Definitions of Volunteer

How do you manage volunteers who don’t choose to be in your organization, those volunteers who often show up after being “bullied” into service? In other words, how do you manage the non-volunteer volunteer?

In this e-Volunteerism feature story, volunteerism expert and author Thomas W. McKee discusses this overlooked issue and offers a step-by-step guide to help organizations and managers face the problem. McKee outlines special considerations for working with this large category of volunteers, and offers additional advice for volunteers who lead other volunteers (especially those who would rather not be volunteering).  McKee uses authentic examples of non-volunteer volunteer situations throughout the article – ranging from the soccer field to an elementary classroom to the board room.  His personable and purposeful technique will engage volunteer managers from all sectors. And they will have no trouble relating to McKee’s descriptions and learning valuable coping techniques from his experiences. 

In this Keyboard Roundtable, we’re casting a wide net to explore a number of volunteerism issues from the diverse perspectives of people involved in volunteering.  “From Whose Perspective?” will include a discussion of such important issues as:

• Employer-supported volunteering: Is it volunteering if people are paid to volunteer with time off from work? From whose perspective?
• Pro bono service: Is this volunteering?  From whose perspective?
• Do we draw the line on rewards/incentives in volunteering? From whose perspective?

We’ll engage a few corporate and community sector volunteer managers, a public sector volunteer manager and a volunteer to help us gain multiple perspectives in this next Keyboard Roundtable.

The term ‘engagement’ has gained appeal in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors to explain and understand relationship management with paid and voluntary staff. Yet little to no research has been done that focuses specifically on a volunteer’s engagement and how that might differ from a paid employee’s. This feature story will deconstruct the concept of engagement and suggest variables which need to be acknowledged in studying this concept and how it applies to volunteers. Looking to the future, we’ll also explore how to move forward to increase engagement capacity within the volunteer management profession.

Māori volunteerism, which has become embedded within the fabric of Māori communities, is a culture that derived from voluntary activity, introduced by immigrants in the early colonial settlements of Aotearoa/New Zealand.  Current literature, however, fails to provide sufficient evidence to pinpoint when this culture emerged; instead, literature discusses the contemporary culture of voluntary activity and attaches Māori terms to explain the behaviour.  This article provides an important new look at the origin to Māori volunteerism by identifying certain documentations in history where volunteerism was exercised by Māori.  It gives a voice to an activity that has been unrepresented, and recognises volunteers during 1800 to 1900 for their communal activity and contribution to building the society of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

A significant area of growth in recent years has been the phenomenon of 'voluntourism' – traveling somewhere on vacation but using the time to engage in some type of organized volunteer project.  In this Keyboard Roundtable, we seek to find answers as to why this form of volunteering has become so popular, what it takes from volunteer management to coordinate this effort and the potential for even further growth in the future.

An interesting movement is emerging in volunteer management: Some managers of volunteers are limiting themselves to being responsible for only one part of their organization's volunteering scheme − the most 'traditional' part − while their organizations build new ‘pro bono’ and ‘community involvement’ programs without them.  While this is not a new phenomenon, what is new and concerning is that there has recently been significant growth in this ‘non-traditional’ volunteering. The change is undermining the role of the manager of volunteers and hampering the ability of community organisations to adequately meet the needs of the community. In this article, the authors consider what factors prevent or limit a manager of volunteers from taking responsibility for all volunteering responsibilities, and they also present a strategy for change.

A few years ago, we reprinted an excerpt from a long out-of-print book written by Ivan H. Scheier in 1980 called Exploring Volunteer Space.  We noted then that this volume contained ideas far ahead of its time – which is exactly what we’d come to expect from Ivan, one of the true pioneers of our field.  We also promised to periodically reprint other sections and so we offer here the chapter entitled, “From Observation to Action.”  You’ll find it thought-provoking, as Ivan explores “a relatively neglected area of volunteer space”:  “a form of indirect participation in which what you see is what you give.”

There’s a phrase circulating that crops up periodically in speeches or books:  “volunteers are not a program.”  This concept can be traced back to an early article by Patty Bouse, Resource Development Specialist in the Nebraska Division of Social Services, in the Winter 1978 issue of what was then called Volunteer Administration.  We reprint the article here, noting how little has changed in three decades in the challenge of gaining legitimate agency acceptance for volunteer contributions.