Tag Archives: unions

Deriding the monetary value of volunteer hours: my mission in life?

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moneysignsDuring a presentation on volunteers at a local government agency that I attended a few weeks ago, the program manager proudly noted that the agency’s volunteer contributions are the equivalent of 21 full time employees, and gave a value of their time at more than a million dollars, based on the dollar value per hour promoted by the Independent Sector. That was one of her very first points in her presentation, and this was the ONLY reason offered during the entire session as to why this agency involves volunteers; she then went on to what volunteers do.

I wonder how the agency’s volunteers would feel to know that they are involved because they replace paid staff? Because they “save money”?

This agency said the greatest value of volunteers is that they are unpaid and mean the agency doesn’t have to hire people to do those tasks. I have so many, many examples on my blog and web site – linked at the end of this blog – regarding why those statements lead to outrage, and how they actually devalue volunteer engagement. These statements reinforce the old-fashioned ideas that volunteers are free (they are not; there are always costs associated with involving volunteers) and that the number of hours contributed by volunteers is the best measure of volunteer program success (quantity rather than quality and impact).

Put this in contrast to a paper on volunteer resource management practices in hospitals which I read today. The post about it on LinkedIn promotes this quote, “volunteers contribute greatly to personalizing, humanizing and demystifying hospitalization.” The paper, “Hospital administrative characteristics and volunteer resource management practices” is by Melissa Intindola, Sean Rogers, Carol Flinchbaugh and Doug Della Pietra and the description never once mentions the value of volunteers as being a monetary value for their hours, money saved, employees replaced, or any other old-fashioned statements to tout why volunteers are involved. I haven’t read the entire paper (it’s $30 – not in the budget right now), and maybe they do talk about these values, but from the summaries of the paper, it sounds like they understand the far better reasons for volunteer engagement, and that this understanding guides their recommendationss.

I’m not opposed to using a monetary value for volunteer hours altogether, but it should never, EVER, be shown as the primary reason volunteers are involved, or even the secondary reason to involve volunteers. If a monetary value is used, it should always come with MANY disclaimers, and should follow all of the other, better, more important reasons the agency involves volunteers. It should come many pages after the mission statement for the volunteer program and the results of volunteer engagement that have nothing to do with money saved.

Years of whining about this has paid off: the Independent Sector noticed yesterday and tweeted some responses to me. Not sure why it took so many years for them to notice my oh-so-public whining, particularly since I tagged them on Twitter every now and again…

I guess it’s time to again recommend this new book, Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: A Balanced and Strategic Approach, by ChristineBurych, Alison Caird, Joanne Fine Schwebel, Michael Fliess and Heather Hardie. This book is an in-depth planning tool, evaluation tool and reporting tool. As I wrote in my blog about this book, “I really hope this book will also push the Independent Sector, the United Nations, other organizations and other consultants to, at last, abandon their push of a dollar value as the best measurement of volunteer engagement.”

Also see:

Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: book announcement

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Want to make me cranky? Suggest that the best way to measure volunteer engagement is to count how many volunteers have been involved in a set period, how many hours they’ve given, and a monetary value for those hours. Such thinking manifests itself in statements like this, taken from a nonprofit in Oregon:

Volunteers play a huge role in everything we do. In 2010, 870 volunteers contributed 10,824 hours of service, the equivalent of 5.5 additional full-time employees!

Yes, that’s right: this nonprofit is proud to say that volunteer engagement allowed this organization to keep 5.5 people from being employed!

Another cringe-worthy statement about the value of volunteers – yes, someone really said this, although I’ve edited a few words to hide their identity:

[[Organization-name-redacted]] volunteers in [[name-of-city redacted]] put in $700,000 worth of free man hours last year… It means each of its 7,000 volunteers here contributed about $100 – the amount their time would have been worth had they been paid.

I have a web page talking about the dire consequences of this kind of thinking, as well as a range of blogs, listed at the end of this one. That same web page talks about much better ways to talk about the value of volunteers – but it really takes more than a web page to explain how an organization can measure the true value of volunteers.

9780940576728_FRONTcover copyThat’s why I was very happy to get an alert from Energize, Inc. about a new book, Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: A Balanced and Strategic Approach, by ChristineBurych, Alison Caird, Joanne Fine Schwebel, Michael Fliess and Heather Hardie. This book is an in-depth planning tool, evaluation tool and reporting tool. How refreshing to see volunteer value talked about in-depth – not just as an add-on to yet another book on volunteer management. But the book’s importance goes even further: the book will not only be helpful to the person responsible for volunteer engagement at an organization; the book will also push senior management to look at volunteer engagement as much, much more than “free labor” (which it isn’t, of course). Marketing managers need to read this book. The Executive Director needs to read this book. Program managers need to read this book. The book is yet another justification for thinking of the person responsible for the volunteer engagement program at any agency as a volunteerism specialist – a person that needs ongoing training and support (including MONEY) to do her (or his) job. This book shows why the position – whether it’s called volunteer manager, community engagement director, coordinator of volunteers, whatever – is essential, not just nice, and why that person needs to be at the senior management table.

