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Membership-based not-for-profit organizations rely heavily upon their volunteers to accomplish their visions and goals. Some member volunteers will lead, many more will follow in management roles, others just volunteer on small tasks, and an even larger group of members will never step up to volunteer or participate. A key to a successful volunteer-based member organization is to continue to develop strong leaders who can influence the membership to achieve the vision and goals of the organization. This article will focus on four basic concepts to help current volunteer leaders generate an active volunteer base to accomplish tasks, projects, and goals: 1) Develop a sense of purpose beyond the individual; 2) Strategically ask members to participate; 3) Use persuasion and influence to your advantage; and, 4) Facilitate intrinsic motivation. ASSE describes its mission as, "A global member-driven association providing representation, promotion, and support for those engaged in the profession and/or the practice of safety, health and environment in their efforts to protect people, property and the environment" (American Society of Safety Engineers, 2007). Although ASSE does have a paid professional staff, they rely a great deal upon member volunteers to do the heavy lifting to achieve their vision to "…be a global champion of the safety, health and environmental profession, a global leader of the profession and a premier resource for those engaged in protecting people, property and the environment" (ASSE, 2007). An important question for volunteer leaders to answer is: How do leaders transform their membership into volunteers, influence these volunteers into essentially becoming unpaid staff, and finally how do they create and develop future volunteer leaders? President Dwight D. Eisenhower defined leadership as "…the art of getting someone 1
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