New calls for more volunteerism -- they will fail without volunteer management!
14:37, 26 May 2009
.. Posted in Volunteerism and Volunteer Management.. Link
Like all Presidents named Bush and President Clinton before him, US President Obama is signing legislation and making speeches to increase the number of Americans that volunteer.
As noted in this editorial entitled "More volunteers won't help if nonprofits aren't ready for them," by the Christian Science Monitor, "Managing volunteers requires considerable staff time and energy – only more precious in the face of ongoing staff cuts. Nonprofit staff members should be given tools and support to design volunteer posts that deliver results and build capacity, not serve as a distraction." It's so nice to see someone else who gets it!
But few really seem to understand the infrastructure needed for volunteers to be successful. In a response to an Oregon editorial "Making volunteerism count," which noted that a law signed by President Obama authorizes up to $6 billion in spending over the next five years to triple the number of AmeriCorps volunteers by 2017, someone wrote on the comments section, "Why do you need $6 Billion for volunteers? I thought volunteers didn't get paid? That's what makes you a volunteer."
Sigh.
I've blogged before about the need for funding the volunteer management to make volunteering worthwhile for both volunteers and the organizations wanting to involve them. As I said back in January:
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.So I ask again: will it be different this time?
My own resources regarding volunteer involvement here.
