Mobilizing Youth

The New Volunteer Workforce: Reading Notes

This blog post is a part of our "Reading Notes" series - where we read an article, post a summary, and our comments on it.

Article Title: The New Volunteer Workforce
Url: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_new_volunteer_workforce/
Date: 12/02/08

Notes:
A tremendous read about volunteering, packed full with stats and research tidbits. The article makes the case that volunteering is severely undervalued by nonprofits, corporations, and the laity in general. The result is that nonprofits are leaving billions (that's billions) of dollars on the table.

Despite Hillary Clinton's claim that 'words don't matter,' the authors make the case that part of the problem may lay in the term "volunteer" itself. The term implies "free" which connotes something that is not valuable (see quote below). You know who's already figured this out?

Coders.

What is the most efficient and value producing volunteer workforce in existence today? It's the open source movement. And being an "open source coder" is a synonym for "software development volunteer." So there's one condor-sized feather in the cap of the authors' hypothesis.

I've blogged about volunteer terminology before (http://blog.mobilevoter.org/2008/07/new-name-for-vo.html) - it's the reason that we changed the name of our endeavor from "Volunteer Now" to "The Extraordinaries." I'm convinced that volunteerism of the 2010s will look nothing like we've ever seen and that it will go by a different name. And you won't think of it as "donating your time." You'll think of it as something fun, social, and good for you. You may even think of it as entertainment for a cause.

This article calls for a more structured and dedicated approach to volunteer program management. The result of which will be taking some of that $36billion off the table and into the pockets of nonprofits. But can we do better? Can we envision that which does not go by the name "volunteerism." Because, frankly, even if nonprofits do a much better job at recruiting, retaining, and managing talent, there's still a lot of value left on the table. And its value that's not even being measured right now. We're looking at one specific table, but there's a whole range of Arizonian mesas in the distance.

To see them, we need only look to the example of the open source software movement. It shifted not only the terminology, but the business model. For one, it shows us that volunteerism doesn't necessarily have to be focused around the (nonprofit) corporation. Social good *and* economic value can be generated by loosely organized communities of individuals. For two, the product that results from this group may actually be of higher quality than that produced by any given corporation. And if you're wondering where that leaves nonprofits, well, they gain too because software is cheaper, better, and more widely available than ever before - and in our information economy, software is how nonprofits do business.

But software production is only one area of expertise. How do we apply this business-model-busting approach to the rest of that which should not be called "volunteerism?"

Pithy Quotes:
* "most nonprofits do not view their volunteers as strategic assets"

* "most nonprofits are losing staggering numbers of volunteers every year. Of the 61.2 million people who volunteered in 2006, 21.7 million—more than one-third—did not donate any time to a charitable cause the following year.3 Because these volunteers gave about 1.9 billion hours in 2006, and the value of their donated time was about $20 per hour4—that calculates to about $38 billion in lost volunteer time in one year."

* "A few nonprofits have grasped this concept [that volunteers can generate a tremendous amount of value] and are taking what we call a talent management approach—investing in the infrastructure to recruit, develop, place, recognize, and retain volunteer talent."

* "Five of the main reasons why more than 1 in 3 volunteers don't re-volunteer
1. Not Matching Volunteers’ Skills with Assignments. Volunteers with valuable and specialized skills are often dispatched to do manual labor rather than tasks that use their professional talents."

2. "Failing to Recognize Volunteers’ Contributions"

3. "Not Measuring the Value of Volunteers. "

4. "Failing to Train and Invest in Volunteers and Staff."

5. "Failing to Provide Strong Leadership."

* "Why isn’t volunteering more respected? Why aren’t more organizations investing in volunteering? One problem may lie with the term itself. The word “volunteer” doesn’t say anything about the nature of the service provided, except implying that it is free. It is often assumed that something free is not valuable. Maybe we should use different words—like fundraiser, project manager, or legal counsel—that describe the work performed and help erode outdated ideas about the value of the volunteer workforce."

* "If nonprofit leaders want highly skilled volunteers to come and stay, they need to expand their vision of volunteering by creating an experience that is meaningful for the volunteer, develops skills, demonstrates impact, and taps into volunteers’ abilities and interests."

* Their research showed that the primary difference between volunteers and non volunteers is the amount of TV watched! Back to quote: "People do not volunteer because nonprofits do not provide them with volunteer opportunities that interest them enough to pull them away from their television sets."

* need to rethink the role of volunteer and make it more hybrid with "worker"

CAPITALIZING ON VOLUNTEER TALENT

* Rethinking Work Roles.

