Charities fight the tide of do-gooder fatigue
Among the top 50 metro areas, Minneapolis had the highest volunteer rate at 40 percent, while Las Vegas was at the bottom with 14 percent, says a new study.
from the July 17, 2007 edition
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In Portland, Ore., where almost 90 percent of residents over age 25 have completed high school, the volunteer rate is nearly 36 percent.
In Riverside, Calif., where only 75 percent of people over age 25 have a high school degree, the number of folks willing to help for free is about 21 percent.
American volunteers tend to participate in one of four types of activities: fundraising, serving food, general labor – including highway maintenance and construction – and tutoring. But more groups that rely on volunteers say they are having a hard time keeping many who sign up.
"Our surveys show that the biggest hurdle to getting a volunteer to stay involved is that they felt ineffective in their use of time," says Rob Wallace, a spokesman for Keep America Beautiful, a national nonprofit public education organization that seeks to improve community environments. "Everyone is extremely busy today, so if they begin to feel their volunteer time is sucking the life out of them without giving them satisfaction, they get jaded and want to quit."
Often this happens because volunteer programs are not being run effectively, experts say.
"Most nonprofits … if they got a million dollar grant, they would put their CEO in charge of it," says Sandy Scott, spokesman for CNCS. "But at the same time they might have $5 million worth of volunteers at work but they are being run by an intern or busy receptionist. We are trying to change that."
More groups are now teaching nonprofit organizations how to help guarantee volunteer satisfaction in part by working with their busy schedules.
"We help them plan flexible projects for times that volunteers have free, or in geographical areas where they are already commuting to or that deal with such facts [such as] they don't have much money to get around," says Ariel Zwang, executive director of New York Cares, which helps 850 nonprofit agencies, public schools, and others create projects for volunteers.
Some states, like Minnesota, have an association of volunteer administrators, who provide training of volunteer leaders. "We have an actual infrastructure here that supports volunteerism, which other [states] don't," says Bob Jackson, who is CNCS's Minnesota state director.
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