I really hope this book will also push the Independent Sector, the United Nations, other organizations and other consultants to, at last, abandon their push of a dollar value as the best measurement of volunteer engagement.

For more on the subject of the value of volunteer or community engagement, here are my blogs on the subject (yeah, it’s a big deal with me):

pro vs. volunteer firefighters

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Back in 2010, I blogged about how the firefighter union in the USA is anti-volunteer – and my feelings about such as a manager of volunteers, a trainer of such managers, an advocate for volunteerism and an advocate AGAINST volunteers being used to replace paid staff.

To stay up-to-date on this issue, check out the National Volunteer Fire Council‘s excellent Right to Volunteer campaign. They post updates about this struggle after the narrative. I’ll try to do a better job of staying up-to-date as well.

Also see this: NVFC Asks FEMA to Examine Whether Anti-volunteer Provision in Labor Agreement Violates Federal Law, from March 2012.

Also see:

Volunteers needed, but are they wanted?

Fire station turns away volunteers – & how it could be different

Unions & Nonprofits: Commentary from the Nonprofit Quarterly

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Should nonprofit workers unionize? Will more and more nonprofit employees unionize?

Todd Cohen of the Nonprofit Quarterly notes in this editorial:

In 2010, the employees of the nonprofit Larkin Street Youth Services, a homeless-services nonprofit, tried to organize a union, but failed. This year, they tried again, looking for a union affiliation to help them deal with issues such as understaffing, increased workloads, and cuts in their benefits. The vote count in the union election was overwhelmingly in favor of joining SEIU 1021. In San Francisco, unionized nonprofits include La Clínica de La Raza, the Exploratorium, and others that one wouldn’t necessarily think of as in the unionized university/hospital nonprofit class. Writing for the East Bay Express, Corey Hill says that the San Francisco Bay Area has the third highest number of unionized nonprofits, behind only New York City and the District of Columbia.

What isn’t here in this editorial is the word volunteer – specifically, what are the consequences of unionization on volunteer engagement? Unions have stated opposition to volunteer firefighters and pushed back over school employees being replaced by volunteers. They are angry (and rightly so) that volunteer engagement is so often used to replace paid workers.

I’ve already whined that organizations need to create a mission (and a mission statement) for volunteer (unpaid staff) involvement and live it, stating explicitly why your organization reserves certain tasks / assignments / roles for volunteers (unpaid staff, including unpaid interns), to guide employees and volunteers in how they think about volunteers, to guide current volunteers in thinking about their role and value at the organization, to show potential volunteers the kind of culture they can expect at your organization regarding volunteers, and to prevent lawsuits from interns. Another reason to create such a mission statement: so that no union members (or any employees, for that matter) can say the organization involves volunteers to replace paid staff.

That said: nonprofit employees deserve competitive wages, health care coverage, disability insurance, a decent amount of vacation time (three weeks at least!), and other benefits. And they shouldn’t have to unionize to get that.

My previous blogs on this subject:

More on the UK’s Big Society

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David Cameron, the prime minister of the UK does not like all of the criticism of his plan to cut government funding and replace paid staff in schools, transportation offices and other public offices with volunteers, under the guise of getting more people more involved in their communities. He defended his program. And then came this outstanding response.

Here’s my previous blog on the UK’s Big Society efforts, with lots of links to the building backlash and government missteps regarding this effort.

Even if you don’t live in the UK, if you work in the nonprofit or government sector, you need to be staying up-to-date about what is happening in the UK regarding this issue!

Criticism Continues for UK Government Talk Re Volunteers

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Like the USA federal and state governments, the government of the United Kingdom, lead by Prime Minister David Cameron, is hoping that its citizens will step up and volunteer their time — work for free — to provide local services that local and federal governments no longer want to fund. Cameron calls this the big society drive. He wants volunteers — unpaid staff — to take over the staffing of post offices, libraries, transport services. He never says that it’s being done to save money: he says that staffing these organizations with volunteers will empower individuals and give them a greater voice in their communities.

Anyone who knows me or this blog knows that I am passionate about involving volunteers, so much so that I do not trust a nonprofit or community-focused initiative that does not involve volunteers – and does not involve them in more than rudimentary tasks. I believe involving volunteers does benefit communities far beyond money, and have said so many times (see the list of links at the end of this blog).

But let’s be clear: Cameron is being disingenuous about why he wants volunteers engaged in these programs. It’s all about defunding programs, not about increasing community involvement. 

