Who doesn’t care about volunteering?

 

I’ve been passionate about volunteering for a long time now. I care about volunteering. I believe volunteering changes lives. It changed mine. I have loads of examples of how volunteering has changed and indeed saved lives.

If you are a leader of volunteers, then I assume you care about volunteering. I don’t care what title your organisation has bestowed on you for the job that you so. I only assume because I would not dare even guess your motivation behind why you do what you so.

The public care about volunteering. They do it in their millions across the globe. They do it in their communities every day. They might not even call themselves volunteers and in many cultures, there is not a name for volunteering.

Some in the corporate world may care about volunteering. Many Corporates give their staff an extra annual leave day to volunteer at their charity of choice.

I assume that some organisations that utilise volunteers care about volunteering. I assume. Some.

Does Government care about volunteering? Do individual politicians care about volunteering?

Does someone care about something more if there is a fear that if not cared for then that something might be lost?

Do people believe that volunteering will never be lost? That volunteers will always just “show up”

I believe that there is no threat to informal volunteering. There is no threat to people helping others. There are still many people in the world who will help where they can.

I do think there is a threat to formal volunteering. That is the traditional mode of volunteering where people sign up with an organisation to volunteer in a certain role. It can be episodic, virtual, event or longer term volunteering.

Numbers of formal volunteering are on the decline in many countries. Some people say this has got to do with the pandemic and reasons associated with that.

But what if volunteers are beginning to think that their organisations don’t really care about them? What if there are organisations that

·         Put volunteers on the bottom rung of their organisational structure or doesn’t have them in the structure at all?

·         Have poorly paid volunteer leaders compared to other leaders in the organisation.

·         Put very little financial resources into volunteering.

·         Have volunteers coordinated by a clearly stressed-out staff member who had just been given the extra responsibility of “Looking after volunteers”.

·         Offer .5FTE roles as volunteer leader even though it’s clear that it should be a full time role.

·         Don’t consider their volunteer leaders as Subject Matter Experts on volunteering and treat them accordingly.

·         Have volunteer leaders who report directly to another manager be it the Marketing, Admin or Kitchen Manager!

·         Have no place at the Senior Leadership table for their volunteer leader.

·         Don’t even care who they hire as volunteer leader as long as they seem “nice” people who will “look after” the “nice” volunteers.

·         Have no volunteering strategy

·         See volunteers as just “nice to have”

Volunteers are not stupid. They can see organisations with poorly run programs, disorganisation of volunteering, lack of planning, stressed out volunteer leaders or volunteer leaders without the SME and experience in leading people. Add to that the lack of recognition and having no idea what positive impact their volunteering is having on the organisation.

Formal volunteering, to succeed, needs resourcing. The part of the volunteering ecosystem that has formal volunteering needs infrastructure to support it.

For formal volunteering to survive in any country it must have advocates who are passionate about volunteering and people who advocate for:

·         Government to support, really support the volunteering ecosystem. And that is not just about throwing a few million here and there now and then.

·         Corporates to be advocates and supporters financially to organisations who take the role of volunteer leadership and their volunteers seriously. Money talks and if you are in the corporate world you know that.

·         Organisations to understand that if they really care about volunteering then they hire SMEs to their volunteer leadership roles or invest in their leaders to take part in training, workshops and conferences that can bring them to that level,

·         Organisations that place volunteer leaders at all leadership tables. Now think about what I have just said. And ask yourself “Who does care about volunteering?” Do you?