Voluntarism: An Expanding Field With a Slick New Image

Meaning well is no longer enough.

Talk voluntarism today and you hear terms like transitioning, retooling, validation, certification and recognition. Today there are volunteer directors, coordinators, advocates, trainers, educators and consultants. There is corporate involvement and community participation. Voluntarism can get you a paying job; a job can get you into voluntarism.

The hottest thing on the volunteer scene is the technology transfer volunteer. But there’s still a need for people to address envelopes.

In the last 10 years, voluntarism has grown up. It’s become sophisticated, a field.

(The term voluntarism --not volunteerism --is the choice of those in the field.)

It’s even a profession, where volunteer directors--seeing themselves as professionals who borrow knowledge from the behavioral sciences, public relations and business management--can measure their ability by seeking certification. Acquiring Assn. of Volunteer Administration certification, which has only been available in its current performance-oriented form since 1983, can have as much marketing value as the initials CPA to an accountant.

Volunteer recognition has new status: from the White House, which last Monday, as the prelude to National Volunteer Week, honored 18 volunteer groups and individuals for outstanding achievement, to Pasadena, where it was the theme of the 1984 Rose Parade.

Today you find volunteers like:

--Les Corey of North Dartmouth, Mass., one of the new “technology transfer volunteers” and an honoree at Monday’s White House ceremony. Corey has spent his spare time for the last three years working with state-of-the-art equipment to develop computerized communications systems for the developmentally impaired. So far, he and the other engineering professionals in the association he founded at Southeast Massachusetts University have provided individualized systems for 24 people.

--Dolores Wong, who lives in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, had only done “the usual--Cub Scouts, PTA, precinct work,” until meeting a children’s librarian named Ruby Ling Louie, who had an idea about a branch library in Chinatown. The city’s initial response was that Chinatown’s population didn’t justify its own branch library. So starting from scratch in 1971, Wong found herself leading a grass-roots movement involving appeals and petitions to the mayor and city council, continuous badgering of the Library Commission, a three-year search for land or a storefront, dealing with more bureaucrats and finally, in 1977, opening a library in the auditorium of Castellar School.

That was just the beginning. After two months of operation, the library showed a circulation of 30,000. Wong and company applied for a federal grant, eventually receiving $523,000, and also started hard-core fund raising for an additional $227,000 toward expansion. That accomplished in 1982, the Friends of the Chinatown Library has since raised an additional $64,000 for such things as book security, landscaping, furnishing and rare Chinese books. A drive to raise $500,000 for a separate children’s wing is now under way.

Wong talks about how the library brought the Chinese community together, including people from outside Chinatown, and the feeling of satisfaction she got from seeing “children, old people, waiters, garment workers, acculturated Chinese who come here because there’s no place else.” Nevertheless, she concedes with a laugh, “if you’d told me at the beginning what was involved, how many crises we’d have, what had to be raised, I’d have died. But the project was so exciting, we just all said ‘Let’s go for it.’ ”

--Dr. Vernon Falkenhain of Rolla, Mo., who since 1977 has led teams of obstetricians and optometrists to eight countries. Now his organization, Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity, figures it has provided 28,000 pairs of glasses. He also received a 1985 President’s Volunteer Action Award.

While voluntarism has always been appreciated, its image traditionally was somewhat limited to homemakers who, with a little extra time on their hands, donated a few hours each week at a hospital or museum. There were many more people involved, of course. But voluntarism was primarily considered an after-hours activity demanding more heart than skill.

Today, contends Eva Schindler-Rainman, a Los Angeles-based writer, trainer and pioneer consultant in the field, voluntarism “looks more powerful, influential and pervasive.”

Sign of Status

Indeed, the most telling indication of the status of voluntarism today may be, as Rainman observed, that listing one’s volunteer accomplishments and skills on personal resumes, has become de rigueur .

Who or what to thank for this change of status?

“President Reagan’s emphasis on the private sector,” Rainman responded. “It’s certainly been an impetus to the corporate world. It’s not just that they’re more concerned, but corporations also are looking at how its employees can benefit from voluntarism. Corporations also are saying ‘We can be available for long-term and short-term projects.’ They want to do more than just give money.

“Mayor Bradley also has been very instrumental in getting the newcomer community involved--the Koreans, Thais--many of these cultures that don’t necessarily know how to volunteer.”

Voluntarism as a field is defining itself much more broadly than in past years, said Marlene Wilson, president of Volunteer Management Associates, a Boulder, Colo., firm that sponsors training workshops for volunteer directors and coordinators. “Traditionally, volunteers worked through some sort of service agency. Now we’re seeing volunteers come out of professional associations, neighborhood groups, self-help groups. I see it at my workshops. The audiences are much more diverse. But there’s one commonality. They have to rely on volunteers to accomplish what they want to get done.”

Relying on volunteers is the ongoing challenge. Their number has remained strong--55% of all Americans 18 and older, according to a Gallup Poll survey. The number of women volunteering has been a constant 56%, while men volunteers increased from 47% in 1981 to 53% in 1983. However, these days volunteers, rather than the agencies, are calling the tune.

