollar values. Into the things that actually change lives. Connection. Belonging. Trust. Community. The ripple effects that show up in people, not reports.

And the harder truth we landed on: better data won't fix this on its own. The real shift starts with the stories we tell and the beliefs we're willing to examine.

🎙️ Making a Ruckus: https://pod.link/1849526451
🎧 Not Everything That Matters Can Be Counted with Sue Carter Kahl

What's one impact of volunteering you've witnessed that couldn't be measured? 👇

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