My fiancee and I had a really tough time deciding on how/where we wanted to devote some volunteer hours. The problems I encountered were as follows:
unreasonable time committement - I simply don’t have the amount of time they were asking for. Not while working a full-time job. Maybe if I was retired and had that many hours of free time in a day, but the time demands were simply not reasonable. It exceeded many part-time jobs.
Loved the cause, the organization sucked - I would put a bit more research into it and would find out that either the administration costs were so ridiculous that for every $10 donated only $1 actually went to the cause, or else I would find out from former insiders that the charity was plagued with bickering and infighting amonst the upper administrators.
Unhealthy competition with other organization for resources - like different AIDS charities fighting to outdo each other to be the ones to get the same big corporate sponsor, instead of working together to meet their common goal.
In the end, I just decided to join the bone marrow registry and donate blood every 56 days. My cousin started a running group to raise pledge money for charities, so we do several races every year. My fiancee volunteers with a program that helps disabled kids with their motor skills by working with farm animals.
So it hasn’t been a total wash. It was just really, really hard to find volunteer positions that didn’t piss us off somehow. With all the organizations that need people, you 'd thik it would be easier to find a good fit.
So if Bohunk Township has a mere volunteer fire department, you would advocate dissolution of Bohunk? Who protects the residents of Bohunk, now that your wand has swept?
They’re all professional firefighters, it’s just that some have chosen it as a career and some are volunteer. They all have the exact same training. In my county, you cannot not ride as a vollie FF until you pass Firefighter 1, Bloodborne Pathogens, Haz Mat Ops and at least First Responder (advanced first Aid). It’s not like you can just mosey on into the station and jump on the engine.
In my county, residents are protected by a combination of career and volunteer firefighters and EMS responders. Most of the vollie stations are in the more rural areas. If you suddenly removed all the volunteer stations and medic crews, a hell of a lot of people would be without fire protection and emergency medical services.
That is the problem right there. No one wants to get invovled unless it concerns “me and mine”. Rather than helping out for the “greater good of humanity” or the “community”.
So there are a lot of people these days who think, “that doesn’t affect me and hence is not my problem”. I know that’s not what you meant, but that’s what jjimm was referring to.
When I started working with a charity to raise money for MS, everyone asked me “Oh, has MS touched your life?” with the assumption that I was only invovled because a friend or family member was afflicted.
“No,” I answered. “I took part in a read-a-thon in the fourth grade and now every year I try to raise money for MS.” (I don’t do it anymore since I moved though).
MS has not affected me or miine, and that was never the motivation.
A friend of mine and I were talking about the differences we saw in a VERY generalized way bewteen the U.S. in Canada. In the U.S., life is geared more to foolw the motto “life, liberty, and happiness” things that benefit the individual. Canada’s motto is “peace, order, and good government”, more socialist in nature, with people more likely to concede a little bit more of their own wants for the greater good of the community because it benefitted everyone in the end.
Again, this was an over-generlaziation. We were just waxing philosophical while puffing on a bong. As far as how it affects volunteering, I don’t really notice much of a difference.
I say “almost” because I already serve on some municipal appointments and such. I’ve got some time, but I’d like to get my job nailed down and see exactly how much time I’ll have after I start working again.
As for the OP, I think it’s a little of what everyone else has said - time, apathy and a generational thing.
As RTFirefly said, groups like Kiwanas and the Rotary are just not attracting the younger crowd. I don’t know anyone my age (42) who belongs to any of those groups. I don’t know why.
When my son was in Scouts, they were constantly pushing for parents to help. I got involved, on the understanding that it would be ‘about an hour a week.’ That turned into several hours a week, and then an hour or more a day, working on projects, calling parents, setting up meetings, whatever. After a while I just couldn’t keep up with it. They always got new parents involved and it was always with the promise of, “It’s just an hour a week!”
When I was involved in the political issue, the director of the group was a young college graduate, but she resigned to work on her masters. A lot of the other folk were older, retired people.
I have , on several, and I have found some common points that actively work to diminish volunteer activity…
1st Board structure:
1/3rd of the board are fossilised… This organisation was created in 1963, and the principles we stood for then still stand… (Uhhhh, yeh, right)
1/3 Rd of the board are simply there for political reasons “I am a concerned, involved memeber, but will not vote on a contriversial issue”
1/3 of the board are activist/visionary, and will promote any cause with out looking to long term effects
The sum total of this is that nothing really gets decided, and all ideas get argued into insignifigance/obsolecence… (Pink table clothes for the annual picnic… let’s strike a committee…)
2nd:Volunteer burn out.
You have a core of volunteers. Dedicated, informed volunteers. Many of them are retired senoirs with connections, experience and skills. So you put them on a committee to decide the shade of pink for the picnic table clothes.
3rd:Fund Raising Dry Out…
The organisations that support your group get tired of three yrs of applications for funding to support committees deciding table cloth hues, when they want to support … panada bears… (or what ever)
4th: Publicity Burnout… Even the most talented journalists have a hard time making 14 weeks of 4 hour meetings on “Table Cloth Hue” seem interesteing
It takes a dynamic organization to make dynamic changes…
I think it would be interesting to be a poll worker at least once on election day. However, LA County requires that all volunteers be at the polls from 6 or 7am to 8 pm, IIRC. Since I have a child in school, I couldn’t possibly do that as it’s my responsibility to get her out of bed, fed, dressed, and off to school, and to make sure she has a plate of food in front of her when I arrive home from work. If it were possible to do half-day shifts at the polls, I’d be there. The point I’m trying to make with this is that sometimes the time commitment requested is greater than a lot of people can manage, particularly those with children or without transportation, of which I am both. I do plan to join the PTA this year, however.