If he were serious, then he would be talking about increasing the money for the resources needed (training, people, etc.) to involve larger numbers of volunteers. He would be talking about increasing funds to Volunteering England, the primary institution in England for tracking, supporting and celebrating volunteering in the country, not cutting them.

The criticisms have been going on for a while now in the British press (‘Big society’ museum plans in Liverpool condemned, 19 July 2010). But this month, the criticisms seem everywhere:

I hope that US politicians who are making similar noises about saving money with volunteers are paying attention; this is what is in store for you if you get serious “big” ideas about volunteers. The criticism will be 10 times louder in the USA!

By all means, let’s undertake activities to involve more volunteers in nonprofits and the government in the USA – AND LET’S PAY FOR THAT. Volunteers don’t just magically show up and get the work done, without a tremendous amount of money and paid staff to support them. Even Wikimedia online volunteers aren’t free!

Also see these blogs on related subjects:

Another anti-volunteer union

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Unionized school employees in Petaluma, California, some of whom have been laid off due to budget cuts, do not like it that parent volunteers are now doing the work they were once paid to do. But even more: the union does not believe volunteers should be involved in the schools at all. Loretta Kruusmagi, president of the 350-member employees’ union bargaining unit at Petaluma Junior High School in California, said of the parents. “Our stand is you can’t have volunteers, they can’t do our work.”

On the one hand, I completely agree that the primary reason to involve volunteers should never be to save money:

But, ofcourse, on the other hand, volunteer involvement is essential for all sorts of other reasons, and I question the credibility of nonprofit organizations and government agencies focused on services to the public, like schools and state parks, that do not involve volunteers in a variety of ways, including in decision-making roles.

I believe passionately that certain positions — even the majority of positions in entire programs at some organizations — should be reserved for volunteers. The majority of programming by the Girl Scouts of the USA is delivered by volunteers. The majority of programming by the American Red Cross is delivered by volunteers. Going all-volunteer can be the right thing to do for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with money saved: It’s been true for the Pine Creek Information Center, it’s been true for the Aid Workers Network, and it’s true of lots of other organizations.

Why involve volunteers? What are the appropriate reasons?

    • Volunteer involvement allows members of the community to come into your agency, as volunteers (and, therefore, with no financial stake in the agency), to see for themselves the work your organization does.
    • Community engagement is community ownership. Volunteer involvement demostrates that the community is invested in the organization and its goals.
    • Involving volunteers — representatives of the community — helps educate the community about what the organization does.
    • Certain positions may be best done by volunteers. Volunteers can do anything. They can be counselors, advisers, theater ushers, short-term consultants, board members, projects leaders, project assistants, event coordinators, event staff, first responders, coaches, program leaders, classroom assistants, and on-and-on. Always be able to say why your agency wants volunteers, specifically, in those positions rather than paid staff (and never say it’s to save money!).
    • Involving volunteers creates support for your organization in other ways. How many volunteers are also financial donors? Have volunteers spoken at local government meetings or written letters to the editor of your local newspaper on your organization’s behalf? Are there any influential community members (elected officials?) who are former volunteers with your organization? What have volunteers done to educate friends and family about your organization and its mission?
    • Involving volunteers can be a reflection of your organization’s mission. If you are a nonprofit theater, for instance, you probably involve unpaid ushers. What have ushers experienced that is a reflection of your mission (which may be to present theater productions of that are of cultural significance for your community, or to ensure that community members of all ages and backgrounds are introduced to and educated about the place of theater in our society, etc.). If you involve volunteers as interns, how could you tie this involvement to the mission of your organization?
    • Involving volunteers can help your organization reach particular demographic groups — people of a particular age, in a particular neighborhood, of a particular economic level, etc., especially groups who might not be involved with your organization otherwise.
    • Involving volunteers can create partnerships with other organizations (nonprofits, government, business). Involving volunteers from a corporation might spur that corporation to give your agency a grant. Involving volunteers from a government office could lead to a program partnership.
    • Volunteer involvement can garner good PR (in media reports, government reports, blogs, etc.) regarding your community involvement.

There is no question that parents have the right to help out in public schools! Union president Loretta Kruusmagi is wrong, wrong, wrong to say otherwise. Just as the union of professional firefighters in the USA is wrong to “not condone” volunteer firefighters. Volunteers can, in fact, be the loudest non-Union voice in support of unions and other professionals. Since volunteers have no financial interest in the organization where they donate their service, their voice of support for professionals and their services, and their voice against budget cuts, can get the attention of the community, funders and the press.

For schools, nonprofits and others thinking volunteers are a great cost-cutting idea, see Frazzled Moms Push Back Against Volunteering.

To learn more on how to talk about the true value of volunteers, I highly recommend Susan Ellis’ outstanding book From the Top Down. The third edition has just been released.