Remember at the start of the year when I warned that 2018 is the time for USA nonprofits to be demanding?
Well, here we go.
Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin and Donald Trump, as well as governors all over the USA, want to require unemployed Medicaid members to volunteer with nonprofit organizations – or, probably, Christian churches – in order to receive those benefits.
This idea was first floated back in Spring 2017. At that time, Danielle Clore, executive director of the Kentucky Nonprofit Network, had a lot to say to Bevin’s office when it asked the group to support his proposal:
The bottom line is this will cost nonprofits money – money and resources we don’t have to spare. It takes professionals to effectively manage volunteers. For the experience to be valuable for both the agency and the individual, volunteer efforts have to be managed. Is it worth the limited and precious resources of a nonprofit to manage a volunteer that is there because ‘they have to be,’ not because they want to be? Nonprofit employees are spread so thin as it is and I feel like a volunteer requirement for anyone not truly committed to the mission of the agency isn’t an effective use of anyone’s time.
I do not typically take people who are ‘required’ to volunteer, because they don’t make good volunteers. Also, 20 hours is A LOT OF TIME. We don’t allow people to volunteer that many hours because at that point they could be considered a part time employee employee, and you have potential legal issues to consider.
Emily Beauregard, executive director of Kentucky Voices for Health, told Kentucky Health News in an interview at that time, “We need to provide them with the support services that they need, but forcing people to volunteer in order to get health care doesn’t make anybody healthier. We know this. There are data to suggest that. In fact, sometimes these stringent requirements put people in a position where they are unable to get care and then they get sick, and they are unable to work.”
I’ve blogged about all this before, in April 2017, when I said that requirements to volunteer are getting out of hand. And I’m calling on all nonprofit centers, all consultants regarding nonprofit management, including volunteer management, and everyone claiming to be advocates for volunteerism to speak out about this.
Here here’s my Facebook post about how I feel:
Nonprofits are not sitting around saying, “I wish several thousand people were forced to volunteer and they would then show up at our offices to do all this work we have just laying around waiting to be done by just any ole’ person that comes through the door.” Bevin and Trump are expecting nonprofits to involve several thousand more people as volunteers – people who are being forced into the act – but without funding all of the increased costs nonprofits are going to have to create more assignments and supervise these people. Nonprofits, don’t do it. Just DON’T. Not without a great deal more money.
Let’s see your statement.
Also see:
- Requiring jobless to volunteer – reality check
- Involving volunteers: a cop out for paying staff?
- Deriding the monetary value of volunteer hours: my mission in life?
- The Value of volunteers – a web page to help you understand how to appropriately talk about the value of volunteers at your organization.
- Initiatives opposed to some or all volunteering (unpaid work), & online & print articles about or addressing controversies regarding volunteers replacing paid staff – a page I developed when someone told me there was no opposition to volunteer engagement because of job loss and “money saved” (obviously, that person was wrong)
- Assigning law breakers to community service: worthwhile?
- Yes, I love court-ordered community service folks
- My blogs about some aspect of court-ordered community service
- Make volunteering transformative, not about # of hours – a blog from earlier this year that illustrates how to talk about the value of volunteers in a much more powerful way (and one that keeps getting retweeted! Thank you!)
- Valuing volunteer engagement: an imaginary case study – an attempt to show, in the simplest way possible, why talking about volunteer value primarily in terms of monetary value insults volunteers
- CNCS continues its old-fashioned measurement of volunteer value, a blog from 2014 – and, no, CNCS nor the Points of Light Foundation responded.
- OPB & Congress Think Volunteers are Free – how the Independent Sector way of thinking influences the press (and a petition for you to sign to help fund resources for volunteer management on public lands)
- Volunteering empowers, activates, builds, communicates – just another way of saying it….
- Volunteers: still not free – a 2012 blog that I think sums up the issues well
- Fight against unpaid internships will hurt volunteering – a blog that summarizes what I have predicted for many years: unpaid interns are revolting precisely because of the reasons given for not paying volunteers promoted by so many national and international bodies
- Advice for unpaid interns to sue for back pay – helping unpaid interns know their rights
- Do NOT say “Need to Cut Costs? Involve Volunteers!” – a 2012 blog that tries to explain this issue in very simple terms
- UN Volunteers, IFRC, ILO & others make HUGE misstep – a 2011 blog in response to these international agencies promoting the value of volunteers in terms of money saved by not paying employees to do the work
- Volunteers are suing
- I agree with this anti-crowdsource campaign
- Criticism Continues for UK Government Talk Re Volunteers – a blog from 2011 that shows the backlash with the United Kingdom decided to cut employees and encourage volunteers to replace them
- International Association of Fire Fighters is anti-volunteer – a blog from 2010 that illustrates the consequences of the Independent Sector and other organization’s promotion of a monetary value as the best reason to involve volunteers.
