International scope - mentioning several countries

Many volunteer program managers bemoan the fact that they receive little support from top management.  In this issue’s Points of View we consider the consequences of having entirely too enthusiastic backing from executive decision-makers – whether politicians or agency administrators – especially in the early stages of developing a volunteer effort.

There are two levels of possible over-enthusiasm.  The first is the growing tendency of national governments to voice advocacy for volunteerism, whether through proclamations of country-wide recruitment campaigns, actual legislation channeling funding for various projects, or just loud speechifying on how important volunteering is to the social good and civil society.   The second is at the individual organization level, in which the attitudes and actions of top managers lead to increased volunteer involvement (maybe).

One of the more interesting leisure pastimes is watching the Internet colossus Google release new tools and gadgets to supplement its basic search engine.  One of these we’ve been contemplating lately is www.google.com/trends.   One of the things about search engines like Google is that they provide an opportunity to see what people are interested in based on what search terms are utilized. 

For those of you who are wondering what any of this has to do with volunteerism, we’ll stop to make a point so obvious that many volunteer managers tend to forget it. 

Volunteering is a leisure activity that people fit into the rest of their lives, making the determination to allocate some of their discretionary time to volunteering based on how much time they have available and how interesting or important volunteering seems compared to other activities in which they might engage.  In one sense, volunteering is a competitive sport, but the major competition is not other volunteer activities as much as it is other activities, period.

Google Trends allows you to see what people are searching for, and to see in which cities the term is search for most often.  And since you can’t have a “trend” without a timeline, you can see a graph plotting usage over the past years in which Google has collected data.  See what we learned by searches on volunteer, volunteering, and community service and what all this might mean to you.

Volunteering is intricately intertwined with many areas of society and public life, some obvious and some that should be better recognized. In this issue of “Points of View” we discuss public policy arenas that relate to volunteering.  For each arena, we pose some philosophic and practical questions designed to provoke deeper thought. 

You’ll note there are no answers here, since our goal was to brainstorm the issues.  However, any question below could – and probably should – become the focus of academic or government research, or the subject of an article in e-Volunteerism.

Linda Graff started this conversation via e-mail and the rest of us just decided to pile on our opinions and questions.  Feel free to join in with us….

Steve and Susan react to recent news stories and observations that perpetuate some frustrating thinking about volunteers. Volunteering is either undervalued or over-valued, elevated to selfless sainthood or seen as a means to the end of teaching the middle class to love others. Some excerpts from this essay:

From Steve:

…Now I suspect that Mr. Roy came to his conclusion following a great deal more thinking that Mr. Sanders brought to his, but I’m not sure that his conclusion is any more rational. Each distorts a realistic look at volunteering, one by undervaluing it and the other by over-valuing it. Each seems struck in the interesting mindset that what a person does can only be valued by what they are paid to do it. People who have this mindset have a hard time thinking reasonably about volunteering, and they generally end up either putting it on a pedestal or else treating it like a momentary aberration of the slightly deranged – one that should be tactfully ignored in a politely capitalistic society.

From Susan:

I realize that I am now in danger of alienating some readers, but I honestly have never understood the goal of selflessness. It makes me wonder:

• • Given the conscious intention to be selfless, isn’t there the danger of selfishly using the person in need for the volunteer to feel spiritually holy? Thereby ending up as the opposite?

  • Why is it necessary to “leave one’s ego at the door” in order to serve? Isn’t it more genuine to bring yourself fully into the relationship with the person to be served? To share your skills and talents generously?

Steve and Susan then start a list of Suggested Universal Principles of Volunteering, to which readers can feel free to add their own Pet Peeves.