Current Trends in Volunteering with an Impact on CASA Programs
Susan J. Ellis
President
Energize, Inc.
Everything in the world changes, and volunteering is no exception to that rule. As economic, social and cultural trends evolve at dizzying speed, organizations able to adapt will attract and retain paid staff and volunteers through both good times and bad. The CASA network has an enviable track record of quality volunteer involvement, but is it keeping up with today’s issues? Let’s examine a few of the challenges faced by volunteer efforts everywhere, consider questions these obstacles raise for CASA programs in particular and brainstorm how to deal with their impact on current and potential CASA volunteers.
To learn how programs in the CASA network are dealing with some of these trends, see this issue's “Program Spotlight.” Sidebars that work hand in hand with this article are a list of resources on volunteer trends, a summary of National CASA’s technical assistance bulletin on using non-advocate volunteers and brief profiles of two non-advocate volunteers. Also see the update on National CASA’s “flex training” initiative now in development, which will provide web-based training of new advocates to reduce the number of required “live” training hours.
The Economy
Whenever the economy is bad, the mass media and politicians rediscover volunteers—for all the wrong reasons. They assume that volunteers are “free” labor ready and willing to make up for budget cuts. This uninformed and highly unrealistic belief materializes as rah-rah campaigns to “get people to volunteer,” even though what is most needed is training and support for organizations to engage volunteers successfully.
How can a CASA volunteer recruitment campaign maximize this media attention while minimizing the wrong messages about volunteering? Consider these ideas:
Acknowledge the current attention to volunteering, but note that your program is not new to this subject—you’ve always been committed to the value of volunteers.
Confront the issue: “We are not seeking volunteers because we don’t have money. For CASA programs, volunteers have always been our first choice for serving our children—whose needs were critical long before the economy tanked.”
Unless you’re engaging in fundraising at the moment, note that your CASA program is seeking time, not money.
Of course, the economy might also be affecting current CASA volunteers. Pay attention to whether some volunteers or their family members have lost their paying jobs, are having trouble making ends meet and so on. Is it time to offer reimbursement for expenses? Or to start a barter exchange of goods and services among volunteers so they can help each other out?
“I Don’t Have Time”
There is good evidence, however, that the biggest obstacle to volunteering is not a lack of money but rather a lack of time. People are working longer hours, find themselves continuously on-call through email and smart phones and are so overscheduled that the family calendar is a complex jigsaw puzzle of pieces to fit into place. We all long for quiet time. So it is understandable that potential recruits are often unwilling to commit to long-term, ongoing volunteering and that veteran volunteers sometimes drop out to regain some sense of control over their lives.
In response to time pressure, we’ve seen a proliferation of single “days of service,” such as Make a Difference Day, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service and even September 11 as the official National Day of Service and Remembrance. Ironically, there are now so many days of service that someone could engage in one almost every week of the year—so much for limited time!
A more extreme trend has evolved over the past year as even shorter bursts of volunteer activity have been organized under the name “micro-volunteering.” Micro-volunteering is service that can be performed in only a few minutes at a time, very often by cell phone or smart phone.
The trend toward volunteering in small chunks of time can be baffling to CASA programs, whose work is definitely not quick or short-term. How can the network achieve its critical child advocacy mission while accommodating the time pressure volunteers feel? Consider these ideas:
First, don’t apologize for the time commitment needed and don’t minimize it! Just as the Marines seek only “a few good” recruits, CASA programs want volunteers who are looking for a serious challenge and who see the commitment as a badge of honor. You’re the antidote to superficial, one-shot volunteering.
Find ways to “job share” among volunteers when it makes sense (it may mean getting permission from the court first). For example, consider partnering two or more advocates so that they can be available to stand in for each other occasionally with the other’s assigned child. Or do what many programs now do, which is assign a husband-and-wife team to serve on a single case.
Recruit new volunteers not to become advocates but instead to become an advocate support team, taking some of the load off the advocate for tasks that are time consuming and not face to face with a child, such as scheduling appointments.
Keep brainstorming, and do not stop yourself because an idea seems like a radical change. Find ways to address the time it takes to be a CASA volunteer and to give advocates an occasional break.
Boomers, Millennials and Social Entrepreneurs
Countless research studies have appeared in the past decade anticipating changes in volunteering due to the expected influx of retiring baby boomers. The challenge is separating fact from fiction in these predictions. Since the economic bust, many boomers are finding they cannot retire for a very long time, as their retirement nest eggs have disappeared. Those who can afford to step out of the labor market often want to travel or do things other than what they consider old-fashioned volunteering.
Those who are between 50 and 65, who look at community service as a chance to redirect instead of retire, tend to want opportunities that are challenging and that offer some freedom of choice. They want to make a difference—not by filling a slot on a schedule or completing a checklist of 25 tasks but rather by helping to create their own volunteer assignments. Doesn’t this sound like the CASA brand of advocacy?
Here’s something that may come as a surprise: the things that boomers identify as attractive in a volunteer role are the same things that millennials (also called Generation Y) want, too! Young adults in their late teens and 20s also seek control over the volunteer work they do.
The wish to forge a new path instead of filling a predetermined position comes at a time when the business world has evolved the concept of social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurs are business owners with a commitment to making money and doing good; either they give a major percentage of their profits to causes they care about or they start nonprofits using the funding stream of a commercial business. Social entrepreneurship holds great potential for those volunteer programs willing to step outside of the comfort zone of carefully defined volunteer positions.
