"Most people in companies are "operational thinkers." Sometimes they just need a little help in strategic thinking. Having a futurist is like getting an insurance policy against being blindsided by something in the future." Steve Millett, business futurist, Battelle, Columbus Ohio based research and development institute.
"You can't predict with certainly what will happen but you get some sort of idea by looking at the trends already in play." Dan Johnson, World Futurist Society.
Contemporary trends in volunteerism give us interesting insights into changes that are occurring and suggest potential strategies for making volunteer organizations more efficient and competitive.
Volunteer Burnout
The Independent Sector reported the highest ever recorded level of participation in volunteering in the 1998 Survey of Giving and Volunteering in the United State. 56% of the adult population over 18 reported volunteering a total of 19.9 billion hours. However, a comparison of the Survey results over an 11year period shows that while the total number of adults volunteering increased, the average number of hours per week decreased, as did the total number of hours given to volunteering.
Deducting the number of hours reported for informal volunteering, there is a slight decrease in the total number of hours devoted to formal volunteering.
Independent Sector, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998:
| Year | Percentage of adults volunteering | Total number of volunteers | Average weekly hours per volunteer | Total annual hours volunteered | Total annual hours of formal volunteering |
| 1989 | 54% | 98.4 million | 4.0 | 20.5 billion | 15.7 billion |
| 1991 | 51% | 94.2 million | 4.2 | 20.5 billion | 15.2 billion |
| 1993 | 48% | 89.0 million | 4.2 | 19.5 billion | 15.0 billion |
| 1995 | 49% | 93.0 million | 4.2 | 20.3 billion | 15.7 billion |
| 1998 | 56% | 109.4 million | 3.5 | 19.9 billion | 15.5 billion |
The 1998 Survey reported that 41.9% of respondents indicated they had volunteered sporadically and considered it a one-time activity. Thirty-nine percent (39%) volunteered at a regularly scheduled time, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. 9% indicated they only volunteer at a specific time of years, such as during a religious holiday.
The Independent Sector changed their survey criteria in 1999, so it is impossible to make a comparison with the more recent studies. They do continue to reveal fewer people engaged in volunteerism. Most recent survey was done by U.S. Department of Labor in 2002. 26% of adults over 16 (59 million people) reported volunteering between September 2001 and September 2002. They volunteered an average of 52 hours per year or 1 hour per week. This survey tends to show an even more dramatic decrease in both numbers of people volunteering and hours volunteered.
These figures seem to support an increasing trend by volunteers to engage in episodic volunteer opportunities (short term or one-time activities) rather than commit to ongoing or long term volunteer assignments, and suggests growing concern about volunteer burnout as organizations are stretched to do more with fewer volunteers.
Episodic volunteering was first identified over 10 years ago by Nancy Macduff in an article titled, "Episodic Volunteers: Reality for the Future." Adults increasingly report they are "too busy" or "unable to make long term commitments" as reasons for not volunteering.
A variety of studies in the past five years have identified work and family pressures as the main reasons for taking people away from volunteer work. The growth of workplace volunteering and family volunteering has been in response to these concerns, creating opportunities for people to combine work and family time with volunteer work. The Netherlands Organization on Volunteering identified time as on the 10 top worldwide trends at the 2001 World Volunteerism Conference: "Time becomes more fluid: clear separations between time to work, time to care, free time and volunteer time disappears."
The Human Touch
Volunteers seek volunteer experiences based on human focused motivations and are drawn to high touch, one-to-one activities. The primary reason given by volunteers for volunteering in the Independent Sector surveys is "I feel compassion towards people in need." An Ohio Urban Volunteerism Study reported that 74% of volunteers had worked directly with others. The 1997 Canadian National Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participation found that 75% of Canadian volunteers are interested in helping people directly.
Work and career requirements that separate families geographically and technologically driven workplaces that isolate employees lead to an increased attraction to volunteer activities that foster direct interaction.
Volunteers are seeking meaning, value and enrichment through direct service volunteer work. Once again The Netherlands Organization on Volunteering tracked a similar trend, saying: "There is a need for reciprocity and collective experiences." Volunteer organizations that do not offer direct volunteer-client opportunities must work harder to connect volunteers to the overall mission of the organization, highlighting the contribution of volunteers to the improvement of the human condition.
Professionalization of the Volunteer Corps
Early retirement incentives and an increased emphasis on workplace volunteering suggest an increasingly professional pool of volunteers. The Independent Sector reports that US college graduates are 60% more likely to volunteer. High-level mangers that have experienced buy-outs and early retirements, workplace changes that promote teamwork and participative decision-making, and increased life expectancy are fostering a professionalization of the volunteer corps. Volunteers view themselves as consumers of volunteer opportunities. Because they are better educated and more experienced, volunteers have higher expectations of how they will be treated and are drawn to organizations that offer good-quality, meaningful volunteer opportunities that have a measurable impact.
