As budgets get tight and staffing gets slim, nonprofit arts organizations will have even more reason to rethink and revitalize their use of volunteers. For those eager to do so, Stanford Social Innovation Review offers this short primer on how to bring strategy and intent to the essential resource of unpaid labor. How big is that resource, and how big the current failure to sustain it? Says the article:
Of the 61.2 million people who volunteered in 2006, 21.7 million–more than one-third–did not donate any time to a charitable cause the following year. Because these volunteers gave about 1.9 billion hours in 2006, and the value of their donated time was about $20 per hour–that calculates to about $38 billion in lost volunteer time in one year.
Anyone who’s managed volunteers knows that they are not ”free labor.” Rather, they are workers who are compensated in other ways — connection, meaning, recognition, purpose, and social interaction. It might be a good time to make sure your volunteers are compensated and managed in a way that will keep them coming back, and will encourage them to bring their friends.
I’ll second that motion. And where have all the good mentors gone?
What can I say… Kudos.