A Quick World Tour of New Research in Volunteering

Great round-up. Thank you! Jan

As a Manager of Volunteer Resources for a large non-profit in Canada, I took exception to Mr. McCurley's comment that Canada has poor volunteer management practices. Although I do not dispute the findings reported by the "Bridging the Gap" report, published by Volunteer Canada, I think it is important to put these findings into perspective when looking at Canada's non-profit sector. There are over 180,000 non-profit organizations operating in Canada. 50% of these ngo's have an operating budget of $50,000 or less per year. 17% of Canada's ngo's have an operating budget of less than a million dollars per year. As a result, these smaller ngo's do not have the financial or human resources to effectively manage the volunteers they critically need to fulfill their mission and goals. Unfortunately, most of these organizations cannot even consider hiring a professional manager of volunteer resources. With a better understanding of the demographics of Canada's non-profit sector, it should help the readers of the Bridging the Gap study understand why the non-profit sector study revealed that many organizations have poor volunteer management practices! Insufficient resources not only affects volunteers, it also affects the quality of services provided by the non-profit. Poorly funded non-profits face many operational challenges! However, based on my 20 years of experience as a Manager of Volunteer Resources in Alberta, I can testify that the majority of mid to large size ngo's, who have more resources, do adhere to best practice standards for volunteer management. Many of our Canadian professional associations work with Volunteer Canada, local Volunteer Centres, and the Canadian Administrator's of Volunteer Resources to share resources like the Canadian Code of Volunteer Involvement, and our experienced volunteer managers provide mentoring and support to smaller non-profits. But it is a never ending challenge! The staffing turn over rate in the non-profit sector (especially for small non-profits) makes it very difficult to provide stability and continuity for volunteer personnel. Although we could do better, the non-profit sector in Canada continues to effect positive social change, meets the needs of many disadvantaged people in our communities, and improves our quality of life through the arts, sports and recreation, etc, on a daily basis! We do what we can with the resources we have available to us!

Let us be clear - I'm not the one taking exception with Canadian practices - the survey by Volunteer Canada simply reports what volunteer managers in Canadian nonprofits say about themselves regarding which volunteer management practices they do. So please don't attribute to or blame either me or Volunteer Canada for simply reporting the "truth" as seen by volunteer managers - we're just the messengers. Frankly I think that Volunteer Canada is doing an exemplary thing by talking frankly about what we don't do well in operating volunteer programs, and the sad fact is that similar studies have identified similar shortfalls in the US and the UK, which have both demographics and NPO budgets much like you describe for Canada. As we all know, volunteer management is not at the top of most agency's priorities and suffers accordingly both in budgetary and in management terms. And I absolutely agree with you that where resources are available Canadians - and those in other countries - do a good job of utilizing them. The problem, as Volunteer Canada, points out is that more often than not this isn't the case. Equally importantly - if you look at the entire report - they reiterate some of the things that might help make a difference in changing attitudes toward volunteer involvement, so take a look at the whole report.