Evaluation/Program Assessment

In 2009, Jeffrey L. Brudney and Lucas C.P.M. Meijs proposed a new way of thinking about volunteer resources: as a natural resource which must be managed sustainably or it will be exhausted. In their article, "It Ain’t Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management" (published in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Volume 38, Issue 4, and reviewed in e-Volunteerism by Steven Howlett), the authors argued that volunteer energy should be viewed as a human-made, renewable resource that people can grown, recycle and influence positively as well as negatively.

There has been quite a bit of research on volunteer satisfaction, but not so much on volunteer manager satisfaction. How satisfied are volunteer managers with their jobs?  Do their working conditions differ from those of managers of paid staff? What are the implications for nonprofit organizations and human resources departments? In this issue, reviewer Laurie Mook looks  at a study of 314 volunteer managers, conducted by a group of Canadian researchers who analyzed job-related and organizational factors such as co-worker respect, supervisor support, closeness to volunteers, and the nature of the work as an expression of personal values. Their final model, Mook explains, predicted job satisfaction for both short-term and long-term volunteer managers. 

 

We hear over and over again how volunteers are indispensable to many organizations. While we have previously covered articles on different methods used to estimate a value for volunteer contributions, a new study out of New Zealand looks at how volunteer value is communicated, both internally and externally. In this issue, reviewer Laurie Mook examines how a team of researchers conducted a qualitative study of local and national medium-sized health charities, and provides some thought-provoking insights into the barriers and drivers to communicating volunteer value for these organizations. An interesting aspect of the study, Mook explains, is that the researchers interviewed the executive director, fundraising manager and manager of volunteers from each organization, providing for a more holistic look at how volunteer value is communicated. Mook also provides her insights into the practical implications of the study, encouraging readers to reflect on the implications of making volunteer contributions visible while also considering the impact of keeping them invisible.

This issue’s Research to Practice provides great food for thought on organizational factors affecting volunteer management. For example, how do the goals of the organization, area of activity, or degree of bureaucracy impact the role that a volunteer management program can take in the strategic achievement of an organization’s mission? How can organizational settings be “assessed and aligned to the needs of volunteers, but also to those of the organization and society at large?”

In this article, reviewer Laurie Mook shares insights from Sibylle Studer and Georg von Schnurbein, two researchers from the Centre for Philanthropy Studies at the University of Basel in Switzerland. They reviewed and synthesized academic literature relevant to volunteer management from 1967 to 2011, looking for evidence to help explain how nonprofit organizational factors supported or restricted volunteer management. As the researchers found, there are many studies looking at ‘who volunteers’ and ‘why people volunteer,’ but studies from the organizational perspective are not as prevalent. Mook presents their findings and other conclusions about organizational factors and how they impact strategic volunteer management.

In this issue, author Laurie Mook looks at an interesting case study of the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House as an example of how to measure the direct impact of volunteer service on the organization, clients and volunteers themselves. The research – conducted by Debbie Haski-Leventhal (Australia School of Business), Lesley Hustinx (Ghent University, Belgium), and Femida Handy (University of Pennsylvania) – is based on a series of surveys, informal interviews and observations through the researchers’ own involvement as volunteers in the organization.

As Mook explains, volunteer managers often view the monetary value placed upon volunteer service as one way to gauge the relative importance of volunteer resources as compared to other resources in delivering the services of a nonprofit. And, according to Mook, volunteer hours are also used as a proxy for impact.  But through this case study, Mook explores a few more tools. For example, the findings in this study reveal several areas of impact that can be measured. From the perspective of the client, three categories of impact emerge: tangible impact (providing services), attitudes (satisfaction and perceived altruism) and future behavior (willingness to volunteer). From the perspective of the volunteer, intrinsic and tangible benefits are identified. Overall, the researchers are able to communicate the distinctive and unique impact that the volunteers had for the organization. 

In a Research to Practice article in e-Volunteerism last year, Laurie Mook explored the Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work, a recent publication of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The manual was designed "to guide countries in generating systematic and comparable data on volunteer work via regular supplements to labour force or other household surveys." The European Commission and the European Volunteer Centre soon endorsed its findings.

Volunteer management representatives need to take another careful and critical look at what the ILO is really saying in the manual, which we aruge presents some faulty conclusions. Though most practitioners will not read this sort of academic tome, at least some of us must pay attention and speak out because government officials and funders will no doubt be guided by the Manual and its conclusions. In this Voices article, author Rob Jackson offers his personal opinions and encourages further exchange and perspectives from e-Volunteerism readers.

It’s common wisdom in the business world that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” In this feature article, author Tony Goodrow proposes a method of measurement that gives a whole new yard stick to help demonstrate the successes of volunteer deployment in organizations: Mission Points ROI. This special method to measure return-on-investment – which is what ROI stands for – quantifies the value of your volunteers’ involvement in ways the long-popular but insufficient wage replacement value never could. Goodrow argues that this “ROI model can help you demonstrate to everyone else a much more meaningful assessment of the worth of volunteer contributions and your ability to manage resources.”

Can you put a monetary value on volunteering? What is a volunteer’s time and effort worth? This Research to Practice re-visits theses questions by studying a paper called “The Economic Value of Volunteering in Queensland,” by Dr. Duncan Ironmonger, Department of Economics, The University of Queensland. Undoubtedly the tools are there to do so, and we will review those methods. In times of austerity, even greater attention is being put on volunteering and the notion of placing a monetary value on volunteering will be very attractive to policy makers. Now is a good time to consider how we ‘value’ volunteering, at an organisation and an aggregate level.