Volunteer Work Design
Designing Volunteer Roles: The Ethics of Paid and Unpaid Work
In March of 2020, much of the in-person and organization-based formal volunteering came to a halt in Europe and North America. While informal volunteering and spontaneous people-helping movements forged on, the organizations where many of us contribute our professional skills made drastic changes to volunteering and made them very fast. Organizations were forced to come up with solutions to provide or not provide services that were needed but had not previously been designated as paid positions.
Seasonal Events and Holiday Volunteering
Thanksgiving, Christmas, Diwali, Chanukah. Holidays and festivals like these can create even busier times for organisations that run fundraising drives or develop special projects tied to these events in an attempt to reach more of the communities they serve.
As evidenced during the most recent holiday season, some organisations depend on existing volunteers to put in extra shifts. Others view a special seasonal time of year as a great opportunity to recruit new volunteers to their causes; these volunteers may come to help out at a one-off event only, while others can likely be retained and end up making longer-term volunteer commitments. Still other organisations or projects exist and operate only n the run-up to and during the holiday period itself. Do they get the same volunteers to return year after year? And if so, how do they make that work?
In this Along the Web, Arnie Wickens presents websites of various organisations that have created a reputation or brand identity from identifying their work with holiday seasonal times, based on effectively recruiting volunteers to maintain the work they do. This article offers a wealth of tips that will prove invaluable when planning the next crunch of seasons and holiday volunteering.
Does Household Internet Access Make a Difference in Inclusive Volunteer Recruitment?
With more and more volunteer recruitment done online, it is important to take a step back and look at who has or doesn’t have the opportunity to volunteer as a result of not having household Internet access. Has digital access changed the demographics of who is being asked to volunteer or to serve in leadership positions such as on a board? In this issue’s Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews a study on the influence of household Internet access on formal and informal volunteering. The results confirm that “volunteer recruitment may not always be an inclusive process” and that nonprofits have a role in bridging this digital divide.
Volunteers and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nations is leading a worldwide effort to achieve clearly stated “Sustainable Development Goals.” Hundreds of organizations are selecting how they will contribute to the effort and, within that process, many are also determining where volunteers fit in. What are the essential elements of an environment that enables volunteerism? And what type of environment will ensure that volunteers make the greatest possible contribution to achieving sustainable development goals?
In this Voices, Bonnie Learmonth, James O'Brien, Shaleen Rakesh, and Goopy Parke Weaving identify and explore some of the environmental elements that contribute to the success of volunteers and the organisations that rely on volunteers to achieve their mission. These include contextual elements like how well people understand and recognise the impact of volunteerism; actor-based elements like the role of the state, civil society, and the private sector in enabling volunteering; relationships and power dynamics between actors; as well as system-wide factors like partnerships, technology, and funding.
The article draws on a discussion paper prepared by AVI (Australian Volunteers for International Development), VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), and the Volunteer Groups Alliance for this year’s IVCO (International Volunteer Cooperation Organisations) conference. Between them, VSO and AVI have over 100 years of experience in sending international volunteers. The paper includes case studies of volunteering in an emerging democracy, Myanmar, and of private sector partnership in India.
The Potential of Remote and Virtual Volunteers in a Changing Nonprofit Landscape
Virtual and remote activities are becoming more prevalent in the landscape of volunteer opportunities. However, most of the information or resources for volunteer managers continue to focus mainly on volunteering done on-site, alongside paid staff.
In this feature article, author Michele Wiesner describes the highly successful volunteer program at Hire Heroes USA, where 85% of volunteer hours are dedicated to remote opportunities. As volunteer program director of Hire Heroes USA, Wiesner is an authority in how to engage with volunteers who never come into face-to-face contact with staff. Here, she shares lessons learned in working with remote and virtual volunteers, describes the relationship between the two, and explains how volunteer managers can think about engaging volunteers in new ways. The potential of remote and virtual volunteers, Wiesner notes, “is limitless.”