Rethinking Volunteerism

Rethinking_Volunteerism.

Reposted from SharedSacrifice.us, Originally Published 1/8/08

By Andy Ellis

Youth Organizing Urban Revitalization Systems

“The beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression.”

George Bush has gotten two things right recently: his quick dodge to avoid a shoe thrown by an angry Iraqi journalist, and his recognition that he
“Didn’t want to be president at the beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression.” The depression may not be as easy to avoid as the
shoe, but Bush is right to not want that on his historical rap sheet.

Job losses, credit freezes, bailouts, 0 per cent interest rates and a recession we have all been feeling for a long time have even the twentysomething percent of Bush’s supporters wondering what is happening
and when it will end.

Non profit organizations are in a precarious position during such an economic moment. One the one hand, many of the social services provided to youth and communities in need are out-sourced to non profit organizations. Economic hard times put more people and communities at risk and more need exists for nonprofit services. In theory this should be good; increases in demand for social and educational services should mean more business for these organizations.

But the nonprofit structure is uniquely affected by fluctuations in the economy. This system functions best when there is excess money in the economy. When excess money is flowing it means that more resources are available to sustain governmental, foundational, and private support.

Actually, the tax incentives non profits offer donors may be more valuable in a time of economic instability, but if donors do not feel that it is a good time to give, much of the resource base upon which the civic society sector operates goes away.

Social Venture Organizing and Nonprofits

The traditional model of a charity and the traditional understanding of a nonprofit organization assumes that these entities simply take in money and spend it fulfilling their charity missions. While this understanding does describe a large number of charities, a new type of social enterprise project has also begun to emerge. Social venture organizing, built on ideas like micro-lending, enterprise networks, and collaboration, is innovating the
delivery of needed social programs.

Small organizations that work on a profit, people, and planet triple bottom line are emerging which use the power of profits and globalization to equalize the relationship between service provider and service client. In many of these jobs, employment and profits are shared cooperatively by the organization and the service client.

These approaches, based much more in movement culture than the corporate or governmental culture of the existing charity structure, provide those looking to create systems of social and economic justice with access to the tools of capital.

Non profits hamstrung from doing anything but subsisting on the excesses of the economy cannot build new systems. They are literally dependent on the existing system to be able to implement all of the services many people depend on. But nonprofits that aim to utilize income for social programs have the flexibility to organize collaborative projects that build the nodes of a new system.

Venture Volunteering and a Bad Economy

When the economy is bad all businesses and services are given something of an efficiency check. Those that are built on excess and the smooth functioning of “big C” Capitalism find themselves scrambling to continue running their business, while those that are efficient, flexible and innovative define new paradigms and thrive.

But often many of the most innovative grassroots nonprofit organizations do not have the resources to sustain or grow during difficult economic times. Perhaps the resource most lacking is talented people to help implement the vision of innovation. Often grassroots organizations have a great business plan and the potential to provide significant social return on investment if they can get off the ground. But before they ever get to work on what they are good at they have to attend to business processes, something not all volunteers are skilled at.

Take website building for example, a social enterprise initiative that creates alternative economic possibilities for teens is likely to be great at teaching and organizing and may even have other high end business and professional skills. If the small group of folks running it do not have website skills, or the resources to hire someone, but they need a website, they can teach themselves the necessary skills, buy the software, make the mistakes, and get a web site set up. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they get all of these processes right: Even in the best-case-scenario, the organization has lost its staff time to a skill which, while valuable, is not part of their mission. People good at creating economic alternatives have spent their time and resources not doing that.

Now let’s say you are talented in this area and also think that creating a socially just economy is good. You find out about the organization  and its need for a website on something like volunteermatch.org, grassroots.org, or Shared Sacrifice.You connect with the leadership, discuss youth economics, work out a plan and get to work on it.  In the end, they have a great web site and staff time focused on their core mission, you have something  for your site design portfolio, meaningful volunteer experience, and connections with a whole new network of socially just organizations. The organization has more staff time and resources devoted toward the core mission, a better website than they could have done on their own, and an effective partnership with a talented and like-minded individual.

A social venture volunteering project is a great way for talented progressives to contribute meaningfully to the development of an organization working at the grassroots level to bring about social and economic justice. You might want to talk to the organization you volunteer for and your tax preparer and see if you can consider your volunteering as donated professional services–count your hours, bill your rate; it’s not worth it when you are doing minimum wage labor for a big organization’s event, but it is when you design and build a website, or do research, writing, public relations, advertising, art, music, etc., well, you get the picture. The point is, what you are good at can be used by organizations as close as your neighborhood or as far away as the Internet will take you. You can help increase the capacities of organizations you support, and you might just find a new job or career.

From Volunteer to Stakeholder

A key part of a successful social venture volunteer project is that both parties contribute meaningfully to the final product. This requires both the volunteer and the organization to work in partnership and have a
stake in work.

Much of what we think of as volunteering provides surplus labor to big corporate charities to put on drives and events. In this kind of volunteering there is an employee employer relationship, but in a social
venture volunteering situation there is a partnership.

Now the next part is going to seem to contradict that, but if you will bear with me… Anyway back to the web site (remember this purely an example)…say you design the website, implement it, train the staff, and
participate frequently in the communities you have established. It is so good that it brings in increased donations, and you decide to work with the organization to get a digital media department you created…Now
the organization has a position to hire. You may not be the heir apparent to this position, but your application is going to look pretty good.

You may not be in the market for a new job, but in a job market like this one, it is never a bad idea to line up other possibilities while working meaningfully for grassroots social justice. By approaching volunteering
as a partnership, volunteers become members of a horizontal labor relationship, one in which all parties have a stake in the final project, and in the goal and the communities served by the organization.

If you don’t have money to invest, or donate, invest your time in an organization you think could use you, strike up a partnership and begin social venture volunteering.

Andy Ellis is Managing Director of Youth Organizing Urban Revitalization Systems (YOURS), Baltimore

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