Login | Subscribe | Stay Engaged | About | Partnerships | Contact
Ethics
Designing Volunteer Roles: The Ethics of Paid and Unpaid Work
In March of 2020, much of the in-person and organization-based formal volunteering came to a halt in Europe and North America. While informal volunteering and spontaneous people-helping movements forged on, the organizations where many of us contribute our professional skills made drastic changes to volunteering and made them very fast. Organizations were forced to come up with solutions to provide or not provide services that were needed but had not previously been designated as paid positions.
An Introduction to Ethics for the Volunteer Engagement Profession
Who do you consider to be an ethical person?
An Old Chestnut in Volunteer Management Rears Its Head: Corporate Social Responsibility and Paid Volunteers
This past August 2018, Starbucks, the coffee giant, and the non-profit organization Points of Light launched a six-month pilot program that allows Starbucks employees to get their full pay check while volunteering at selected non-profits for half the work week. Before long, the Internet and Volunteer Program Manager list serves were buzzing about a topic that routinely rears its head in volunteer management circles. Namely, do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs create positive, beneficial experiences for volunteers, or is paying someone to volunteer simply absurd?
In this Voices, author Allyson Drinnon hears from people on both sides of this debate, ranging from a volunteer program manager to a corporate representative familiar with the concept. That Starbucks’ Salted Caramel Mocha Frappucinno® may never taste the same again.
Not Everything that is Voluntary is Volunteering
Definitions are important. But when it comes to volunteerism, a focus on the language we use can often result in a lot of navel gazing and little practical action. In this Points Of View, Rob Jackson looks at the ethical implications that can arise when we aren’t clear on the terms we use. Erin R. Spink relates this to actionable advice for anyone working in volunteer engagement. As these two authors clearly point out, not everything that is ‘voluntary’ is ‘volunteering.’
When Volunteers Break the Rules
Why do volunteers break the rules? This Research to Practice reviews an ethnographic study of an animal shelter where disruptive behavior by volunteers was a regular occurrence. This disruptive behavior was defined as “any behavior that either explicitly violated a rule or was identified by more than one staff member as disruptive” (Jacobs, 2017, 31). Researcher Molly Jacobs volunteered four days a week for a year at the shelter, keeping extensive notes of her observations and interactions. She also interviewed paid and unpaid workers. In her analysis, Jacobs was able to identify different ‘rule breaking’ categories and analyze why this occurred.
This Research to Practice review of this study provides an opportunity to think about these types of disruptions in your own volunteer context, and perhaps determine different ways to handle them.