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Trends and Issues
Clearing Hurdles on the Volunteer Obstacle Course
In this Points of View, the authors won’t argue for a return to the old and casual systems for volunteer involvement. After all, this is a different world with different problems – with criminal record checks serving as a perfect example of something that volunteer managers learned the hard way need to be done, as imperfect as they currently function. But a goal of volunteer resource managers should still be to extend a welcome to prospective volunteers, making the process go as well as it can in today’s more complex environment. This Points of View presents some ideas that will help more people clear the hurdles of the volunteer process and help them actually cross the finish line as accepted volunteers.
The Growth of VolunTourism
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.
Challenges to Volunteerism in the 80s
In June 1979, Pennsylvania’s “First Annual Symposium on Volunteerism and Education” was convened in Harrisburg. The keynote address was delivered by Gordon Manser, co-author of the 1976 book, Voluntarism at the Crossroads. We dust off and republish his speech here, allowing us to look back through the prism of 31 years at the issues he predicted would affect our field in the coming decades. Some – such as the impact of the gasoline shortage at that time or Proposition 13 in California – have evolved into somewhat different challenges. Other themes continue to be very pertinent today.
On the Same Wave: The Story Behind Australia’s First Squad of Muslim Surf Lifesavers
In December 2005, an assault on three volunteer surf lifesavers led to violence and what are now known as 'the Cronulla riots.' In the aftermath of these events, a number of parties (including the Australian Government, Sutherland Shire Council, Surf Life Saving Australia, Surf Life Saving NSW, and various other groups) representing Muslims proposed a program which would attempt to bring harmony back to the Cronulla beaches. Ultimately, this program has seen almost 20 young people of mainly Lebanese Muslim background undergo the arduous training to become volunteer surf lifesavers. But is this mere tokenism or a genuine attempt by those involved to make a difference?
Making Sense of Volunteering: A Literature Review
2005 in the UK was the Year of the Volunteer, with a programme of events designed to increase the profile of volunteering. To build on its legacy, the England Volunteering Development Council, a high-level representative mechanism of volunteering, established The Commission for the Future of Volunteering to develop a long-term vision for volunteering in England. To inform this, a literature review was undertaken which aimed to look at what is going on in the world of volunteering, particularly examining societal changes and the impact these may have on volunteering.
The resulting report by Colin Rochester was published in December 2006 and is the focus of this Research to Practice review.
Using Technology to Understand Volunteering Trends
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.
Generating Corporate Brand Value through Nonprofit Organizations and Employee-Volunteer Programs
The nonprofit sector has long been the domain of organizations and individuals interested in philanthropic activities and charitable work. However, this is changing, as Corporate America discovers that nonprofits and employee-volunteering programs can be legitimate and useful business tools to promote their brand value.
The latest trend for companies is to create corporate nonprofit foundations and employee-volunteer programs to demonstrate corporate social responsibility (CSR). Although having noble missions, the real intention of these corporate nonprofit foundations and inspired employee-volunteer efforts is to enhance brand value, increase overall company profitability, grow customer loyalty, and reflect company values in tangible ways.
Two for-profit corporations, Bank of America and Toyota, are both enhancing their brand name through their respective nonprofit foundations and employee-volunteer programs, each of which helps Bank of America and Toyota to build stronger relations with their communities and stakeholders.
In this article, Kevin Kalra, himself a 2004 Toyota “Community Scholar,” explores what “brand value” is and how CSR furthers it.
The Contradictions of Imposing 'Checks' on Volunteers: Questions We Need to Answer
Debbie Usiskin, an experienced volunteer programme manager in London, shares her personal exploration of how government requirements to ‘check’ (screen) volunteers provide contradictory and conflicting responsibilities and messages. She raises important questions about finding the right balance between protecting those who are served while supporting the widest range of volunteers.
Usiskin also introduces a provocative analysis of volunteer-involving organisations by influential business guru Charles Handy and applies his thinking to volunteer management.