This new professionalism in the volunteer corps is creating an increased demand for professionalism in volunteer programs. The Netherlands Organization on Volunteering identified a similar trend, saying: "High quality demands from governments, volunteer and customers lead to a growing professionalism."
New Forms of Volunteerism
Various government-initiated program in the past decade have provided financial stipends and other material incentives to encourage volunteer service. In 1960 Congress created the Peace Corps and VISTA as international and national service programs with minimal financial stipends. Today there are a wide range of government-initiated programs, such as AmeriCorps, Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), Senior Companions and Foster Grandparents, designed to promote and expand service beyond traditional volunteer programs.
For many years courts have used mandated community service activities as alternative sentencing programs. Correctional institutions encourage and promote volunteer service among inmates. Educational institutions are engaging service learning as a teaching technique to connect theory with practical application through community based volunteer service for students.
Emphasis on a global society has opened new avenues for international volunteering that are attracting a growing corps of retired individuals who are not satisfied with "routine" volunteer work. The democratization of the former eastern block is attracting volunteer consultants from the non-profit arena to assist developing non-governmental organizations (NGO's). The Netherlands Organization on Volunteering sees a challenge in this trend: "Globalization leads also to localization: to keep people involved volunteer work must be transformed into close-to-home pieces and bits."
Volunteers of all ages are creating new models of volunteering/service that reverse the trend toward short-term volunteering, requiring significant time commitments (30 hours per week) from volunteers. A major characteristic of these evolving volunteer-driven programs is that the volunteers are actively involved in the design and implementation of the work and find significant satisfaction in the opportunity to fully utilize their skills and talents.
Diversity
Changing urban centers, migration patterns, and an aging population creating to new consumers of services and volunteer programs will be challenged to expand volunteer roles to new groups and new generations. Highly effective volunteer programs recognize the value of involving people from all sections of the community, including those the organization seeks to serve.
The Independent Sector has long reported that the most effective form of volunteer recruitment is personal invitation. The danger in this approach is that by relying on current volunteers to recruit new volunteers there is a considerable tendency to perpetuate existing volunteer demographics as volunteers invite new volunteers similar to themselves. Organizations must develop differentiated marketing strategies that target efforts to produce greater diversity and reflect a broader cross-section of society.
Technology
Technology offers opportunities to revolutionize volunteer work. Knowledge is becoming available anytime, anywhere. A search of the Internet leads to the National Aging Information Center and it's extensive listing of resources on Volunteers and Older Adults. Resources on mentoring are plentiful on the Internet. The United Nations International Year of Volunteers website features the faces and stories of volunteers around the world. Technology offers the unique opportunity to share information and form horizontal connections between volunteer managers around the world, bringing a global perspective to local volunteer work (http://www.cybervpm.com/, http://www.avaintl.org/, http://www.iave.org/).
Research shared at the Independent Sector's Spring Research Forum, The Impact of Information Technology on Civil Society, suggests that though the non-profit sector has current technology, it is often slow or reluctant to use it. There are frequently statements about the impersonal nature of technology and the fear of losing the human touch.
Marine Corps units, high school students, international organizations and special interest groups are harnessing the Internet to promote and organize volunteer activities. The Sword and Staff web site, started by fans of Xena: Warrior Princess, is a "catalyst for volunteer groups from around the world to work on projects concerned with bettering the life of people in their own communities." The Artemis web site serves the San Francisco Bay Area lesbian community by organizing and promoting community service projects ranging from environmental restoration to helping the homeless.
The SETI@home Project, headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley, has signed up more than 250,000 home computers to an innovative screen saver program that ~Sharnesses spare computing power to crunch data from a radioastronomy search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Technology offers exciting options for maximizing volunteer resources, considering limited time is the biggest barrier to volunteering. Internet access to volunteering, and virtual volunteering options are among the fastest growing volunteer trends. Distance is no longer a factor when people choose an organization as a site for their volunteering. The times for volunteering are changing as people work in one time zone but serve customers (clients) in a different time zone.
Organizations are challenged to create opportunities for new techno-volunteers that include online volunteer activities where volunteer tasks are completed online from home or work. Age restrictions for volunteer work will shift as young techno-teens seek opportunities to fulfill service requirements and build online experience. The new generation of volunteers will not view technology as impersonal and organizations (current employees and volunteers) will be challenged to offer opportunities that promote "human touch" in new ways across the generational spectrum.
Distance learning is revolutionizing volunteer training by offering content-for-one materials for specialized orientation and training when and where it is needed. Listserves and chat rooms encourage volunteer management professionals and volunteers to share innovative programs and cutting edge approaches to societal problems. The Columbus Chapter of the American Red Cross now offers their orientation manual in CD format, with automatic links to the national site and supporting information.
Technology offers great potential to address the number one barrier to volunteering - time pressures. Online applications, Internet based orientation, CD training modules and email can help to minimize meeting and time requirement and free up time so volunteers can do what they really want to do - make a difference in a life and in the world.