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.
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  Michael E Clark, President, Citizens for NYC, Inc., New York NY

  Tue, 11/30/2004

  I agree with the writer who notes that much of organized volunteerism is designed to suit volunteer managers, but would take this point further: the vast majority of volunteering in the United States is self-managed, in the form of block and neighborhood associations, local “self-help” groups, neighborhood and faith-based volunteer groups, and the like – what we call Volunteering Close to Home. My organization works with some 12,000 block, neighborhood, tenant, faith-based, ethnic and youth volunteer groups throughout New York City’s five boroughs. We estimate they involve more than 1 million New Yorkers every year in improving their neighborhoods’ quality of life in the areas of Urban Environment, Beautification, Safety, Hunger and Poverty, Neighborhood Diversity, Youth-Led Community Service and Youth Entrepreneurship and others. Glad to discuss…