OLD Jayne Blog on nonprofits/ngos, communications, community engagement, volunteerism, aid & development, women's empowerment, & random thoughts

In the news: more misconceptions about volunteers

08:40, 5 March 2010

.. Posted in Volunteerism and Volunteer Management


.. Link

Two recent stories in the news show just how much misunderstanding there is about volunteers, this time regarding volunteer value and volunteer motivation.

1. The governor of Arizona wants citizens to work for the state for free. She wants these volunteers to fill the gaps left by cuts in social services to help reduce big budget shortfalls. She wants volunteers to become foster parents, supervising child visitations, provide transportation and help care for the elderly and children from low-income families, all for free -- no pay. Thanks, Governor, for reinforcing the idea that the primary motivation for involving volunteers is because you don't have to pay them, for reinforcing the idea that volunteers can replace paid staff. Thanks for setting us back on a message so many of us have been trying to overcome for years. Using that mentality, I'm sure she will be resigning and asking that her duties be filled by volunteers.


2. The Wall Street Journal just discovered that there are volunteers who engage in service in order to get training and experience to help improve their career options. The writer proclaims it as a new trend and calls it "strategic volunteering." Ofcourse, it's not new at all. Most volunteer managers have, at least, worked with pro bono consultants and unpaid interns, both of whom are motivated by career goals in their donated service. Such motivation is the drive behind most of the volunteers I myself have involved in the last 20 years as well: even in not-so-bad economic times, most of the volunteers I've involved have been people using volunteering for career exploration or resume-building. In fact, this has been how I have chosen to volunteer myself for the last 20 years -- choosing things that are "strategic" for me for one reason or another.

Sigh. The first story is the one that hurts the voluntary sector the most. I pity Arizona nonprofit organizations and government agencies who will now have to fight even harder to keep paid staff in the face of calls that they replace them with volunteers and save money, and will  have to negotiate even more delicately with workers unions who will say efforts to involve volunteers in organizations like hospitals is actually an effort to replace paid staff.

The second story is merely annoying -- another for-profit person who didn't do her homework and proclaimed something new that wasn't at all. I wonder how long before she writes an article about this "new" thing called "virtual volunteering"?