Except that some potentially valuable volunteers have more time than money. You could accept their time, or you could lose out.
That’s why you need somebody overseeing volunteers, who can direct the different sorts to the areas where their approaches are most helpful–and who is also empowered to get rid of any who prove useless, or worse.
But effectively-used volunteers are already more than offsetting such costs. That’s the whole point, right?
Asking for “dues” from volunteers sounds like a money-raising tactic, or a not-so-subtle way of discouraging volunteers by organizations that don’t really need them.
If volunteers are valuable, you’d think their time and commitment would be welcomed without slapping them with a fee to participate.
I volunteered (briefly) at our local arboretum. No mention was made of my needing to pay to finance a “background check” (does this person have an unnatural attraction to plants?) or pay for the slapdash “supervisory” function of the person in charge.
Again, I think how volunteers are treated is a good indication of how badly they’re needed.
You’d also have to pay for any landing fees and other such expenses according to a friend of mine who used to volunteer for medical flights although most airports will, apparently, waive them if they know you’re carrying organs or transporting people for medical needs.
In part, that’s because FAA regs prohibit private pilots from receiving compensation for their flying (you are allowed to split costs between everyone on the plane, but a donated liver doesn’t count for that purpose). The result is that, no matter how good the cause, it costs bunches to volunteer your flying skills for anything.
True. However, there are some weird, rich assholes out there.
The other BS: you’ll wind up with parents excluded from volunteering to supervise their kids - you know, the kids they raise, live with, and provide for - on a school trip because they passed a bad check 15 years earlier when they were a stupid 18 year old. Yes, certainly, exclude rapists, murderers, and the like but have a sense of proportion, people.
I’m going to approach this a different way.
When places offer benefits to people who volunteer, they run into “Volunteers” who are in it for the benefits, but who are ‘too busy’ and have constant ‘scheduling conflicts’ with the times they’re asked to help. Doesn’t help the organization much when you have 50 “volunteers” who are sucking up resources and 30 of them haven’t done any actual volunteer work because it somehow just doesn’t work out for them, or they do 2 hours and go home because they’re tired or some bullshit.
Charging a nominal fee changes that slightly for most people. They’re not going to pay that and then weasel out of any time commitments.
$15 is a cheap volunteering fee. Try to volunteer for something like Search and Rescue and see how far $15 gets you. Lots of mandatory trainings and many with fees. Weekend tracker training with large fees, all the equipment you need to purchase for your 24 and 72 hour packs. All the fuel you burn up getting to these remote trainings (we did get reimbursed a bit for an actual call). All the potlucks and picnics you have to take food to…oh wait. 
I volunteer with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the Veterans Crisis Line (shameless plug in sig). My local organization also handles local and regional lines for vets, people in crisis, and people needing assistance with substance abuse and addiction.
I didn’t have to pay a dime, and the organization paid for 56 hours of classroom training, including a 2-day formal training in the ASIST suicide intervention model. In exchange they ask–they can’t demand, but they ask very firmly–that volunteers give 200 hours of their time on the phones over the course of a year.
In our (admittedly very different) case, we still have trouble filling shifts and getting people to fulfill their commitments. Asking us to spend our own money on much of anything would not do a damn thing besides reduce the pool of volunteers. It’s hard fucking work, even only four hours a week, and we need everyone we can get.
I sometimes foster dogs for a rescue, but I was looking into fostering for a breed specific rescue, and found one in my city. Then I got to the foster application on their website which required a $25 fee just to apply. Looking after a dog is a big commitment - I like doing it, but I also know that when I get someone else to look after my dogs, it costs me $25 per dog per day, so I know what I’m doing for a rescue has real value, especially if I have a dog for months before the right home is found. Lots of other rescues looking for foster homes, I don’t need to pay to be one.
I get the principle, I suppose…but a one-time $25 fee, when you’ll be dropping $25 a day for each dog? I’m not seeing the financial burden there.
It is? Not in my experience.
In the department where i was a grad student (top-tier private university), and in the department where i am currently a faculty member (middle-tier public university), the most important criteria for grad school admission are your professors’ (academic) letters of recommendation, your writing sample, your undergraduate GPA, and your GRE score.
