Image of Volunteering

The fiasco of the United States Presidential Election 2000 in Florida made a mockery of a democracy's fundamental activity: voting.  Mountains of paperwork analyzing what went wrong with election technology or election laws have accumulated in election offices, legislatures and courtrooms around the nation. "Hanging chads" and "recounts" became household expressions - and justly so.  Some elections districts had error rates as high as 5 percent, far greater than President George W. Bush's margin of victory. Technological and legal issues clearly needed attention to revive Americans' flagging confidence in the elections system after the controversy, as post-election polls showed.

What most of the analysis by government task forces, academics and pundits largely has overlooked, however, has been the role poor poll worker management played in causing problems on Election Day. The evidence, which ranged from the comic to the shocking, was everywhere. In one case, a poll worker accidentally took a bag of ballots home after mistaking it for his laundry. Poll workers in other Florida voting districts improperly turned away voters from the polls, mishandled machinery that led to vote-calculation errors, or weren't able to instruct voters on how to properly operate voting machines. Incidents like these indicate that, in addition to modernizing election equipment and updating old laws, governments should take a cue from the business community in recognizing "people problems" in their organizations. "Senior executives are beginning to devote the necessary attention to understand the links between human activities and desired business outcomes," Jessica Korn of the Gallup Organization said:

In terms of elections, the "business outcomes" are reducing the number of errors made during elections and making voting as painless as possible for voters. And while the business world can help point out the malady, the volunteer community can shed light on actionable solutions. The nature of poll workers' jobs makes volunteer-management principles in four areas - attitude and motivation, recruitment, training, and evaluation - especially apropos for improving the election process.

After dispensing with some helpful definitions, this paper will describe common election routines and how to apply volunteer-management best practices. The goal isn't to lambaste elections administrators - many of whom have made admirable innovations in election management or face significant barriers to reform - but to suggest ways they might better meet the needs and expectations of the public.

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.

David Brettell was the Manager of Venue Staffing and Volunteers for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games ('SOCOG"). This article includes excerpts from keynote speeches David Brettell gave at three volunteerism conferences in July and August 2001, in Singapore and in Adelaide and Fremantle in Australia.

Excerpts from Speech:

You have, I'm sure, heard the expression "from dreams come realities." Sydney has just been through the dream and the experience of its life, as have all the citizens of my country. A slightly cynical Australia went "soft" in September 2000 and embraced the Olympics and Paralympics with exactly what they needed: PASSION. We were genuinely "touched" by the Games and what they represent. Our CEO says it much better than I. He says that Sydney and Australia "brushed the sky" for that short period in September last year.

Volunteers from all round Australia and some from overseas as well were amazingly supportive of the Games. The Sydney Games saw the largest gathering of volunteers at one time, in one place, in Australia's post-war history: 62,000 volunteers (47,000 for the Olympics and 15,000 for the Paralympics) gave their time, skills, enthusiasm, warmth, and never forgetting their passion, to make the Games a great success. They received lots of acknowledgment and recognition but nothing matched what was given to them at the Closing Ceremony of the Games. On the 1st of October, 2000, Mr. Samaranch (CEO) awarded them the ultimate recognition, calling them "the most dedicated and wonderful Games volunteers ever."

David Brettell was the Manager of Venue Staffing and Volunteers for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games ('SOCOG"). Susan Ellis interviewed David while she was in Australia and taped the interview for e-Volunteerism.

Questions Asked in Audio Interview:

• What - if anything - was done to let Games volunteers know about how they might continue volunteering somewhere, somehow once the Olympics were over?
• What connections - if any - were made with existing volunteer-involving organizations to offer ongoing opportunities?
• What advice David might have for other organizers of major events about harnessing and re-channeling such a large outpouring of volunteer interest.
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An international Youth Forum was held just prior to the IAVE World Volunteer Conference in January 2001 in Amsterdam. By all accounts this was an extraordinary experience for the participants. Representatives of the Youth Forum were invited to report back to the full conference at one of the plenary sessions. They charged onto the stage with enthusiasm, sharing the theme of their meetings: "Volunteering IS sexy!" These young people urged everyone to change the old-fashioned images of volunteering.

Conferees were given a handout with eight graphics designed by the young people during a team exercise at their Forum. Each gives a different interpretation of "SEXY" as an acronym. e-Volunteerism is pleased to reproduce these with permission from the Amsterdam conference committee, representing the International Association for Volunteer Effort.

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.