Direct Service Volunteering
National Days of service promote direct service volunteering. National Volunteer Week, Presidential awards, and local community service awards are designed to honor volunteers who have engaged in direct service to others. Service volunteers are given titles as “Everyday Heroes” and daily “Points of Light.”
The Independent Sector reported that 44% of the adult population in the United States was formally engaged in volunteering in 2000. The summary of their major findings outlines the important contribution of volunteers as well as the motivations that influence volunteering.
Volunteers are a vital and important part of the nonprofit sector, enhancing the delivery of services and increasing the reach and effectiveness of the organizations they serve. . . Volunteers are compassionate people. Not only do they feel compassion towards people in need, they believe they can take personal action to help improve the welfare of others. Volunteers give their time to all kinds of organizations, from arts and cultural organizations to those providing youth services, with some activities focused on helping individuals and some focused on improving the cultural, environmental, social and educational aspects of American society. (Independent Sector, 2001, p. 9-10)
The language associated with volunteer service reflects virtues as selflessness, altruism, service to others, compassion, purpose, and virtue, which perpetuates a collective vision of volunteers as warm, kind, compassionate people.
In a study of the activities of nonprofit organizations in 32 countries, sixty percent of the paid and volunteer workforce engaged in service functions, with education and social services the dominant service functions. Six percent of the nonprofit workforce was engaged in civic, advocacy or environmental activities. Seventy-nine percent of the paid employees and volunteers in the nonprofit sector (civil society workforce) in the United States engaged in service activities (Salamon, Sokolowski, List, 2003).
Advocacy Volunteers
While direct service volunteers provide valuable services to our communities, their efforts rarely deal with the ongoing nature of the issues being addressed through their direct service. Service volunteers make a difference, but they do not change the conditions that cause the problems. Social service organizations that have a one-dimensional view of volunteers as direct service providers may be limiting themselves to bandaging hurts that may never be cured.
Provision of tangible services is only one function of the civil society sector. Also important is the sector’s advocacy role, its role in identifying unaddressed problems and bringing them to public attention, in protecting basic human rights, and in giving voice to a wide assortment of social, political, environmental, ethnic, and community interests and concerns. The civil society sector is the natural home of social movements and functions as a critical social safety valve, permitting aggrieved groups to bring their concerns to broader public attention and to rally support to improve their circumstances. (Salamon, Sokolowski, List, 2003, p 20)
The language used to describe volunteers who chain themselves to trees in environmental protects, block ports to stop unsafe exportation of animals, write letters to protest the use of animals in medical testing, or take to the streets to protest the International Monetary Fund is far different from that used to describe the work – and motives – of direct service volunteers. Confrontational, aggressive, threatening, violent, crazy, fanatical, and zealots are terms frequently applied to volunteers who speak out as part of activist groups. There seems to be a disconnect between recognizing personal acts of compassion as valuable and meaningful and recognizing volunteer efforts to bring about social or structural change as valuable and meaningful. “Described as ‘evil scum’…. often groups are so informal they do not even have a name…. In some ways it’s volunteering in its purest form. People freely take on tasks simply because they need undertaking” (Restall, 2000/2001, p1). These are the “not-so-nice” volunteers that bring about social change (Cravens, 2005).
At the International Association for Volunteer Efforts World Conference, January 2001, Kumi Naidoo, President of Civicus: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, identified the need to bridge the gap between the world of volunteering and the world of social activism as a major challenge facing the global volunteering movement over the coming decades (Murphy, 2002).
The world of volunteering has been defined, I think by accident and not in a conscious way, as the folks who do good things, who provide direct services, who give up their time and so on, but do not really have a stake in the broader policy issues of our time. The world of social activism is seen as those people who are most concerned about the big questions of our time; they’re involved in various campaigns around the macro-policy issues. Of course many of the people that do social activism do it as volunteers, but more importantly, people who are doing work directly with communities have a right to have their voice heard on the broader macro-questions that our society faces. (Naidoo, 2001)
Bridging Service and Advocacy
The majority of service-focused nonprofits in the United States have not traditionally engaged advocacy volunteers. Yet changing patterns in volunteerism would indicate there might be good reasons for Non Profit Organizations (NPO) or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) to consider bridging direct service volunteerism and social activism. Changing demographics and changing expectations about volunteer work and volunteer impact indicate that contemporary volunteers are seeking challenging, results oriented work around issues they are personally passionate about.
The Boomers have always been viewed as social activists. Many came into volunteerism through the large social movements of the 60’s and 70’s. As Boomers come into retirement there is increasing evidence to indicate they are looking again at that social activism of their youth. (Merrill, 2005)
The new generation of young volunteers is well educated and globally aware of issues such as female circumcision and human trafficking. Nonprofits may currently be unprepared to offer satisfying and meaning work to this generation of volunteers.
Generation Y is donating more if its time to charitable causes than perhaps any generation in history. . . Young people are determined to make a difference; they accept a mission that is close to their heart and take action when they can get their arms around the whole project. (Trunk, 2005)
The traditional volunteer community has often failed to acknowledge and recognize the contributions of activist volunteers, standing by silently in political environments that highlight the work of service volunteers, while minimizing or even restricting the efforts of activist volunteers. The nonprofit community champions volunteer programs to address serious social problem through such organizations at the Points of Light Foundation and the Corporation for National Service, yet these organizations feature direct service approaches to community problems.
