Social Entrepreneurship

In the scenic Olympic Peninsula town of Port Angeles, Washington, businesses were struggling to survive the national economic meltdown. The six-week Hood Canal Bridge closure from May 1 to June 15, 2009, temporarily slowing the economy-driving flow of tourists from the Greater Seattle area to the Peninsula, was enough to make these businesses brace for the knock-out punch. Instead, residents of this feisty former logging community banded together, organized and launched an unprecedented drive toward sustainability. The plan: use the six-week period of isolation to transform the downtown core into a colorful, vibrant tourist destination that would draw visitors across the newly opened bridge.

In this e-Volunteerism feature article, Deborah A. Black reveals the step-by-step process that allowed a group of dedicated Port Angeles volunteers to take an ambitious community idea and turn it into a community success that exceeded all expectations. Today, the town has never looked better, the volunteer spirit has never been stronger and the tourists are coming back to Port Angeles.

Colleen Kelly suggests that volunteer management has taken the road more travelled – the easier road – because when we began the process of formalizing volunteer involvement we did so mainly from the point of view of organizations recruiting volunteers to “fill positions” largely defined by paid staff. “I feel that this is one of our most pressing current challenges: developing a people-centred process, rather than a position-centred one – the road not yet taken.”

Based on an experimental project at Volunteer Vancouver, Kelly presents the concept of deploying entrepreneurial volunteers (EV) as “Scopers” to assist organizations in determining innovative ways to utilize highly- or specially-skilled prospective volunteers. She notes there are two approaches:

• Working with the ED: We can begin a process of working with organizations to determine the very specific tasks that highly-skilled volunteers can do for the organization.

• Working with the EV : We can teach the entrepreneurial volunteer how to go through a process of finding – and getting – the right volunteer position.
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Keyboard Roundtable participants from Australia, Canada, Rumania, the United Kingdom, and the United States discuss what an "entrepreneurial volunteer" really is (a pioneer or someone who doesn't like rules?  a blessing or a nightmare?) and how a volunteer program manager can welcome and support out-of-the-box participants.  Here's an excerpt from one of Abby Dyson's (UK) comments:

One area of discussion that I'm particularly interested in exploring, and finding solutions where there are obstacles, relates to that first group of volunteers that Rob identified which is, in my opinion, very similar to the final group that Linda refers to.

These are people who, for various reasons, are put off by the rules and bureaucracies that exist. One set of reasons may relate to a lack of understanding, time and/or willingness to navigate existing systems. Alternatively, perhaps as in the case of Linda's expected experience as well as Ioana's volunteer, there are people with a clear understanding of what they have to offer and/or want to achieve (often they don't have both) and an expectation that the organisations they work with will be able to accommodate them.

The first set of reasons will, I think, happily be tackled by Volunteering Managers seeking to, as Adaire says, "institute good volunteer management principles and practices" which will strip away the bad rules that may have developed over time as well as effectively communicate the need for good and necessary rules.

The second set of challenges are, I think, less likely to be embraced as the solutions are less clear, more challenging and time-consuming.

Ten Thousand Villages, the largest fair trade organization in North America, works to provide vital, fair income to artisans in Africa, Asia and Latin America by marketing their handicrafts and telling their stories. The nonprofit organization has its American headquarters in Akron, Pennsylvania and Canadian headquarters in New Hamburg, Ontario, and relies on a network of volunteers to keep operating costs low and to share its story with consumers. Tens of thousands of artisans benefit from the dedication and involvement of hundreds of volunteers across North America. Whether volunteers pull and pack orders in the warehouse or unpack merchandise and assist customers in a store, they know that their involvement changes artisans’ lives.

Is there a big blind spot in volunteer management? Consider:

• the elderly gentleman in the park, feeding pigeons or even squirrels
• a woman regularly looking in on a sick neighbor
• a teenager teaching other young people how to skateboard
• the police officer (definitely not as part of his official job) finding time to stop for a friendly chat with a troubled young person
• the helpful giver of directions to confused tourists

...and a whole host of other such “natural helpers” and doers of daily decencies, enriching virtually every neighborhood. To all these I would add the Dreamers who “go for it” to achieve their personal vision or goal. Often they are not paid for trying, just as often the goal itself is not defined primarily or at all in financial terms. So Dreamers, too, are often volunteers, though they rarely think of themselves in such terms. Moreover, my experience is that most of their goals have direct or indirect positive social implications. Even where the goals seem primarily to serve the Dreamer personally, I would argue that a happy society can be seen in many ways as the sum of fulfilled individuals.

People in the above examples could be thought of as "self-employed volunteers" in the sense that their helping behavior is not just unpaid, but is also primarily "on their own": freely chosen and accomplished, without benefit of bosses, managers, supervisors, rules or regulations, and typically without significant organizational support. There is always accountability, or should be. But for the self-employed volunteer, this accountability is virtually entirely to the client or goal served, not to any boss or agency.