I lived in FL for 18 years. Thanks, but I only return to visit my inlaws.
Looking back in my email, it’s been over 3 weeks since my first attempt to volunteer to help out a community theater group. I got an email acknowledging my query, then nothing. You’d think someone would reply with “Our next production will be in <month> and the first meeting of the crew will be <date>” Nope.
Maybe it’s me…
I think another factor in this might be population size/density. I’ve usually worked in large metro areas, where these fees were more common. In smaller communities, it’s less likely.
Like usedtobe’s post, think about things that have a small entrance fee. Orgs don’t usually charge it to make money - offset costs, maybe, but it’s a barrier to participation, for whatever reason. In our society (generalize as you see fit), people don’t tend to place much intrinsic value on things they get for free. If you ever arranged a free event, e.g., a movie screening, a resource fair, you’ll know you get a certain percentage of people sign up, and then don’t show, for whatever reasons. By charging them a bit of $, they’ve suddenly got skin in the game, and are more likely to actually attend.
Same principle.
I’ve found that when an organization solicits volunteers, in most cases the phone is never answered, and if it is, calls are not returned nor are e-mails responded to, assuming they don’t bounce on you. :smack:
And people wonder why it’s so hard to get volunteers - people who want to donate their TIME.
Many professional programs in allied health want to see patient contact hours (anywhere from 500-2000 minimum) as part of the application. Often students have to volunteer to accumulate those hours.
My wife is a docent at the local art museum. She pays $50 a year, plus museum membership of $40. She gets a lot of art training for that money, plus a 20% discount at the museum gift shop, and free entry to events held there.
On reflection, I find it hard to disagree with non-profit organizations asking for dues or a membership from their volunteers, and I expect people who feel strongly enough to volunteer in a museum or gallery are probably members already. I can see schools having you pay for your own fingerprints - goodness knows, education budgets seem to be among the first to be slashed.
However, for-profit places, like our local hospital, seem to be another story to my mind. The idea that I should have to pay, then my donated time enhances their bottom line?? I don’t think so.
As for people who volunteer only to get the bennies, like free admission or discounts, or whatever, it seems to me you weed them out by requiring a certain number of hours of work before the bennies kick in. And you give first choice of plum assignments to your best volunteers.
But what do I know - I’ve never volunteered before, beyond at my daughter’s schools when she was a kid. And if I don’t hear back from the organizations I’ve contacted, I may not be volunteering after all.
Many hospitals are nonprofit or not-for-profit and may have a greater burden in vetting, training and overseeing volunteers than other types of organizations. For example, at a local hospital I used to be a board member of, the greeters at the hospital were also passively screening people for flu symptoms and directing anyone they suspected was sick to someone who took their temp etc (this was during the most recent H1N1 outbreak). They also have to be familiar with aspects of patient privacy rules and other important regulations. All of that requires training and supervision. The hospital also has to verify the volunteers own health records- up to date on vaccines, TB test etc. It requires a lot of oversight which is costly.
Yes, yes it does. But once done, you get their labor for free. If the job is necessary and not just make-work, the alternative would be hiring actual staff where, in addition to training expenses, you would also be paying an ongoing salary.
YMMV and we can certainly agree to disagree on this subject. But to me, a volunteer’s time is their commitment. Time is valuable, to me, to you, and presumably to other people. So when one of them choses to donate some of their time to my organization, I treat it the same as a monetary donation. Because it is – money can be converted to labor, and labor converted to money, as our economy demonstrates every day. Why should I require volunteers to give both kinds of support?
I provide volunteer services for certain organizations myself. I believe that my time and my skills are an asset to those organizations. Frankly I’d be insulted, possibly even denigrated, if my services weren’t deemed valuable enough on their own but had to be supplemented by cash. That may be just me, but there we go.
Time is valuable, but volunteer time has some important limitations. It’s not exactly like a free staff member.
Volunteers do not usually offer much flexibility for scheduling. Unlike paid staff, they are unlikely to accept difficult shifts or unglamorous duties. Volunteers have a much higher degree of absenteeism, often without notice. They often come in with training needs, and yet offer no guarantee of a long-term return on that training. Now and then you get an amazing volunteer who brings in far more than you could ever pay for. But just as often you get someone who takes more resources than they can contribute.
So while volunteer is certainly valuable, and many wonderful organizations rely on them, it’s rarely a free lunch for the hosting organization. For organizations that already have ample resources, or for organizations that are stretched to the limits already, the math math may not work out.
I volunteer for a non-profit organization and have done so for 10 years. I have never been asked to donate but I could. However, I consider that the time I spend there as a volunteer is a significant contribution to the organization.
Bob
Hey, Bob! Are you one of “my” Bobs? Whether you are or not, thanks!