‘People Won’t Wait Around’

It’s a big jump from, say, the early ‘70s when, Wilson said, “the problem was that volunteers would drop out after a while. Now people just won’t come. The emphasis now is on people’s time. If agencies want a volunteer program to succeed, they have to have their act together. People won’t wait around for an organization to decide what they want of them.

“I’ll tell you the hardest thing (as a consultant) is to convince people (who run agencies or groups requiring volunteers) that what worked 10 or 15 years ago won’t work today.

“The difference is a lot of people have paying jobs. So if they volunteer, they want short specific assignments. Three to six months are the most appealing. They want to work nights and weekends. Many want to practice skills they’re not able to use in their paying work--but not if they’re put in nonsensical little jobs. Many want to learn new skills and they want training to be provided.

“In our town, for instance, there’s an excellent hospice with a two-week training program which people have to pay for. There’s a waiting list because people see this training as transferable. Actually, extensive training turns people on rather than the opposite.”

This is where the experts talk “transitioning.” Or as Eva Schindler-Rainman, author of a book on this subject, said, “moving from the no longer to the not yet.” The challenge, they say, is creating an environment where volunteer work is seen as a transition for the retiree leaving a paid job or a homemaker re-entering the job market. It can be a training ground for youth and also for the unemployed.

Rainman talks of making voluntarism more accessible to people “at risk” such as the physically and mentally handicapped. Volunteer advocate Ruth March of Los Angeles, who led the movement in the ‘70s to have a “volunteer experience” category included on job application forms, is now concerned with getting volunteer-reliant agencies to draw up specific job descriptions--even to the point of denying them financial aid unless they did so.

Reimbursement of expenses is another issue. “Volunteers can claim 9 cents a mile on the IRS form, while if a person is traveling for business they can get 20 cents. It hardly seems fair,” March said.

“What we have to realize,” Rainman said, “is that volunteers not only give service, but they have needs. People need a place to hang their hats. In this computerized, traditional world, they need a place where they can feel at home. Maybe they have a job they don’t like. They can have a volunteer job they do like. They need to be able to think, ‘By gum, I made a difference.’ Whether it’s planning a gala at the Wiltern Theater for an animal shelter, or driving home a drunken teen-ager. It doesn’t matter what they do as long as they are doing.

“Volunteers come today with a combination of motivations. They don’t volunteer just because they’re cause-oriented. They need to get something personal from it. Maybe make friends, or gain status in their job. They may want the chance to be creative, or this opportunity to make a difference. We tend to forget that voluntarism is still one way a person can move in society--socially or friendship-wise.”

Exactly the thinking of Ellen Lindsley, president of Involvement Inc., a California-based, nonprofit corporation that works with corporations throughout the country, linking employee volunteers with community agencies needing their help. She looks at Transamerica Occidental as typical of what can happen with corporate involvement.

6,500 Hours of Volunteer Time

Just in terms of numbers: Since 1974, when the company contracted with Involvement Inc., subsidizing office space and the salary of its activity coordinator, approximately 1,200 of Transamerica Occidental’s 4,000 employees have volunteered more than 6,500 hours serving 20 community agencies. But if the causes--ranging from a picnic for burn victims and their families to tutoring Job Corps students to aiding tornado victims as part of a Red Cross Disaster Action Team--benefit, so do the employees.

“People want to do something and we (Transamerica Occidental Involvement Corps) provide the vehicle. If they’re working all day long, they’ve sort of got to have it handed to them,” said Lindsley, who’s coordinated programs with more than 150 companies in 13 states and the District of Colombia.

“For the people we see, it (volunteering) may be a matter of personal growth, maybe testing themselves or using skills they’re not using on the job. Maybe showing that they have skills that they’re not given credit for. Sometimes people just want to make friends, have something to do. Or they may have had their consciousness raised through our Volunteer Fair where they have access to all the agencies we work with, or by a speaker in the cafeteria at noon hour. It’s also not unusual for people to come in the day after seeing something on the television news the night before. It will trigger something in them and they’ll want to know how they can help.”

In-House Operation

Transamerica Occidental, whose volunteer program is employee-managed though operation is contracted out, is one of at least 50 Los Angeles corporations with volunteer centers on the premises. Most are operated in-house

Lindsley sees the corporate trend as an outgrowth of the activist period, a way of alleviating some community problems especially as government programs are being cut back. “But it also came at a time when corporations were beginning to sense a need for something. It was as if they felt a vacuum. At Transamerica Occidental, there’s a clear-cut business philosophy which includes responsibility to the community. And I think that’s very significant.”

Significant, too, is the relaxed attitude on the part of some women’s commissions and organizations which in past years approved of voluntarism for social change, but not for service, and were adamant that those who volunteer for service really ought to be paid.

Said Gloria Allred, attorney and president of the Women’s Equal Right Legal Defense and Education Fund: “We couldn’t do without volunteers. They’re so important and I admire them.”

But that, she added, is why there should be credit and remuneration where possible. “Employers should recognize the voluntarism as a work experience. And volunteers should be honored for what they do.

“I’d like to see people get the title, the credit and the pay. It seems without pay, the people generally expected to do a job are women. . . . Many are willing to volunteer large amounts of time without compensation. But there are some who can’t afford it.

“They’re (volunteers) so important, they should be compensated. We owe that to voluntarism. It’s been underestimated for too long.”