Volunteer Centers and Infrastructure
Volunteer Centers: Changing Rationale and Roles
Volunteer centers exist around the world, although they rarely connect with each other across national borders. In Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, the concept of a “volunteer bureau” – the most common original name – first gained traction to mobilize home front activities during World War II. In Japan, volunteer centers were (and to some extent still are) literally organizers of local community services. Newer in mainland Europe, volunteer centers evolved from the push towards civil society in formerly communist countries. Volunteer centers in the U.S. are transforming into “HandsOn Action Centers,” while centers everywhere are trying on new identities in a world of Internet access to volunteer opportunities.
As volunteer centers continue to evolve, it seems like a good time to understand why and how they began. In this Voices from the Past, we reflect on their historical significance and consider where they might be going next.
Reflections on a Decade of e-Volunteerism
With this issue of e-Volunteerism, co-founders and co-publishing editors Susan J. Ellis and Steve McCurley begin their tenth year of publication. When they began this effort, both admit that they had no idea whether a venture like e-Volunteerism would succeed at all, much less flourish. “So we’ve been surprised, and pleased, and occasionally astounded,” the co-founders admit, as they reflect back on the publication’s 10 years. In this Points of View, Steve and Susan also consider how volunteering has changed over the past 10 years and how it might change during the next decade of e-Volunteerism.
The 25th Jubilee of the Association of Volunteer Bureaus: Excerpt from Proceedings, 1976
The Association of Volunteer Bureaus (AVB) celebrated its 25th anniversary in Kansas City, MO., in 1976, coinciding with the American Bicentennial. A gala celebration on the theme, “Volunteers: Our Finest Natural Resource,” brought together the leaders of what are now called “volunteer centers” across the United States. In this Voices from the Past, we excerpt from the Proceedings book that AVB published, and see what has changed or stayed the same from 1951 to 1976.
The State of Volunteer Management Infrastructure
Recent years have seen a plethora of new research on volunteers and volunteerism. In this issue of “Along the Web,” we’ll focus on “volunteer management infrastructure,” and examine how well prepared we are to actually work with all those volunteers who are lurking out there.
The picture isn’t a pretty one.
We’ll conduct our examination on a country-by-country basis, including the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and Australia, in order of the earliest to the most recent studies. We welcome references to similar studies in additional countries, including those in languages other than English. Please use the reader response button and share the information.
Exploring Volunteer Space: Ivan Scheier's Lost Book
In 1980, VOLUNTEER: The National Center for Citizen Involvement (predecessor of the Points of Light Foundation) published Exploring Volunteer Space: The Recruiting of a Nation, by Ivan H. Scheier. As has been the case so often with Ivan’s writing, the book was way ahead of its time and unfortunately is now largely unknown. It is a joy to be able to use this “Voices from the Past” feature section of e-Volunteerism to reintroduce new readers to the very-much-still-relevant pages of Exploring Volunteer Space. In the Introduction, Ivan says:
The further cultivation of volunteering is the theme of this book; intensifying, energizing, and expanding it, working out from today’s career leadership of volunteering. The core is the director, coordinator or administrator of volunteer programs, plus resource people and organizations at local, state and national levels. These leaders number an estimated 70,000-80,000 people in the United States today…Without this leadership, there would be no significant volunteer movement for anyone to analyze here. Nevertheless, this leadership seems thin on the line, because the volunteer helping army is far larger than we suppose, and visible leadership, however, talented, shrinks drastically in relation.
In the excerpt presented here, we share Ivan’s thoughts on “Thick and Thin Leadership” – “Practical Issues in Career Effectiveness.” Over time, we’ll revisit Exploring Volunteer Space and give our readers more excerpts. And, since Ivan is Consulting Editor for this journal (/team/scheier.php), we may even hear from him directly in response.
The Road Not Taken
Colleen Kelly suggests that volunteer management has taken the road more travelled – the easier road – because when we began the process of formalizing volunteer involvement we did so mainly from the point of view of organizations recruiting volunteers to “fill positions” largely defined by paid staff. “I feel that this is one of our most pressing current challenges: developing a people-centred process, rather than a position-centred one – the road not yet taken.”
Based on an experimental project at Volunteer Vancouver, Kelly presents the concept of deploying entrepreneurial volunteers (EV) as “Scopers” to assist organizations in determining innovative ways to utilize highly- or specially-skilled prospective volunteers. She notes there are two approaches:
- Working with the ED: We can begin a process of working with organizations to determine the very specific tasks that highly-skilled volunteers can do for the organization.
- Working with the EV : We can teach the entrepreneurial volunteer how to go through a process of finding – and getting – the right volunteer position.
VQ Sustainable Training Scheme
Hong Kong has a long history of developing volunteer services. People from all walks of life are familiar with the concept of volunteerism while a wide variety of specific volunteer opportunities have been opening up, ranging from management roles to the execution of specific projects and tasks. The quality of volunteers and the sustainability of volunteer participation have become significant concerns within many volunteer organizations. It is expected that volunteers shall be well trained and equipped with adequate knowledge and appropriate skills to serve the needy. Further, it is believed that the enhancement of volunteer competencies and increased job satisfaction will lead to a higher commitment to volunteering.
The Agency for Volunteer Service (AVS) maintains a pool of over 10,000 volunteers and, in order to address some of these issues, established its Volunteer Training and Development Centre in 2003. A new initiative of the Centre is the “VQ Sustainable Training Scheme,“ promoting “Volunteer Quotient towards Volunteer Quality” – an attempt to provide progressive training to enhance the quality of AVS volunteers as well as to sustain their commitment to and aspiration of helping others.
This article provides an overview of what VQ is, how the training is structured, the three levels of achievement, who is being trained and who is doing the training, and other elements of the pilot project underway.