Motivation

Do we need another study on volunteer motives? Michael Callow’s work (published in the International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing) argues that we do and that there is value in looking at volunteering among retirees. Too often, says Callow, we categorise types of volunteers into broad groups, with ‘older volunteers’ put into a category that merely allows them to be contrasted with other groups. This, however, leads to assumptions that all older volunteers come with the same motives and aspirations for their involvement.

While I think that Callow may not have considered all the many and varied studies into older peoples’ participation, there is some truth in what he says. As a result, this piece of research is an interesting contribution to thinking, especially as it comes from the perspective of an assistant professor of marketing, not from someone who focuses exclusively on volunteers.

This article examines a research report done at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada by Evelina J. Rog, S. Mark Pancer, and Mark C. Baetz: “Corporate Volunteer Programs: Maximising Employee Motivation and Minimizing Barriers to Program Participation.” The research was done on the Ford Motor Company’s employee volunteer programme and is based on in-depth interviews with over 100 staff. It outlines six key points to increase employee volunteering. The Research-to-Practice article highlights where the findings resonate with other volunteering research, but also notes some areas where convincing companies to have an employee volunteering programme might encounter barriers not addressed in this research.

South Australia boasts the highest volunteering rate in Australia, celebrates a strong level of government support for volunteers and even has volunteer involvement featured in the state’s ‘strategic plan’. The northern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia’s capital city, has often been viewed as a hot bed for volunteerism, and so there were few surprises when a strong volunteer management sub-committee was formed as part of a broader initiative, called the Northern Collaborative Project (NCP).

A key problem tackled by this working party was the question of how to encourage more volunteers to undertake the training required of them by their organisations. The solution was that the group developed an annual training conference for their volunteers called ‘Volunteer Fest’.

Now gearing up for the third event, this article shares the experiences of the volunteer leaders who, through this forum, have revolutionized volunteer training in their local area.

It is often said that volunteering is a great way to test-drive a career.  But that premise is only as good as the opportunities we make available to volunteers.  And with an increasing number of thirty- and forty-somethings expressing disaffection with their present careers, it is no longer only young people who could use volunteering opportunities to help them change track. Fraser Dyer first outlines the factors that cause career disaffection in workers today and then looks at what agencies will need to think about to attract this potential source of volunteer recruits.  What does the not-for-profit sector have to offer career-changers anyway?  And is your volunteer program up to the job of becoming a shop window for the next generation of employees?

Research-to-Practice Editor Steven Howlett re-visits a paper by Colin Rochester published in Voluntary Action, the journal of the Institute for Volunteering Research in 1999, about the management implications for volunteer coordination based on the organisational setting in which it takes place. Rochester observed that organisational context will impact upon how volunteering is managed, but this context is not very well addressed in the research literature and, as a result, best practice writing often gives minimal advice about how practice can vary from organisation to organisation.

The paper argues that there have been two implicit assumptions in the literature which may explain why the organisational context of volunteering has received less attention. The first is that what is being measured and described as volunteering is seen to be essentially the same activity regardless of where it happens. Second is the tendency to view volunteering as part of the non-profit sector, where it is seen as primarily unpaid workers contributing to the goals of the organisation; the result of this is a dominance management language emphasising the ‘workplace model’ of management.

Note:  Thanks to the generous permission of the Institute for Volunteering Research, the full text of the original study is provided as a PDF accompanying this review.

It seems counter-intuitive for most people working in volunteering that such participation should be bad for your health. A new research paper in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health claims just this, flying in the face of much other evidence. Is volunteering bad for you, or should we pay more attention to the way in which we involve volunteers and acknowledge that bad (or no) volunteer management may offset the positive impacts of volunteering? This Research-to-Practice looks at a new survey and asks whether it is volunteering or the organisation of volunteering that the authors found problematic.

Keyboard Roundtable participants from Australia, Canada, Rumania, the United Kingdom, and the United States discuss what an "entrepreneurial volunteer" really is (a pioneer or someone who doesn't like rules?  a blessing or a nightmare?) and how a volunteer program manager can welcome and support out-of-the-box participants.  Here's an excerpt from one of Abby Dyson's (UK) comments:

One area of discussion that I'm particularly interested in exploring, and finding solutions where there are obstacles, relates to that first group of volunteers that Rob identified which is, in my opinion, very similar to the final group that Linda refers to.

These are people who, for various reasons, are put off by the rules and bureaucracies that exist. One set of reasons may relate to a lack of understanding, time and/or willingness to navigate existing systems. Alternatively, perhaps as in the case of Linda's expected experience as well as Ioana's volunteer, there are people with a clear understanding of what they have to offer and/or want to achieve (often they don't have both) and an expectation that the organisations they work with will be able to accommodate them.

The first set of reasons will, I think, happily be tackled by Volunteering Managers seeking to, as Adaire says, "institute good volunteer management principles and practices" which will strip away the bad rules that may have developed over time as well as effectively communicate the need for good and necessary rules.

The second set of challenges are, I think, less likely to be embraced as the solutions are less clear, more challenging and time-consuming.