MY THOUGHTS

Presenter:  Susan Ellis

What does service mean, what do the words mean?  National Service came from the Viet Nam era to identify other ways of the serving the Country than military service.  During the presentation will learn the different terms and how they relate to each other.

First thing to learn it that

Volunteer is a pay category not a function

In Volunteer management we must learn to live with ambiguity of what the terms being used may change in context with who and where we are, it is a sign of an advanced position or understanding of the different terms.  We need to be aware of what is out there for misconceptions and the other definitions words may have and how they are used.  It is up to the program to determine their definition of the words they use.

Where do Volunteers Work?

• Organization that are nonprofits including:  501(c)(3) and others, Non-incorporated associations (clubs, groups),
• For profit businesses (hospitals, corporations, Apple, IBM (called student interns) , SCORE
• Units of government (all levels) the more local you go, the more likely you are to have volunteers
• Men have always volunteered but have been called Coach, Trustee, associations,  (paid vs unpaid)
• Majority of federal government is prohibited from using volunteers as part of their labor agreement with the union.  CNCS may not have volunteers.

Discussed the typical timeline on volunteering

1. The lunatic fringe (people who see things before anyone else) moving well beyond the norms of the time.
2. Moving from be viewed as the lunatic fringe to being only provocative or controversial
3. Then the individuals realize “we are doing this as a job” – first hire to manage volunteers
4. Risk management, confidentiality, move the volunteer to “helper” role.
5. Become an Entrenched institutions – we need to bring in a volunteer program.

Categorize Elements of the volunteer world

• Formal affiliations:  agency related volunteer programs, boards of directors, trustees and advisory councils, corporate social responsibility and employee volunteer programs, pro bono public work/donated professional services, trade and professional associations (professional societies), labor unions, chambers of commerce,
• Community based: community service, auxiliaries, friends and alumni groups, all volunteer membership associations, civic engagement and civil society, social entrepreneurships, Service Learning, faith based service,national service and full time stipend service, alternative sentencing, mandated (but unpaid) service, self help groups
• Volunteering Infrastructure:  Volunteer Centers, state office, national resource, Professional association of volunteer, consultants, trainers, academics researchers

What’s in a name?

• Volunteer:  From who’s perspective.  Someone who provides the service your organization needs and is not on your organization’s payroll.
• Voluntary:
• Volunteerism:  Harriet Nailor – distinguish between volunteers and a voluntary sector
• Voluntarism: Refers to things to things that happen in the country voluntarily – the third sector (gov, corporate)

Unpaid staff, intern (in training), board member, trustee, auxilian/friend, active citizen, member, good Samaritan, time donor, community resource, civic engagement, community service. 

Social Change:  activism (volunteers help out – activist gets thing done), community involvement, historical movements, neighborhood action, mutual aid, community organizing

Anyone who volunteers is making a political statement by supporting their cause.  Different streams of volunteering include:

• Students:  service learning, experiential learning, community service, internships (different definitions), curriculum based in the schools, extra curricular activities, graduation requirements for volunteering (mandated action without pay)
• Business world/the professions:  corporate social responsibility, engagement in the community, pro bono publico work, donated professional service, in-kind services, work-release time (Paid time-off)
• Justice Field:  court ordered community service, alternative sentencing, restorative justice (community service – punishment and volunteering equal the same)  in lieue of fine or jail, in addition to time served, in addition to probation or parole. 
• Faith Communities: Lay ministry, social concerns, tzedakah, mitsvot, Zakat (Sadqa), charity
• Mutuality:  self-help, client participant, stakeholder, neighborliness, civic duty, belong, taking part
• Newly – coined terms:  civic engagement, civil society, social entrepreneurship, the commons, community assets, citizen service (doing favours)
• Other programs:  National service (stipends), welfare-to-work options, service dollar/time banking, voluntroursim

The negatives that some think of or hear when volunteer is used: slave, relative, sucker

Commonalities

• Choice – voluntary-ness
• No monetary profit/gain
• Oriented to community betterment or advocacy for causes.  The common-good
• Need clarity as to what needs to be done and how to do it, unless structures or defines what needs to be done.
• Volunteers are not “free”.
• Vocabulary, status, resources available , for their efforts, for each participant,
• degrees of autonomy
• degree of accountability and to home

This was a very good training, Susan Ellis did an excellent job of presenting the information.  I wish that I had this information last year when I started, it would have cleared up some of the initial confusions that I had and the session put into context and clarified a lot of the terms I had been hearing, but was unsure of how they were being used in the volunteer field.

This work by Harold L. Shaw, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.