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Volume VI, Issue 3, April 2006

Walking a Fine Line: Are We Over-formalising Volunteering?


Keyboard Roundtables
Moderated by Andy Fryar and Rob Jackson
Contributors:
Elisha Evans, Mikheil (Misha) Kechaqmadze, Sue Kobar, Scott Martin, Pamela DeFanti Robinson and Kerrie Spinks

The issue of how formal our styles of volunteer management have become is not a new one.  From conference workshops to training sessions to books and articles, volunteer resource managers are being told not to make volunteering too formal an experience for people whilst in the same breath being told to exercise due diligence on health and safety, the care of vulnerable clients, and more.


  • Where do these contradictions leave us as volunteer resource managers? 

  • To whom should we pay most attention: volunteers? the legal profession? board members of our agencies? the media? our own professional judgement? clients? 

  • How do we get this most critical of balances right in our programmes?

Definitive answers to these questions are hard – if not impossible – to find.  In this Keyboard Roundtable, a panel of leaders, thinkers and practitioners from Australia, the USA, the UK, and the country of Georgia share their thoughts and opinions on this critical topic.  Readers of e-Volunteerism are encouraged to join in the debate and discussion for the benefit of our field.

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Comments

Lucas Meijs and Esther Ten Hoorn, RSM Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

June 27th, 2006, 5:20pm

The e-Volunteerism team addresses a very important topic. On the one hand, we over-formalise volunteer management, but on the other hand there is too little attention to volunteer management in different contexts. As we see it, there are two perspectives to look at formalizing volunteer management:

1. In the ‘old situation’ in the Netherlands, few things were arranged for volunteers. In the 80s and 90s nonprofits started to organize their volunteer management, which brought improvements for the sector. But nowadays we over-do it. We can wonder whether formalized work fits all potential volunteers. There is a risk that we send volunteers away, because they don’t fit our volunteer profile, or because they don’t fit our assignments. Also, there’s no room for passion any more. People will be blocked to do what they really want and be left with a bad taste in their mouth. This development has been translated, in our latest research project, to the question ‘what are the effects of bad volunteer experiences for long-term volunteering?’ In the Netherlands, the Dutch Institute for Volunteering (CIVIQ) is conducting research into a hallmark, called ‘Goed geregeld’ (Well Arranged). This hallmark will give volunteers the guarantee that their voluntary organization has made arrangements to support, guide and manage her volunteers.

2. The second perspective is that the need to formalise volunteer management differs in different contexts. Looking at the volunteer management literature, it looks as if volunteers want the best of both worlds: 1) professional organizational practices of the workplace that lead to efficient processes and effective outcomes and 2) the relative freedom, fun and mutual respect of the leisure time inefficiency.

It is the task of the volunteer administrator to balance these worlds. This balancing act is not only influenced by such factors as competition for volunteers, but also by organizational contingencies such as goal of the organization (service delivery, mutual support or campaigning). A membership management approach as described by Meijs and Hoogstad (2001) and Meijs and Karr (2004) seems to be much more appropriate when placing volunteers at a central point. For a volunteer administrator in a membership environment, it is necessary to start with exploring what volunteers want instead of starting with formulating tasks to match the volunteers with. Social skills are probably even more important in this membership management than in program management. In mutual support and campaigning organizations the fit between organizational characteristics and the personal characteristics and beliefs of the volunteer administrator plays an important role. In service delivery organizations program management, matching volunteers to tasks, is often the most effective way to organize the volunteering.

If you would like more information on our project that deals with ‘the effects of bad volunteer experiences for long-term volunteering’ or if you like more information on the two management approaches you can contact Esther Ten Hoorn ehoorn@rsm.nl.