Philosophy of Volunteerism

Research for the report, Flying Under the Radar: The Significant Work of All-Volunteer Organizations, was conducted in 1999 in the San Francisco service area of CompassPoint by Cristina Chan, M.P.P., and Sonali Rammohan, C.P.A. Leadership for the study was provided by Jan Masaoka, Executive Director of CompassPoint. I first became aware of the study when I attended a workshop presented by Cristina and Sonali at the 1999 National Community Service Conference. It was very telling that, in a conference of nearly 2,800 participants, there were only about a dozen attendees at this particular workshop. Obviously, not many all-volunteer group representatives were at the conference! When I was discussing the study with CompassPoint Executive Director Jan Masaoka, she used a term that to me describes why the health and well being of all-volunteer groups are so vitally important for our consideration. She called the sub-sector a "fragile ecology" that is little understood and very much under-supported by any of the primary sectors of modern life. This is despite the fact that these groups really create the rich fabric of what we call "community" and bring people together in so many ways. 

 

Is there a big blind spot in volunteer management? Consider:

• the elderly gentleman in the park, feeding pigeons or even squirrels
• a woman regularly looking in on a sick neighbor
• a teenager teaching other young people how to skateboard
• the police officer (definitely not as part of his official job) finding time to stop for a friendly chat with a troubled young person
• the helpful giver of directions to confused tourists

...and a whole host of other such “natural helpers” and doers of daily decencies, enriching virtually every neighborhood. To all these I would add the Dreamers who “go for it” to achieve their personal vision or goal. Often they are not paid for trying, just as often the goal itself is not defined primarily or at all in financial terms. So Dreamers, too, are often volunteers, though they rarely think of themselves in such terms. Moreover, my experience is that most of their goals have direct or indirect positive social implications. Even where the goals seem primarily to serve the Dreamer personally, I would argue that a happy society can be seen in many ways as the sum of fulfilled individuals.

People in the above examples could be thought of as "self-employed volunteers" in the sense that their helping behavior is not just unpaid, but is also primarily "on their own": freely chosen and accomplished, without benefit of bosses, managers, supervisors, rules or regulations, and typically without significant organizational support. There is always accountability, or should be. But for the self-employed volunteer, this accountability is virtually entirely to the client or goal served, not to any boss or agency.

Directors of volunteer programs tend to view volunteering from a management perspective, mainly because they're responsible for effectively managing people and resources. Volunteering, however, can be viewed from the perspective of other disciplines as well and this article is a useful reminder that looking at something from all directions is more enlightening than simply examining one.

Ethnology (the discipline, not the magazine of that name) is "the science which treats of races and people, and of their relations to one another, their distinctive physical and other characteristics." It is practiced by sociologists and anthropologists and you've probably been exposed to at least some of it through the works of people such as Margaret Mead. Ethnology tends to examine the relationships among individuals and their culture, with some emphasis on how people fit into that culture. One of the tenets of ethnology is that cultures tend to develop models of appropriate roles for its members, with some classic examples being the shaman, the warrior, the clan mother, etc.

Lynne Nakano's article examines volunteering in a residential neighborhood outside of Yokohama, Japan.

In the mid-1970s, the Association for Volunteer Administration embarked on a revision of its professional credentialing program. AVA selected a performance-based system, based on a core group of competencies deemed essential for the effective administration of volunteer programs. At the recent international conference in Toronto, Canada, Sarah Jane Rehnborg - the system developer - offered her reflections on the competency-based credentialing format. This article is based on her presentation, which includes an important call to recognize that "our work is steeped in purpose and energized by passion."

There are many words to describe volunteering and voluntary action, reflecting the many forms of people helping each other survive and prosper over the challenges of their time and place. Whether it is trabalho voluntario in Brazil, benevolat and volontariat in France, gotong royong in Indonesia or harambee in Kenya, supporting each other for mutual survival is a key ingredient to community the world over. In this issue we look at a very ancient, yet still modern, form of community interaction and service to each other that, even though it is no longer extensively practiced, is still is a relevant way for people to be involved in service to each other.

With volunteering by youth at an all-time high in the United States, it is important to examine the continuum of civic action to ensure that we are creating pathways that allow more volunteers to facilitate more sustainable community change.  We must recognize that each level of participation plays a valuable role in meeting needs in our society and that volunteers may be involved in multiple points along the continuum at the same time.  However, the hectic pace of life, lack of infrastructure to more fully engage volunteers and a skepticism of policy-making in the US and worldwide result in the vast majority of volunteers being involved only sporadically.  If we do not focus our energies on providing infrastructure support, training and networks to facilitate the involvement of the 90 million volunteers in other parts of the continuum of civic action, we risk resigning ourselves to clean the same dirty rivers and tutor in the same underfunded schools year after year.

The Saguaro Seminar is a program of Harvard University that builds on the work of Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone: Collapse and Revival of the American Community). One of its initial activities was to conduct this national survey of almost 30,000 people, released in February 2001. This survey is the largest investigation of civic involvement ever conducted in America. The study examines a number of areas of social capital formation, including religious engagement, political and civic participation, levels of trust, giving and volunteering, and informal socializing.

Key findings of the survey follow in this article.

No ancient holy book mentions "volunteering" by that name, but every religion in the world encourages charity, service to others, and personal risk for one's beliefs. This unique article compares the major religions of the world in terms of charity.

Abstract

An innovative approach to raising funds burst onto the nonprofit scene a few years back.  Entitled "new philanthropy," it has enthusiastically been adopted by fundraisers wishing to raise the level of their success.  This article proposes that those responsible for enlisting volunteers adapt a "new philanthropy" approach to recruitment. A definition of new philanthropy is presented. This is followed by a step-by-step process for employing the features of the new philanthropy to ensure a good match between volunteer and organization.