They become part of a tax base that can support professionals. The nearest larger city, the county.
Actually, I suppose I overstated my position. I don’t like the idea, as I think it’s a sign that the area residents aren’t willing to pony up enough tax money to adequately protect their community. I myself wouldn’t live in such a place, but if they want to take on that risk, well, ok.
Some organizations are pretty picky about what type of help they want to get. I was part of a group of about 10-15 people who were willing to help with a habitat for humanity project, but they pretty much told us unless we could raise 20,000 dollars to not bother coming back. We donated our time elsewhere.
I would put in a vote for the burden of employment. (I do not know anyone who simply clocks 40 houras and comes home and know far too few families in which any adult gets to stay home all day.)
On the other hand, I am surprised that no one has mentioned the scattering effect of suburbia. When I was quite a bit younger, I gave thought to applying for the volunteer fire company. However, I could never find a job in my town. The idea that I would leap from my desk and rush out to fight fires when I heard the town siren go off (in the days before pagers, much less cell phones) was silly if I was 15 miles away (far too far to hear the siren even if I was outdoors) and it was going to take me 25 minutes to fight my way through traffic to reach the fire station. They need much faster response. Even now, with cell phones, pagers, and always-on-instant-messaging, I do not have a jet pack or transporter that could get me to a fire in time to fight it.
While not as extreme, a similar situation applies to all the Kiwanis/Rotary/ELKS variety of organizations, to say nothing of the people running hotlines as mentioned by minor7flat5. They need a certain level of time commitment and people who are spending a fair amount of time just getting to work and back, then getting their kids to meetings and home, really cannot promise that sort of time. (The kids are another issue, of course. We have organized the lives of kids to the point where they need their own calendars even in lower elementary school. The idea that a bunch of 7 - 10 year olds would hang out in their own neighborhoods having fun on a summer day just cannot happen when they are signed up for Little League and swimming and golf and a few other projects.)
The volunteer organizations always had a LOT of social aspect to them. With everyone scattered across the countryside, much social activity now focuses on the place of employment, drawing together people living in widely dispersed neighborhoods who do not have the energy to go home and engage in more social activities just because they are social and local.
Problem #1 by far. My father got a job out of college with a company and stayed there for 25 years (his division was sold a couple times so the company changed but he never quit). The idea that I, as a recent college graduate, would work for a company for the next 25 years is frankly laughable. This is really just one symptom of an endemic problem. Increased mobility has broken down the fabric of society.
My generation increasingly goes away for school, and increasingly takes a job away from their home town. Really this trend started with the Baby boomers. For example, most of my grand parents/aunts/uncles lived in the same town when my parents were growing up. For most of my childhood the closest Aunt, Uncle, or Grandparent was 500 miles away.
What does this mean? It means that I have few ties to the town I grew up in, and fewer ties to the town I live in now. With fewer ties it’s only natural that I care less about what happens to the town. After all, I’m probably not going to be here in 3-5 years. It sounds bad to say it, but it’s the truth. You naturally care a lot more about a place that you expect to live in 20 years from now.
When did participation in a parade become a requirement for giving a shit about one’s community? Parades aren’t an absolute indicator of anything except willingness to walk or drive in convoy. They actually accomplish very little, lead to a lot of littering and inconvenience people who are just trying to get around them.
Not to be cynical or anything, but anyone who said I had to volunteer for some all-day ritual to prove something is gonna get at best a half-hearted effort.
Time and money.
I work at a college and almost all of my students are up to their eyeballs in school loan debt, and have a job (or two) and go to school, do homework and also try to find time for family and friends. Some of my students are getting by on 4-5 hours of sleep per night!
The teachers all have second jobs and most are dragging their asses to classes with little sleep and time to really prepare like they would like to.
Despite the rosy numbers Washington DC likes to post, most Americans are barely keeping their heads above financial waters.
Speaking for myself, I really do not have any time that I could schedule on a regular basis for any kind of charity work. That said, I used to work for what was once one of the largest charities in the US…we relied heavily on volunteers who were mostly retired people or those who were unemployed or on disability.
I also got burned out on charitable organizations - watching useless people getting paid ungodly amounts of money while the people really doing the grunt work got paid little, or nothing.
I think if people had one job that paid well, and could safely set aside a few hours a week, they might be more inclined to volunteer - but as it stands now, it is just not an option, at least for the people I know.
This is true. Moving around a lot to catch up with the job-market can erode your sense of community and your “my home town” feeling. In the case with me supporting MS, I simply moved on to different charities once I moved. I’d done it for so long that I knew the regulars in my one home town. Here, I looked into the same organization, but I didn’t get that comfy vibe, and I really HATE making cold calls to solicit donations, which is what they wanted me to do.
I’m living in Toronto now and have been for 7 years, but I consider my “home town” to be my last place and I would still happily contribute to charities there if I could, because I feel closer to that community than the big anonymous city.
One of the free weeklies puts out an annual list and very big list of places you can volunteer. They do it shortly after New Year’s for all the people ho make resolutions to be more active in their community. It’s an awesome resource for anyone who wants to volunteer but can’t find a good fit. (I still haven’t found quite the right fit.)