The simple reason is that there are, for most organisations, more potential people who want to volunteer than people who can volunteer, turn up on time and on schedule, and do something genuinely useful. If you ask them to pay a nominal some then the time-wasters are less likely to continue with their application.
It still is a bit shit to be asked to pay to give your time for free but the bonus is that, if you do so, there will be fewer times when someone doesn’t turn up, turns up but is awful, etc. $15 isn’t actually that bad, really. You do need someone in a paid job to vet the applicants (because it would be pretty shit if you had a volunteer vetting all the volunteers, and no way to penalise that vetter for not turning up, etc), so hiring volunteers is not actually totally free.
In addition, funding orgs tend to assume that you can get volunteers for non-key roles so your funding is partly based on providing functions that can only go on with volunteers. IOW, the museum or whatever doesn’t gain workers when they hire volunteers, they simply fill places that their funders already assumed existed.
Depends on your field of work. The OP and couple of other posts mentioned museums and zoos; there, having volunteer experience would be excellent to add to your exemplary grades that everyone applying for your courses already has.
It’s just different these days to what it was like even twenty years ago. Then I volunteered on a ton of projects, even as a teenager with no qualifications. I benefited greatly from them all and I know I helped. Now my daughter can’t volunteer on anything till she’s 18 and then there are waiting lists. An aunt of mine was on the waiting list as a member of a zoo for nineteen years before she was accepted as a volunteer. They just had so many people applying.
I’m sure most volunteering organizations carefully consider how to deploy their volunteers. Some places I’ve worked have specifically considered volunteer services as “value-adding” and not core business - that is, the facility ought to be able to function even if all the volunteers suddenly simultaneously flaked out. If the role is so mission-critical that the absence of the person would be detrimental (to a predetermined level) then that person should be a paid staff member.
Other orgs don’t have this luxury. I’m currently (but not for much longer) working for an entirely volunteer-run informal education program, which locally has 800 kids, 300 vols, and 2.5 staff members. One of the reasons I’m leaving the job is that I’m uncomfortable with the high expectations placed on the participating volunteers, and the lack of professional development and support that can be provided in such a bottom-heavy structure.
I don’t understand this at all. These people are not job applicants looking for a salary. They are volunteering their time. They owe no duty to the organization; simply offering to help out of the goodness of their heart. Why should I have to pay for the privilege of working without pay?
If my neighbor sees that I have been working 70 hour weeks and offers to cut my grass so that I can go out to dinner one evening, should I ask for $5 just to make sure that he isn’t just yanking my chain and going to do a half-assed job?
If you have so many volunteers that you don’t really need my help, then fine, I’ll go back home and watch the History Channel. But pay you to work for you? Hell no.
There is no “have to.” You don’t have to volunteer, and they don’t have to accept your volunteering on terms they don’t like. Again, they aren’t unwrapping a sweater you’ve knitted them for Christmas. They don’t have to pretend they’ve always wanted what you’ve proposed doing for them. Just as you owe them nothing, they owe you nothing.
If it works for you, yes. If not, no. And if for whatever reason that makes sense to you, you choose to ask for $5 and they choose not to cut your grass, shrug, that’s just the way it is. You don’t get to be mad because you chose to reject their offer, and they don’t get to be mad because volunteering isn’t supposed to be about their feelings.
Umm, good? Everyone is walking away with what they’ve chosen and there’s no cause for either side to be anything other than content.
My place could always use more volunteers. Removing – err, ahh – animal excrement from cage walls and floors (most creatures simply drop their crap, but hawks, eagles and the like squirt it, often a couple of meters), scrubbing perches and water bowls, raking mulch outdoors in the heat and bugs isn’t some people’s idea of a glorious volunteer experience. All along I thought that we should be giving them whatever small rewards we can. But I guess I’ve learned from this thread that the better way to attract volunteers is to make them pay us! Come Monday I’m gonna solve all of our volunteer shortfall problems. I’m gonna run an ad “Volunteers wanted! Dirty, nasty work! And as a bonus, you get to pay us XX dollars!” How much should we charge? Do we get more and better volunteers the higher we price it? Need answer fast.
As to the supposed problem of volunteers “freeloading” off benefits provided by their organization, a simple solution would be to grant/phase-in benefits according to length of association and milestones achieved.
I think it’s pretty clear no one is saying organizations must charge or suffer dire consequences or not be able to attract qualified candidates. People are simply trying to explain the benefits of charging for those organizations that choose to do so.
Indeed, and I intend my sarcasm to be humorous rather than malicious. I can accept the fact that some find charging vols to be workable, even beneficial. But I really, truly cannot wrap my brain around the psychology of it. It still seems counter productive to me. Obviously, others’ M does V. 
If your organisation were the kind that gets me applications for volunteers than it could possibly accept, you’d probably have a different POV.