Mr. President-Elect, recruiting volunteers is the easy part
04:30, 17 January 2009
.. Posted in Volunteerism and Volunteer Management.. Link
Barack Obama, like the Bush presidents and Clinton and Kennedy before him, has issued a call to service. Like those presidents, he created yet another new web site for this call (just what we didn't need -- yet ANOTHER web site listing volunteering opportunities). Obama says he hopes citizens of the USA will turn out en masse this weekend to participate in community projects.
Ofcourse, as anyone who was involved in all the other Presidential promotional campaigns regarding volunteerism over the last 20 years, it's no problem to get people in the USA to turn out en masse for a just-show-up-and-feel-good experience. The challenge -- and it's a BIG challenge -- is having the infrastructure in place so that these volunteers aren't standing around waiting to do something, and so that they have such a great experience they decide to volunteer again.
Will this President actually be different from those before him, and instead of just saying, "Hey, everybody, get out there and help!", he'll also provide the call for funding the volunteer management needed to make volunteering worthwhile for both volunteers and the organizations wanting to involve them? Or, like the other Presidents before him, will he motivate thousands and thousands of people to try to volunteer, people who will become frustrated at the lack of follow-through and lack of support and who will give up on volunteering as a result?