Hi Jayne – Thank you so much for writing this. That was my first reaction when I heard about the possibility of adding a volunteer requirement for this program.
My agency and many in my area are already bombarded with an increasing number of people with service requirements imposed by the courts. This may sound like a great idea at first. People can avoid jail time by helping a local non profit. What the courts don’t realize, or just don’t want to address is that this is in effect and unfunded mandate to non profits. We have to fully vet any applicant who wants to serve our agency, which works with vulnerable clients. That takes staff time and resources as well as money, which sadly doesn’t come to us as part of the service requirement. I have had public defenders outright lie to me about what was in an applicant’s criminal record just so we would take them for their service requirement. Is it any wonder that fewer non profits even accept applicants with court mandated service?
Having said that, we have had many court mandated volunteers who have taken this requirement seriously and provided good work at my agency.
I understand that this situation is also frustrating for those who have been given this mandate by the courts. I spoke with someone last week, whose son had court mandated hours. He was really frustrated because as he put it “people are starving and in need — yet no agency wants to take my son who has hours required by the courts” (We’ll leave aside for now why his son wasn’t making these calls himself) I explained that we serve youth and other vulnerable clients and thus have to run a full clearance before any volunteer can serve at our agency.
I greatly fear that if implemented by many states, this new requirement will either become another unfunded mandate to non profits and/or will put people looking to complete this service requirement in an untenable situation. If the requirement actually comes with the planning and funding to enable non profits to effectively vet, train and supervise volunteers with this service requirement, that is one thing, but just imposing yet another service requirement with out that planning or funding just puts one more burden on an already squeezed non profit sector.
Thank you for getting out in front of this issue and yes, I think we all need to address this to policy makers considering this option.
“this new requirement will either become another unfunded mandate to non profits and/or will put people looking to complete this service requirement in an untenable situation” That sums it up PERFECTLY, Laura. I hope you or someone from your organization will write your local newspaper and local TV stations and say this. I’m both morally opposed to the idea of requiring people to perform community service in order to get health care coverage and outraged at the idea that nonprofits are being asked to do something that takes away from the work they need to do to meet their missions. I love to engage volunteers, including community service required folks, but in small numbers that I manage and have funding for – to be asked to take in dozens, even hundreds, of people, to be asked to create assignments for them, train them, supervise and support them, etc., with NO additional funding – yeah, I’m angry!
Can community service be used help reduce college student loan debt?
I found your blog site researching court ordered community service for a reluctant family member. Your content is well presented and you discuss many topics I encountered in my attempt to be a worthwhile volunteer (and lead volunteers) over the years. I also was disappointed in recent political proposals for the government to pay off college student loans (that were all taken out voluntarily). These two unrelated concepts got me thinking.
What if voluntary community service could be recognized with a tax credit for those with outstanding college (or trade school) student loans? Here are some arbitrary parameters to frame the proposal.
Up to 500 hours per year of in person service to one or more qualified 501 C3 is eligible for a federal tax credit for someone with outstanding college student debt. (student or parent). The credit is the number of hours of service performed times the Federal minimum wage. The credit cannot exceed the outstanding debt of all student loans in the person’s name. It is voluntary on the part of the participant and the charity.
The filer would have to submit an IRS form with loan account balances and hours worked. The form authorizes the IRS to confirm loan balances and hours worked. The 501 C3 would submit a list of workers and their hours for the year to the IRS.
Five hundred hours per year limits scope of payment. In person service is meant to limit the scams you mention for court directed community service. This could be expanded to supervised on line services or further limited to in State or local service. Qualified 501 C3 could be size (staff, budget) , years in place and up to date reporting. I initially exclude schools and government agencies (and union conflict). Minimum wage limits scope and targets those that have few other employment options (overtime, second job) to pay off student debt.
I would very much be interested in your opinion if you believe there is merit here or if it is totally off base. Thanks for publishing your blog.
Hi. Thanks for reading and responding.
Student loans are a for-profit business. There are no companies that would write off the massive profits they will make from student loan interest rates in return for students doing community service for nonprofits.
Secondly, nonprofits aren’t suffering from a lack of volunteers because not enough people volunteer – they need the money and resources for the professional staff necessary to involve volunteers. Volunteers are not free.
So your proposal doesn’t address any of the problems regarding the student loan system nor the needs of mission-based organizations.
You might want to get to know the nearest association of managers of volunteers in your area. They have a lot of great insights into what the real needs are around involving volunteers.