Tag Archives: required

What are the consequences of allowing court-ordered volunteers to make a donation instead of actually doing service?

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image of a panel discussion

I’ve drafted an article about how some nonprofits and probation officers are allowing people who are court-ordered to do community service to pay a fee or make a donation as a substitute for actually volunteering. But I’d like to ask for feedback on one part of the paper.

I wanted a list of some of the consequences of this practice of allowing court-ordered volunteers to make a donation instead of actually doing service. But I have just three points:

  • People becoming skeptical that community service is actually being done and believing those that receive court-ordered community service are getting “an easy way out” of real consequences for their actions.
  • Inequity, as some people still have to do actual community service because they cannot afford to make a financial donation, and the donation being asked for is often less than the fine the court issued and offered to waive in return for community service.
  • In the case of nonprofits offering legitimate online community service, a growing belief that virtual volunteering is merely someone watching videos or producing text that is supposedly their self-reflections – something that could easily be generated in seconds by artificial intelligence – which undermines the credibility of actual virtual volunteering, such as transcribing scanned, hand-written historical documents, redesigning web sites to that they are accessible for people with disabilities, correcting captions on videos, etc.

Are there more consequences of allowing this practice? I would love your thoughts. Please know that, in sharing them here, I might include them in the final paper, though I won’t be identifying contributors, unless I have the contributor’s permission to do so and feel that it’s necessary (such as for quotes).

Here are all my blogs to date regarding some aspect of court-ordered community service.

school parent volunteer engagement ethics

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersI got this message from a friend. And then I had another situation I had wanted to offer up on a blog as well. So… what do you think about the ethics of required parental volunteering in schools?

I’m preparing to go to [[name of private school redacted]] to work a basketball game. I don’t want to go at all but I have to put in so many volunteer hours every school year for my daughter to be able to go see a movie with her class at the end of the year. And nobody wants to be that deadbeat parent whose child has to stay behind because they didn’t volunteer enough. She’s not even playing basketball! They’ve got quite a racket going here: work me for 20 hours for a $20 movie trip.

Apparently, a parent can’t simply pay the movie ticket admission and, say, a bit for gas: they must volunteer or the child isn’t allowed to go on the trip.

A neighbor also told me that her son is on the swim team for the public high school where he attends but she can’t afford all of the fees for him to participate, so the school gave her the option of volunteering 30 hours a semester so her son could participate.

But, on the other hand, students at schools with high volunteer involvement flourish – good grades, fewer discipline problems, etc.; schools without much parental involvement struggle – students with poor grades, more discipline problems, etc., so there is a big incentive by this and other schools to get parents into the school for student events or into the classroom. And this kind of required time better guarantees that happening.

What are your thoughts about the ethics and optics of either of these cases? What about a situation where a parent absolutely cannot volunteer, because of childcare issues, caregiver issues, job issues or lack of transportation? What if a parent has a conviction that precludes him or her from ever volunteering in a school?

Also see:

Comparing schools with high & low volunteer engagement

How schools & small governments should be using social media