November 13, 2008
Are Volunteers Useless?
How much of an impact do volunteers have on charities’ programs? Not much, writes Holden Karnofsky, on the GiveWell blog.
In fact, Mr. Karnofsky says that volunteers generally cost a charity more time to manage than the value they add to an organization.
“I’ve generally found that adding a new person into a work process nearly always costs a lot of time, especially up front, for training and managing,” he says.
He says that training volunteers can be worthwhile, however, if the volunteers put in enough time to eventually overcome the cost of their training, or if their projects are very well-defined.
The real value of volunteerism for most charities, says Mr. Karnofsky, is that it provides a way to get potential donors more engaged with the organization.
What do you think? Click on the comments link below to share your thoughts.
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Rubbish! When your volunteer participation goes up, donations go up. From Shar McBee, author of “To Lead is to Serve.”
— Shar McBee Nov 16, 06:23 PM #
Having a hard time swallowing this on the face and then I clicked thru and read the original and can see to a point where Holden is coming from. He makes two points worth mulling over. (1) best effective use occurs when the task is extremely well-defined – very true and it reduces costs and streamlines training. (2) the more systematic about processes allows you to use volunteers more effectively. What we know in the ASAE Study on Decision to Volunteer http://tinyurl.com/4ybrpd is the unique roles of volunteers are in content development and the passion they bring to a “problem” or “challenge”. So it’s not the volunteers are useless but that our volunteer systems may well be “useless” and need work.
— Peggy Hoffman Nov 17, 09:23 AM #
I’ve was a volunteer leader from 1975 to 1990 and depended on the volunteer contributions of dozens of other people to operate a tutor/mentor program reaching 300 inner city kids in Chicago. In 1990 we converted that to a non profit and I’ve continue to integrate volunteers into key work of the organization. Why? It’s the only way to expand the talent and manpower needed to achieve our mission. There are not nearly enough dollars to fund every part of the work we’re trying to do. We started with volunteers, and we’ve only stayed in business for 15 years because of them.
That said, I agree that without effective leadership and creative thinking, it’s difficult to maximize the potential that volunteers offer. This is an acquired talent, and you get better the longer you do it. I feel a weakness in non profits who rely on volunteers is the lack of enough effective leaders who stay in volunteer-management positions long enough to build effective skills in this work.
— Dan Bassill Nov 18, 06:51 PM #