Image of Volunteering

From the outside, the large agency looks like a model nonprofit when it comes to involving volunteers. It hosts a significant volunteer and paid staff team. There are volunteer applications, legal waivers and comprehensive training. The team is guided by operational plans based on lessons learned from the corporate world and nonprofit consultants. The leadership heeds and hones best practices for volunteer management; it collects and makes decisions using many, many data points. It has come a long way from its humble all-volunteer roots.

Article reviewed: Mamuji, A., Kenny, C., & Ahmed, S. (2021). Co-production Through Volunteerism in Emergency Management: Drawing Lessons from Canada’s Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative. Canadian Journal of Emergency Management 1 (1), 40-65. Available at: https://cdnjem.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/CJEM-v1n1-Mamuji-Kenny-Ahmed.-Co-production-through-volunteerism.pdf

One of the interesting things about getting older is that memories become a bit more elastic and you find yourself thinking about things that you have experienced and realize that they occurred an age or so ago.

Volunteers can make the world a better place - but it behoves us to ask the question,  "Better for whom?" In this Points of View, Rob Jackson and Erin R. Spink put this question front and center by challenging leaders of volunteer engagement to look at volunteering in real life from every conceivable angle. Jackson and Spink boldly note that “volunteering is not simply a nice thing to do: volunteers are directly shaping the world with their choices and actions.” As they write:

It would be naïve to proclaim that volunteering is always objectively good. The socially acceptable view of volunteering being for the greater good isn't wrong per se, but it has never demonstrated a true understanding of the complexities and nuances of volunteering in real life. In today's world, this overly simplistic conceptualization is actually a hindrance to understanding the power of volunteers and why our role as leaders of volunteer engagement is so critical.