Given the court-defined advocate role, how can CASA programs accommodate new volunteers who want to find creative ways to help families? Consider these ideas:
Focus on the ultimate goal of CASA volunteer work—helping abused and neglected children find safe, permanent homes. Create a recruitment campaign that offers a challenge: “Can you help us meet our goal?” (Instead of “Become an advocate and do what our position description says.”)
Explain that every case is different and that every advocate is called upon to individualize the CASA program’s service to the needs of each child.
Pro Bono Service
There is nothing inherently new about volunteers donating professional expertise, but various national initiatives have been examining the potential of strategically applying business talents to the nonprofit world. Perhaps the most developed campaign is A Billion + Change, in which the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation and the Corporation for National and Community Service have issued a challenge to leverage $1 billion in skilled volunteering and pro bono services from the corporate community. They define pro bono service as:
…the donation of professional services that are included in an employee’s job description and for which the recipient nonprofit would otherwise have to pay. It is a subset of skilled volunteering that gives nonprofits access to the business skills and experience they need to develop and implement sound business strategies, increase their capabilities and improve their organizational infrastructure.
In other words, the door is open for you to go to corporations, universities and professional societies and start a conversation about the push toward pro bono work. This is not necessarily a new avenue for finding more advocates, but it holds enormous potential for recruiting board members, advisors, strategic planning consultants, marketing experts—anyone who offers skills that you would normally pay for.
Just because someone is an expert in his or her professional field does not automatically make that person a great volunteer for you. Apply all the volunteer management practices that you use with other volunteers: define the volunteer consultant role in writing, provide some orientation to the CASA program, assign a staff liaison, agree on how you will work together and so on. And when you ask an expert to give advice, be prepared to listen to it!
Internet Technology and Social Media
Social media refers to communication tools available to everyone that facilitate sharing and exchange of information and ideas with anyone interested. These tools have transformed the internet from a place that allows some people to disseminate information and others to find information—pretty powerful in itself—to an even greater platform for interaction and exchange. Social networking is the use of social media tools to interact with people you know and then the people they know—and on and on. What’s most remarkable about all this is that almost everything is free. Since volunteer-involving organizations rarely have a lot of money to invest in technology, having such great tools at no cost is pretty amazing.
Last year, Everyone Ready offered an online seminar called “Social Networking and Volunteer Involvement” (it is still available to CASA staff in the archive accessible from your Everyone Ready main page described at CASAforChildren.org/Trends). Trainer Michael Gilbert used the analogy of a forest fire:
We want our volunteering message to catch fire, we want it to spread beyond our control, but somehow we want to control it at the same time. A forest fire doesn’t spread based upon how big a match you toss into it; it spreads based upon how interconnected the trees are. And that’s the paradigm shift: we have to pay more attention to the relationship between potential and active volunteers than to our relationship to them directly. The latter is the broadcast model, the former is the social volunteering model.
One of the biggest roadblocks to this approach is the mind-boggling array of constantly emerging social media websites. Who can keep up—or find the most useful tools? The first thing is to stop worrying about “brands” (to Facebook or not to Facebook). It’s not necessary to know every site out there but rather to understand the basic social media tools they represent. Trainer Jayne Cravens offers this advice:
Here’s one way to think about internet tools—dividing them into asynchronous, which are those tools where users do not have to be online at the same time in order to interact with each other; and synchronous, which are those tools where users do have to be online at the same time in order to interact with each other.
Anyone under age 25 is a “cyber-native,” unable to picture a world without computers and internet communication. This means, among other things, that the children you serve are fully networked. Is your program?
Online networking is a huge topic, but consider a few of the actions you might take to utilize the web productively and safely:
Recruit “cyber deputies”—volunteers with solid knowledge of various online tools and the interest to help you use them. Cyber deputies never have to meet a child; they provide administrative support with special expertise.
Learn to use the many websites established to help organizations recruit volunteers. Post interesting and appealing messages, targeted at the populations you most want to recruit.
Recognize the critical importance of your own program website. Does it give detailed information about how to become an advocate and about the other volunteer roles available? Is the information current? Can someone apply online?
Build an online community among current volunteers. Start an online discussion group for advocates to share experiences, ideas and tips (of course, they are trained not to reveal a child’s or family’s identity). Create a Facebook group open only to current volunteers—and another one for anyone who wants to learn more about the program. Get your cyber deputies to teach you how.
Explore ways that current advocates can add internet communication to their contact with their assigned children. For example, if a teen has internet access, encourage Skype calls using video; it’s much less time consuming than a personal visit, and yet it is a personal visit in the mind of the young cyber-native. Such calls can be an addition to, rather than a substitute for, regular in-person visits. Consider also whether you can use tools such as Skype to stay in touch with volunteers.
Develop virtual volunteering opportunities for people who want to help the program on their own schedule, even in their pajamas. Online service is no longer an oddity. And as with pro bono volunteers, you can apply all the principles of real-world volunteer management. What can someone do virtually? Write a grant proposal, proofread materials, translate information into another language, search for discounts on needed supplies, set up online surveys, design new web pages for you, do web research on any topic. Get the idea?
What Is Really Possible?
This article is meant to be provocative. The trends identified are documented and only scratch the surface of the many issues percolating in our communities right now. The proposed actions, however, are intended as discussion starters. You may find that each has merit but some are way off base for your program. On the other hand, look for the seed of an idea that gets your creative juices flowing. And invite current volunteers to help you debate the pros and cons.
|