Evidence of volunteer work would probably count in your favor a bit, in terms of your life experience and maturity, and it certainly would not be held against you, but in my field (history) it’s your potential as a scholar that will determine whether you get into grad school.
Howdy, neighbor! I know which Marine Museum you are talking about in this post, and I think that there is one small tidbit about that museum which you have forgotten. Here in Southern Maryland, that museum also serves as the largest concert venue available. In recent years we have had Journey, Brett Michaels, Heart, and Styx perform at that venue. You were just looking for a free ticket into the concerts, weren’t you? :dubious:
I guess I didn’t explain my outrage well enough, lol.
If I have to board my personal dogs at a kennel, it’s $25 a day, but that’s not what it costs me to keep a dog in my home, though I figure that’s what my efforts for the rescue are worth, in an abstract sense, if they had to pay to board the dog that they foster with me. Fostering for the rescue I’m currently with costs me nothing out of pocket as they supply all the food, equipment and vet care, I just need to take good care of the dog. A commitment, but not a financial one.
Paying, just for the privilege of applying (no guarantee that they will find me suitable) to foster for the rescue with the fee, when other rescues are crying out for foster homes and don’t charge, just seems well, outrageous.
I would think that if one was interested in volunteering for an organization that one would be committed to its ideals and its success and so would want to donate to it or become a member to help support it. I can’t imagine an organization I would like to volunteer for but wouldn’t want to donate $15 to.
Thailand: thought police on deck, all other police caught nappin’. Chart sasna mahakasat!
That’s how I feel about where I volunteer. They don’t charge any fees if you want to help and donate your time, but I definitely don’t mind throwing some extra cash their way because I already believe in what they’re doing. And I totally think even the little things count towards a common goal.
No, I wanted to play with the otters! 
We’ve been members of that museum in the past, when we kept our boat in Solomons and I’ve thought of joining several times since then, just to have some place to go on occasion. It just rubbed me the wrong way to think they weren’t interested in my help unless I was one of them. I may get a membership anyway - I really like that place, and with school getting back in session, it should be less crowded.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting to hear back from the Vets home. They have my application, so we’ll see if they want my help.
When I “volunteered” to be the Girl Scout Cookie Mom, I had to pay for an adult membership.
When I volunteered to coach my kids’ volleyball team, I had to pay for a background search and fingerprinting.
I volunteered as a math tutor and the school district paid for my fingerprinting. It was done digitally and kind of neat to watch.
Math for the win, I guess.
Different for professional degrees, I believe. Business, law, and (I think to some extent) medicine will look for practical and/or life experiences gained through volunteer work.
Apparently this is common practice in many places. Frankly, I don’t like it. And, since I get to make such policy decisions at the place I work, it is our policy that volunteers provide their services and we say “Thank you”. We even provide some small benefits to them, like a logo T-shirt after their 5th volunteer day. Or discount tickets to events, and such.
Surely training and supervising volunteers requires an expenditure of resources, same as for paid staff. But the difference is that additional expenses are zero, since volunteers get no salary. I know that sounds trite and self evident, but I state it simply as a contrast to those who seemingly are saying that, yes, volunteers give us free labor, so we ought to make them pay cash money too. That just doesn’t make sense.
We do have to weed out those who are not committed enough to be reliable, those who just want to come and pet the animals, those who will not take instruction, and other issues. But I cannot see how having charged them a fee would prevent those problems. In fact, it might make it more difficult for us to “un-invite” them from volunteering, when that is deemed necessary. “Hey, I paid you good money to let me volunteer, so no fair kicking me out!” Even though my actions endanger myself, other volunteers and staff, and/or the animals under care, they don’t say.
A couple of local non-profits do charge volunteers a “registration fee” or an “administrative fee” or the like. Speaking to their executive staff off the record and as equals reveals that these are actually imposed almost entirely for incremental income. I’ve never heard any of them rationalize it by claiming it makes a better volunteer or attracts a better class of volunteers. At least, not after a couple of drinks. 
So, OP, if you want to move to Florida, you can volunteer here for free.