The United States and other countries are experiencing cutbacks in funding for social programs, with an increasing shift of responsibility for addressing social problems from government to the NPO/NGO community – organizations that engage volunteers. Volunteers could become power advocates for setting funding priorities that address critical community needs. Legislators traditionally respond more favorably to citizen constituents than to clients or staff of nonprofit organizations. The nonprofit community may be failing to capture the knowledge volunteers have gleaned from their direct interaction with clients, and use it to advance an advocacy agenda.
With this changing political climate and additional responsibility, NPOs and NGOs must evolve into organizations that are able to lobby for issues that need to stay on the political agenda and for resources to allow them to address such. For NPOs and NGOs to survive may mean their engaging in activities that lead the agenda, rather than just trying to fit in with the current political agenda. And volunteers can be excellent advocates in this regard. But for these volunteers to be effective advocates, they must be effectively supported. (Cravens, 2004)
Nonprofits often cite concerns about legal restriction on advocacy work as a reason for not venturing into the advocacy arena with volunteers. Yet the public libraries in Ohio, funded almost entirely through state income tax dollars, have a long tradition of training volunteers to serve as advocates and lobbyist for library funding in the biennial state budget. The Ohio Library Council Legislative Awareness Website (http://capwiz.com/olc/state/main/?state=OH) has an advocacy handbook, legislative directory and detailed instructions on how host legislators at a local library.
The US based Hands On Network (formerly CityCares), designed to engage working professionals by creating convenient, results oriented service projects, is an emerging model of a nonprofit bridging service with activism/advocacy. They provide educational forums, group discussions and round tables, as strategies for connecting issue education to action, and for creating networks and social alliances for change (Nunn, 2002). The success of their Citizen Academy (http://www.handsonnetwork.org/vca/citizen-academy/) has encouraged volunteer retention and a broader level of civic engagement, and in 2004 led to a new strategic direction that reinvents volunteerism by bridging direct service to long-term civic action.
NPOs and NGOs spend valuable resources recruiting, training and engaging volunteers. These organizational “insiders,” from board members to direct service volunteers are often highly skilled and very knowledgeable about problems of the client population. Few organizations devote resources to educate volunteers about the underlying causes and conditions and rarely do they offer volunteers the opportunity to move from social service functions to social advocacy roles. While it is true that not all volunteers want to be engaged in advocacy work, the overall nonprofit community may be missing a valuable opportunity to at least offer options for volunteers to be engaged in both service and advocacy work. Creating bridges between traditional service work and advocacy work may be a valuable strategy for engaging the new volunteers.
The Challenges
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the nonprofit community is the need to become comfortable with the “not so nice volunteers” who want to address macro policy issues. Training opportunities are needed to assist managers of volunteers as they design opportunities and systems for bridging service with advocacy. Conferences designed to promote best practices and management techniques can also highlight effective social activism programs. Language used to describe volunteers might change from “Volunteers are nice” to “Volunteers are powerful and potent.” The nonprofit sector can highlight the work of social activists in positive terms helping to bridge the chasm that currently exists between the warm and fuzzy feeling displayed towards service volunteers and the fearful, standoffish approach towards advocacy volunteers.
Considerations:
Is there an inherent fear of the “not so nice” volunteer and how their actions will be perceived by the public and associated with the organization?
Should managers of volunteers become more skilled in issue education and policy briefings with volunteers?
How can practitioners identify best practices that motivate, encourage and sustain broader levels of civic engagement?
References:
CityCares (2004). CityCares changes name to reflect new strategic direction. Downloaded October 25, 2004 from www.citycares.org.
Cravens, J. (2004). Learning from the not-so-nice volunteers. Downloaded December 2004 from http://www.merrillassociates.net/topic/2004/12/02/nice-and-not-so-nice-volunteers/
Independent Sector (2001). Giving and volunteering in the United States: executive summary. Washington DC: self.
Loeb, P. (1999). Soul of a citizen: Living with conviction in a cynical time. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Merrill, M. (2005). Generational differences in volunteering. Manuscript in preparation.
Murphy, S. (2002). The social impact of volunteers internationally. Journal of Volunteer Administration, 20:4, 5-15.
Naidoo, K. (2001). Active citizenship – a force for change. Volunteering Magazine. London: The National Centre for Volunteering. Downloaded January 2002 from http://www.volunteering.org.uk/print.php?id=574
Nunn, M. (2002). Volunteering as a tool for building social capital. Journal of Volunteer Administration, 20:4, 14-20.
Restall, M. (2001). Do it yourself. Volunteering Magazine. London: Volunteering England. Downloaded March 15, 2005 from http://www.volunteering.org.uk/print.php?id=574
Salamon, L. M., Sokolowski, S.W. & List, R. (2003). Global civil society: an overview. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies.
Trunk, P. (2005). Grassroots volunteering draws younger people. BostonWorks.com. [Downloaded 5/29/05 from: http://bostonworks.boston.com/]