It’s not about raising awareness of volunteering

Less talk, more action

Photo: Pixabay

Volunteerism doesn’t need more awareness. Organizations need infrastructure, says Karen Knight.

I admit it, I get annoyed when someone gets the opportunity to advocate to government and they say we need to start raising awareness of volunteering.

No, we don’t! Just about everyone knows about volunteering. I heard a conversation in a restaurant the other day. Two people were discussing a local charity and one said, “I’d volunteer there … if I could ever find the time.” The other nodded and replied, “Same here. I know I should. I just have too much going on right now.”

Awareness is not the problem. People know volunteering exists. They understand it helps communities. They see volunteers at events, museums, hospitals, shoreline clean-ups, festivals, classrooms — you name it. Awareness is everywhere. What’s missing is real, concrete support for organizations and volunteers.

Advocating for raising awareness of volunteering lets decision-makers off the hook. It’s the political equivalent of offering someone a cookie when what they really need is a meal. When governments say they support volunteering but don’t invest in the structures required to sustain it, they’re not supporting volunteering at all. They’re just cheering from the sidelines.

Organizations often run on the thinnest shoestring budgets imaginable. They handle hundreds of volunteers a year, yet the leader of volunteers juggles three or four other roles. What those organizations need is not another “volunteering is good” poster, they need funding for staff and overhead, proper training and solid partnership support.

When we advocate, it’s time to drop the fluff. Volunteerism doesn’t need more awareness. Organizations need infrastructure. Those who lead them need governments willing to invest money, not just words, in supporting them.

Here are some specifics I think we should demand – loudly!

• Stable funding for volunteer-involving organizations, not one-off grants or project-based funding. I’m talking about long-term, predictable investment that allows charities and community groups to plan more than five minutes ahead. Also, funding for overhead is needed too because funding projects without paying for the rent and wages that support those projects is just stupid.

• Dedicated funding for volunteer manager roles. It’s astonishing how often government strategies praise volunteering while ignoring the people who recruit, train and support those volunteers. Too many organisations see leaders of volunteers as expendable. They wouldn’t be seen that way if organizations received funding for them.

• Strong community volunteer centres. These centres connect volunteers with opportunities in their communities, support the smaller organizations and keep the whole community healthy. Yet they are closing at an unprecedented pace and those that survive scrape by on skeleton budgets.

• Integration of volunteers into emergency planning. It isn’t a surprise volunteers turn up in a crisis, yet their involvement is often improvised rather than embedded. Check out the TED talk, “How to step up in the face of disaster” to see what I mean. Proper planning, coordination and training are essential. Certain jurisdictions already do that. All of them should.

• Regular national and/or regional data collection. Data isn’t boring, it’s powerful. Without it, we can’t demonstrate our impact, argue for increased investment, or track emerging needs. Other countries already make a point of doing this. It shames me that Canada isn’t one of them. Yet.

• Legal protections and standards for volunteers. Clear, consistent rules around safety, liability insurance and expense reimbursement protect both the volunteers and the organizations that involve them.

• Policies that encourage employer-supported volunteering. More and more corporations are seeing the value of offering paid volunteer days or similar corporate social responsibility programs. Incentives for companies to offer them would accelerate this, and vastly increase the number of people willing and able to volunteer.

• Tax incentives for donating hours, not just dollars. And why not? Society rewards people for donating money, yet ignores the enormous – and irreplaceable – value of donated time. Recognizing it through tax incentives would validate all contributions. You may already have read my rant on that.

None of these points requires raising awareness of volunteering or on people suddenly “discovering” its existence. What the points require is political will and political will rarely appears until enough people make noise.

So let’s drop the awareness conversation. It’s soft, it’s vague and it accomplishes very little. The sector doesn’t need more politicians cheering us on. It needs hard commitments – policies, funding, protections, structural support. And it needs advocates who are willing to stop being polite and start being specific.

If we want volunteerism to thrive, the path forward isn’t a brighter spotlight. It’s a stronger foundation.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.