Lightbulb jokes aside, one of the eternal questions which shows up on a regular basis in online discussions, training sessions and inquisitive e-mails is usually framed quite simply:
"What's the recommended ratio of supervisory staff to volunteers?"
Susan greets this question with a quiet sigh; Steve tends to jump up and down and scream.
Somewhere, in an organization quite like yours, a staff member is in the countdown for the annual fundraiser... With the countdown underway, the lead staff member is juggling a thousand balls: confirming logistics for the entertainment; finalizing attendance figures with the caterer; being available to answer all kinds of last-minute questions…
There is one additional relationship that this staff member is juggling, along with the other 999 balls: the relationship with the event co-leader. This co-leader, a volunteer for the organization, is a person of tremendous dedication and passion for the organization and its mission. What complicates the relationship and adds to the juggling challenge is that this co-leader is also a board member.
The staff event leader is juggling this relationship because this year’s co-leader at times expects her suggestions and opinions on the event to be the final word... It’s hard to predict which it will be on a given day. Will the “co-leader” show up? Or will the “board member” show up? It has certainly made the event planning a lot more complicated than the staff member had expected.
Does any of this strike a familiar chord with events in your organization? If so, you’re hardly alone. Confusion and conflict over authority and roles are common occurrences in organizations that involve volunteers.
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Excerpt from "Steve Says…" The strangeness began about 20 minutes into the meeting when a number of the assembled academics launched an all-out orchestrated attack on the survey [entitled “A Measure of Commitment – Volunteering for Serious Social Problems.”], contending that it was wrong to single out any type of volunteering as being of more importance than any other. The parent, for example, who volunteered to coach his own child at Little League was building just as much “social capital” as the person who volunteered to feed the homeless. To conduct a survey of just those volunteers who worked with the very needy and to publicize their work would result in denigrating the contribution made by all other volunteers who also, in their own way, enriched society. It might, for example, imply that what they did wasn’t “serious.” All volunteering is thus equally “worthy.” I’ve pondered this over the years and about the only thing I can say is that it strikes me as an argument that accomplishes the difficult feat of being perfectly logical while remaining totally irrational. So, some propositions to ponder – or to disagree with: |
Excerpt from "Susan Says..." It sounds totally reasonable to want to direct volunteering effort at “serious social problems” (which I refer to wryly as “SSPs”). But who decides what those SSPs are? You may think it’s a case of “I can’t define it, but when I see it I know what it is,” but I wonder. My concerns fall into two categories: |
World Leisure, an international organization devoted to the scientific study and promotion of leisure, has as part of its structure several commissions devoted to matters consistent with this mission. One of these – the Volunteerism Commission – was founded to organize and encourage research in all countries on all aspects of volunteering that relate to leisure and, to the extent they are deemed useful there, to disseminate to the applied sector the world over relevant research findings in this area. The socio-economic context of leisure and volunteering is explored and a case made for viewing volunteering as leisure activity. The structure and programs of the Volunteerism Commission are then examined. A selected bibliography of theory and research in this area is presented as part of the reference list.
Right now in volunteer management we are facing a rising tide: the increasing preference among potential volunteers for short-term, episodic volunteering. By all guesses, in practically all countries, the number of volunteers preferring a shorter term commitment is rising and there isn’t much on the futures forecast to give one hope for any reversal in this trend. We need to step back and take a concerted look at what we are asking volunteers to do and how we are asking them to do it.
The field of volunteerism spends inordinate amounts of time arguing the finer points of just what is and what is not volunteering. Most readers are familiar with a range of concepts that strive to ‘define’ volunteering. Such concepts include volunteering being conducted
However, a much more fundamental question was posed recently on both the OzVPM (Australasia) and UKVPMs (United Kingdom) newsgroups, causing quite a reaction, and prompting us to share the thoughts of respondents with you all through this Keyboard Roundtable forum.
The question was, quite simply: ‘Is volunteering work or leisure?’
With the generous permission of the participants, we have compiled some of the key postings in this debate and hope e-Volunteerism readers will join in.
One of the most fascinating things about volunteerism throughout history is that it represents the basic human response to "can you help?" It also reflects the culture, values and state of the times in which it occurs. What kinds of things are people willing to do to meet needs outside of their own? What does this tell us about our values? Our worries? Our hopes and fears?
In this issue we will share some of the original ways in which people both ask for volunteers as well as volunteer. We will also invite readers to share their own examples of wild and wonderful volunteer opportunities around the globe!
In the late 1990s, the Volunteer Center of Battle Creek (Michigan) worked closely with the Points of Light Foundation (POLF) and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) to adopt and implement the POLF Family Matters program. The goal of the POLF Family Matters program was to “make family volunteering the norm in the U.S.” In support of this goal a goal that we share with the POLF we knew that implementation of a single program, no matter how well intended or implemented, would not be sufficient to move us to a community where family volunteerism was a norm. To reach this goal, we needed to develop the capacity of our own organization and the capacity of the organizations we serve, to work with a new kind of volunteerism family volunteerism.
This article reports on some of the strategic decisions we made to develop our capacity and that of participating organizations to work with family volunteers. A focal point of this article and our own learning was a study of family volunteers that explored the barriers and incentives to family volunteerism.