* Assigning Appropriate Tasks.
"CNCS research found that volunteers who engage in less challenging activities tend to be less likely to continue volunteering the following year. Only 53 percent of volunteers who did “general labor” activities or supplied transportation continued volunteering the following year. By contrast, 74 percent of volunteers performing professional or management activities continued volunteering."

* "Creating Bonding Experiences. "

* "Supporting and Training Volunteers"

* "Using New Technology"

* "Developing Strategic Plans"

* "America’s young people are increasingly interested in making a difference. One recent study revealed that 68 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 26 prefer to work for a company that provides professional volunteer opportunities....The UCLA Higher Education Research Institute reported in 2005 a 25-year high in first-year students’ belief that it is “essential or important to help others.”

* "Nonprofits can also use religious organizations to expand their reach into the African-American, Hispanic, and Asian communities. Each group does more than one-third of all their volunteering with religious groups."

* A "surge in professional people interested in putting their skills to good use creates a tremendous opportunity for nonprofits."

CrossPosted at: www.theextraordinaries.org

Blog, Blog, Blog

Thanks to Elliot Harmon for the kind words about Jacob and my session at the Craigslist Bootcamp. That was a fun one. At one point, I went down on one knee a-la Phil Donahue (I was sans coffee that day). He reinforced a point of our presentation which is that blogging is the easiest, cheapest, most effective gateway to "Web 2.0." If you do nothing else, blog.

In fact, I just wrote up an email about "the value of blogging" apropos an email exchange that a friend and i had. Reposted here:

picture this: we just had an interchange about breast cancer, crowdsourcing, and volunteering. truth is, that i'll probably be too lazy to document it on my intranet. so the idea will remain in our heads and may or may not be remembered in time. the email will be lost. if i'm very good, i'll write it up on the intranet and will be able to bring back the idea when it's relevant.

enter blogging: instead of sending you an email, i do a post about this topic on my blog and ask you to read it and respond to it there. the post is indexed by technorati, google, and the rest. over time, my blog starts to hit high on the keywords 'crowdsourcing' 'mobile phone' and 'volunteering' - and whenever people do a search for combinations thereof, my blog comes up. so when conference organizers want to know who the experts are, they call me. when the media wants to write a story, they call me (this happens all the time with "SMS" and "youth vote" as a result of this mobilzing youth blog). when Obama's transition team is looking for innovative ways to engage the young citizenry, they call me (this is theoretical, of course). this one post, although not much in and of itself, adds fuel to the fire of my blog, organization, and career.

but that's only the ancillary benefit. the real benefit is that i've documented the topic in a way that is accessible to me and my organization in the future - i browse my relevant blog tags to see all of these ideas over time. and they are also accessible to the community of people interested in the topic - so we have other like-minded people blog about it and link to it, which again adds fuel to the fire - and it's all gravy. i(we) barely did anything to attract all that extra fuel. we just had a text based exchange that normally would have been lost to email.

every meaty thought-laden interchange that i have with someone (that isn't private) - every bit of research that i do  - every article that i discover ... is an opportunity to increase the success of my organization and blog.

Gavin Newsom's Epic State of San Francisco 7 Hour YouTube Video

In the video and photo sharing chapter of my book, I held up George Miller, congressperson from California, as the savviest user of the Web to connect with constituents. His office made a request for questions to the general public via various means and then answered those questions on YouTube - inviting further video/email/blog responses, to which he additionally answered. It was a great use of Web video to break out of the soundbyteization of the media and a way to speak directly to constituent questions.

Now Gavin Newsom has followed suit. But his speech takes 7 hours! As noted in the SFGate, Newsom's virtual speech draws mixed reviews. 7 hours!

Miller's approach was brilliant. Newsom's needs some refining. Now I fully agree that this is where we're going in "post broadcast politics" (as noted in previous posts). But just because the medium is ripe for direct speech, doesn't mean that you don't need editing! Mark Twain said something like "Apologies for the lengthy letter, I didn't have time to write a short one." So, the length is a problem.

But so is the use of supporting materials that you can barely read. The produciton values of Miller's video were crappy and, in the book, I commended him on this approach, because it felt more authentic (when compared with the current fare from Hillary that was professionally produced and seemed very far from the "conversation" that she was pitching it as). But here, the produciton values reduce our ability to understand the material. Now, you could keep the crappy production values and just offer supplementary downloads of the powerpoints. That would work around the problem. But in general, there's got to be a little more thought put into how to use YouTube as a communication tool. Just using it doesn't go far enough.