Image of Volunteering

Want to elicit an “ah-ha!” moment from people who think too narrowly about what volunteering is and who does it?  The “Personal Volunteer History” worksheet provided in this Training Designs article is the core of a training exercise that will do just that. It will help:

• Demonstrate to paid staff or members of the general public that everyone has been (and probably still is) a volunteer in some way, although that label might not be applied to the activity. So it’s a great way to start an introductory workshop or course about volunteering, particularly the issue of vocabulary making much of volunteering invisible.
• Guide a screening interview – of both volunteers and employees – to gauge the candidate’s personal understanding of volunteering.
• Structure volunteer orientation sessions and even recognition events, putting the service that volunteers do for your organization into personal context.

Generally the hardest part of the exercise is getting participants to really think back on what they have done over their lives (the older the respondent, the more they need to remember!). But the worksheet’s greatest value is in the reflection and discussion it can generate, which is something e-Volunteerism readers can appreciate.

For nearly two decades,the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society Studies research group has conducted comparative research on volunteer work and the nonprofit sector. This year, in conjunction with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and in collaboration with the United Nations Volunteers and an international Technical Experts Group, the Johns Hopkins Center has published a Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. The Manual was developed “to help statistical agencies around the world track the amount, type and value of volunteer work in their countries” in a systematic, regular and comparative fashion.  Although national statistical agencies are its primary focus, the influential document also provides food for thought for measuring volunteer work at the organization level. This quarter’s Research to Practice presents highlights from this work.

In late 2009, Volunteering England established a Volunteer Rights Inquiry to look into a rising number of volunteers who were complaining, sometimes very publically, about their treatment by their volunteer-involving organizations. After nearly 18 months of confidential testimony, the Inquiry published its final Call to Action report in March 2011. In this article, editorial team member Rob Jackson, former Director of Development and Innovation at Volunteering England and head of the secretariat for the Volunteer Rights Inquiry, gives e-Volunteerism readers exclusive insight into the work of the Inquiry and the issues it raises for the volunteer management field around the world.  Editor-in-Chief Susan J. Ellis notes that Jackson’s story and accompanying sidebar represent a “great coup for e-Volunteerism. No one else has yet reported on the Volunteer Rights Inquiry beyond the release of the official documents.”

 

In this issue, Rob Jackson’s feature story about volunteer rights describes and analyzes the unique Volunteer Rights Inquiry led by Volunteering England from 2009 to 2011. In this special, companion Voices presentation, Jackson interviews two key participants who were deeply involved in the groundbreaking work and gives insight into the personal side of the Inquiry process. The Inquiry participants share their reflections on the controversial issue of whether or not to offer legal recourse to volunteers who feel mistreated by their organizations, as well their hopes for the future and their thoughts on what the work means for the volunteer management field as a whole.

 

An important international event on the global volunteering agenda kicked off 2011: the 21st World Volunteering Conference in January, sponsored by the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) and hosted in Singapore. The conference marked 10 years since the world celebrated the United Nations’ International Year of Volunteers (IYV), so the UN is calling the 10th anniversary “IYV+10.” The Singapore event explored the changes that have occurred over the past decade and looked ahead at new trends.

As always, e-Volunteerism hit the ground running at the conference, covering the event. In this Voices, e-Volunteerism staffer Andy Fryar provides a photographic montage of some of the conference highlights and also shares his own thoughts on what he calls "the most well-run conference event I have ever had the opportunity to attend." Fryar also presents an audio interview from the conference with Laurence Lien, CEO of the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre in Singapore.

One of the most basic and vital types of volunteering is citizen involvement in democratic political processes. All the elements of volunteering and volunteer management are here: recruitment, volunteer leadership, supervision, volunteer motivation, etc. Guest contributor Debbie Macon is uniquely qualified to help bridge the perceived gap between citizen involvement and volunteering. She has had 10 years in public service as an elected official, and is a 20-year member of the League of Women Voters. In addition, she is a member of the Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA) and a member of the adjunct faculty of Wayne State University as co-instructor for "Managing Volunteer Programs" in the Nonprofit Sector Studies program.

This month’s Research to Practice takes a slight detour from reviewing research to report on an article that tries to take a completely new view on some well-known volunteer issues.  The article, called “It Ain’t Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management,” is written by Jeffrey L. Brudney and Lucas C.P.M. Meijs and published in the April 16, 2009 edition of the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Steven Howlett explains that in their article, the authors ask readers to consider what would happen if “we draw our eye from the need to recruit volunteers all the time and start to focus on retention?” So far not so new, Howlett admits, before adding that “the authors think they have a new way to describe how we should think of volunteers.  We should look on them as a natural resource, and one that can be exhausted or managed sustainably.” Instead of reviewing research, this popular e-Volunteerism feature may just trigger some research of its own as the authors attempt to extend this new way of thinking into implications for management.

When it comes to describing volunteers and the volunteer community, attention tends to be focused on social or human services.  In fact, case studies, examples of volunteering, and vocabulary choices disproportionately assume that the volunteers are "solving problems" or "meeting community needs."  So we hear a lot about mentors, friendly visitors, tutors, care givers, and other similar roles − all of which makes people who work in the cultural arts feel like stepchildren.  This Keyboard Roundtable presents an international panel of volunteer program managers in the arts, who share their views on what it’s like to lead volunteers in the cultural arts and how they cope with feelings of being ignored by their social service colleagues.