History - Other

In 2010, Volunteer NOW and the Voluntary Service Bureau in Belfast obtained Heritage Lottery Fund money to conduct a two-year oral and social history project to capture the volunteer stories of over 110 people in all walks of life in Northern Ireland. The work led to the publication of a book called Volunteer Voices: Belfast’s Creative Extremists and an exhibit open to the public. The book also included several historical accounts of the evolution of volunteerism in Belfast, sometimes bleak but also hopeful. As the Foreword states:

Most of the past forty years of Belfast’s history has been turbulent, fractured and painful. The City suffered and over 1,500 of its people died; countless others injured. During the early 1970s Belfast experienced one of the largest movements of population in Europe since the Second World War. Later with the erection of ‘peace walls’ and interface barriers, it became, and still is, a physically divided city…Amidst this reality, however, are countless stories of people with hope. People equipped with enthusiasm and energy who gave their time as volunteers…and “faced the dragon’s fire” believing it was possible to make a difference.

In Voices, we excerpt some of the many inspiring examples of the power of volunteering told in this book. 

A community organizer is usually a social agitator who wants to build grassroots power. While a volunteer manager may be working toward social justice, the primary goal of this position is usually tied to a pre-determined objective, like service delivery or broader organizational support like fundraising. In practice, the roles often overlap. Both require a high level of interpersonal skills, insight into what motivates people, and the leadership to get those people to act in ways that benefit the community.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, author Aimee Inglis discusses the often fine line between the two fields and the tension this creates in the volunteer community. Inglis explains that “as a volunteer manager who is also trained in community organizing — and currently working at a nonprofit that organizes for social and economic justice and tenants’ rights — I have felt the line blur between the two fields. I have also felt the tension as both fields professionalize and learn the same lessons in silos where they would be stronger sharing notes.”

Inglis builds on her personal experiences as she examines not only the history of community organizing but also how community organizing and volunteer engagement have become part of the profession. Inglis also proposes ways for volunteer managers to bridge what she calls the unnecessary divide between these fields.

Most people are very familiar with the concept of a telethon, a word coined to combine "television" and "marathon." It’s a televised fundraising event, lasting many hours or even days, in order to raise money for a charitable or other worthy cause by combining a variety show or television production with solicitations for pledges from the viewing audiences. The first national telethon was hosted by Milton Berle in 1949, raising $1.1 million for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation over the course of 16 hours. Because the idea worked, the concept spread quickly and today examples of telethons can be found around the world.

One of the key factors in a successful telethon is, of course, volunteer involvement – and the presence of volunteers is frequently acknowledged on air. The celebrities who perform during the show donate their time, so they are certainly volunteers. The people who answer the telephones to accept pledges are all volunteers. And they are just the tip of the iceberg of people running special event fundraisers in conjunction with the telethon.

Over time, many factors have changed the impact of telethons, most critically the ability of the Internet to spread the word more broadly than television, with much less effort and cost. This Voices article shares this telethon evolution and reviews how volunteers continue to be part of the process.