Limits on volunteer involvement?
08:13, 6 June 2007
.. Posted in Volunteerism and Volunteer Management.. Link
I'm not a visionary. Sometimes, I see opportunities before other people do. Often, I know how to implement and work a system well, even creatively. And I love recognizing and borrowing other people's brilliant ideas and implementing them in my own work. But when it comes to imaging new possibilities outside the "norm", that's just not me. Sometimes, I can't see the forest for the trees. I believe that *most* people have much better ideas than me. Even about online volunteering.
That's why I involve volunteers in my work: because they often have the vision I lack, and they prompt me into new ways of thinking. Volunteers push me to think bigger, or in new directions. To access those great ideas means putting volunteers into roles where they not only have responsibilities, but also offer creativity and vision.
For most of you, this is probably nothing new: volunteers being a part of not only the work to be done, but the strategies to be developed.
So with all this being said, you can probably imagine my astonishment when a volunteer recruitment site blocked one of my requests for volunteers. What was the request? For experienced online volunteers to help our organization explore new ways of involving online volunteers! The site's reasoning for blocking the assignment: identifying ways to involve online volunteers "is the role of the host organization itself." Period.
I have read and re-read the email and just keep shaking my head. This site will allow me to post assignments for volunteers to serve as architects, board members, medical advisors, researchers, database designers, web designers, marketers, online discussion group moderators, policy analysts and translators. But NOT volunteers to help with better, more visionary volunteer involvement.
So, exploring new ways of involving volunteers is entirely up to me, and experienced online volunteers who may have great ideas -- please keep those ideas to yourself. Pity my organization -- we're not going to get very far.
